Independence Day came a couple of weeks early this year for singer-songwriter Esme Patterson.
The Colorado native released her daring new solo album We Were Wild on June 10, then celebrated by performing eight days later inside a crowded house of old friends, new fans and special guests at the Larimer Lounge in Denver.
For Patterson, the dingy bar in the RiNo neighborhood must have felt like a place fit for a queen. She was home again, but the circumstances this time involved some significant changes.
"This room is filled with love," Patterson said softly and without a hint of irony in between "The Waves" and "Find It," the opening tunes of her late-night set, both off We Were Wild (Grand Jury Music). More selections followed from her third solo album that starts off with a bang as she lets her expression of freedom ring over the course of 12 scrumptious songs.
The former member of Denver's trio of harmonizing women in the folk-pleasant-pop act Paper Bird followed that up by saying, "I'm gonna do whatever I want to do tonight. You guys should do that as well as long as it's safe and consensual."
This clearly was no raised-fist act of defiance, delivered in such a joyful manner that the last comment drew the biggest laughs of the night from an audience that seemed to appreciate Patterson's happy return.
An encore of "Free Bird" with her gifted three-member backing band that included current road trippers Philippe Bronchtein (guitar) and Alex Koshak (drums) might have sent them rolling out of the club in hysterics. But the thoughtful artist with movie-star looks seems too classy and crafty to go there, no matter how appropriate the circumstances are. Instead, accompanied only by her electric guitar, she finished with "Yours and Mine," another track off the new album that Patterson described as a love song.
In the light of my love / You are a diamond, you shine
Esme Patterson (left) performs with touring guitarist Philippe Bronchtein
during her June 18 show at the Larimer Lounge in Denver.
The curious explorer is simply celebrating her newfound freedom these days, whether it's escaping the structure of a group, a constricted form of music or just a figurative place where she never felt totally at ease.
On the cellphone with a spotty connection in Oakland, Calif., earlier this week ahead of a show that night in San Francisco that included touring bassist Jeremy Averitt, Patterson cordially considered how going solo stacks up against being a band member.
"It's very different and, for me, it's much more comfortable to be solo because there's kind of a clear chain of command," she said. "In every ... creatively and logistically and, yeah, I do enjoy collaborating with other people and I really love community and working with other people. It's really inspiring and exciting a lot of the time but I have really enjoyed kind of a peacefulness stepping into my own project where I am free. ...
"I'm free to want to make and do things the way I'd like to do them. I don't really have to explain that to anyone. (laughs) Well, I do sometimes but ... I can just follow my vision."
She laughed approvingly at the suggestion that this explosion of unhinged, unconventional creativity proves there's a punk rocker trapped inside a folk singer's body just dying to get out.
"I do feel that way," she said. "That's so funny. That is true. And I feel like I got a lot of my musical training in folk music, in being in Paper Bird for almost a decade. ... I feel like the ways that I stand in folk music still are just kind of the street level quality of folk music being played by anyone for everyone. And the music, folk music, seems to connect on a heart level. It aims to bring people together and give people tools to use in their community and in their lives. And those are the ways I feel like I still play folk music and stand in folk music as a tradition.
"But the punk rock tendencies you were talking about are just the ways that feelings don't translate into poetry that sounds nice -- sometimes. (laughs) You know, things have to feel wrong and sound wrong because that's the way that the world is. And that's the way that life is, too. I feel like it's dishonest to only show ... the songwriting that I do is an exploration of my life and of my heart and of my experiences. And to not include chaos and pain would be to not tell the whole truth."
That turmoil can be revealed in songs tender or tough, fragile or frenetic. Check out the sonic blasts of feedback fury declaring her recording return on "Feel Right" or, after breaking free, the squeals of delight unleashed during the title track that sound like David Byrne if he was a she. Further evidence is displayed through symbolic references to attempts at taming the wild beast in the video for "No River," a filming experience that Patterson told the Denver crowd was "possibly the craziest 12 hours of my life," or on the attention-grabbing album cover.
Wearing a collar hooked to a leash as a heart-shaped tag inscribed with her first name dangles, Patterson said of the cover image, "The idea of it is just about self-ownership. And about domestication vs. wildness. ... We're aware of the fact that we're animals that have kind of created all of these boundaries for ourselves."
