Music has been the major constant in the not-that-long life of Patrick Hall. As a young child, growing up in Arkansas, Patrick had learned to sing by performing with the Church choir. But unlike most kids who sing with the choir because it beats sitting through a Church service with Mommy and Daddy telling you to stop fussing, Patrick loved the words and the sounds of the hymns he was taught and to this day remembers by heart just about every single hymn you could expect to hear in a Baptist church. When his obvious love and natural talent for music convinced his parents to get him piano lessons, Patrick’s passion for music was greater than his desire to practice scales and the like and he eventually chose to teach himself how to play. He would sit his stereo on top of the piano and put it on the Top