Then there are those colorful tattoos, a natural accessory to Patterson's flamboyant wardrobe. If one looks hard enough, though, four bold black letters can be seen on her right hand, a letter for each finger spelling out D-Y-I-N.
For anyone wondering if it's a blatant cry for help, take it easy.
"Mostly, it's just a reminder to be present and to remain present because everything is fleeting and passing," Patterson calmly said of the ink she recently added. "I feel like there's a lot of that idea in my music, and on this record, especially. A song exists within the moment of singing it and then disappears. And that's what life is like as well, that everything is passing and moving past us."
For Patterson, life began three decades ago when her mother Elisabeth gave birth at Boulder Community Hospital, the same place where Esme's father Balfour Patterson had been born. Esme grew up in the college town northwest of Denver where her parents remain. She was schooled in Boulder, graduating from Fairview High, then attended the University of Colorado-Denver for a couple of years before turning toward a music profession.
She vaguely remembers Paper Bird's first show at the Larimer Lounge on a bill with Denver musician Ian Cooke "probably like seven years" ago only because "I think I was still trying to figure out what I was gonna play in the band," Patterson said. "I think I was wearing tap shoes and trying to do percussion with the tap shoes."
Her voice soon became the instrument of choice and while experiencing ups and downs like any touring band, the members of Paper Bird shared the same residences, first in Denver, then Boulder.
As the band played on, Patterson's solo career officially began with the 2012 release of All Princes, I that included "very autobiographical" material she wrote while going through a divorce.
Esme Patterson (far right) prepares to take a bow with members of Paper Bird, Shovels & Rope and the Lumineers during a New Year's Eve show
in 2012 at the Ogden Theatre in Denver.
The year for Paper Bird ended on a joyous note, though. Opening a sold-out New Year's Eve show for Shovels & Rope and the Lumineers at the Ogden Theatre in Denver had to be a Mile High milestone, with all three acts sharing the stage for raucous covers of the Band's "The Weight" and Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Long As I Can See the Light."
That spirit of togetherness within her group vanished in 2014, the year Patterson recorded a seven-song solo EP, Woman to Woman. Her career path took a sudden turn when she left the band, then her home state, for Portland, Ore.
What expedited her departure from Paper Bird, which still includes co-founding members Sarah Anderson and Esme's younger sister Genny Patterson, along with three male musicians, was a group ultimatum to essentially choose between working full-time for them or herself.
Involved in the solo projects and a cool collaboration with Shakey Graves that led to three songs as a featured guest on his 2014 album And the War Came, then a knockout performance of "Dearly Departed" with him before an esteemed group of nominees in Ryman Auditorium at the Americana Music Awards in 2015, Patterson admitted that Paper Bird didn't have her full attention.
"They kind of sat me down one day," Patterson said of a tour stop in May 2014. "It was an unpleasant conversation but I was just like, 'Well, that's easy. If you're gonna let me choose, I'll choose the work that I'm doing.' So I left and, yeah, they're still doing their thing. I wish them the best."
Regarding how that affected her relationship with Genny, who remains in the band that's preparing to mark its 10-year anniversary by releasing a new album with replacement Carleigh Aikins, Patterson said, "My sister and I love each other very much and we're doing great."
In fact, Patterson thanks Genny in the album's liner notes and, as pain from the breakup faded, she attended her sister's wedding at Washington Park, sharing, "I got drunk and made a lot of speeches. It was really fun."
Seeking comments before this interview from members of Paper Bird about the split with Esme, their publicist said in an email that the parting was amicable "but they have moved on and she's really not a part of the story of Paper Bird as of now."
"All things must pass," Patterson offered. "It's fine. I don't think anyone wishes anyone else any ill will."
Before her cellphone began breaking up again, Patterson clearly stated that, looking back, even if the option to pursue the solo and group careers simultaneously had existed, "I'm glad that I didn't stay any longer. I really am. ...
"I'm just making the art that I believe in, that I want to make," she concluded. "And I stayed in Paper Bird for a long time because I love my sister and I had worked very hard to build that. But I'm very glad that I stepped away to do my own music. I feel really rewarded and grounded in that choice, and it is where I'll stay."
Long after the smoke clears on the Fourth of July, that can only mean Patterson will set off more celebratory fireworks.
Publicity photo by Devvon Simpson. Concert photos by Michael Bialas. See more of Esme Patterson's homecoming performance at the Larimer Lounge in Denver.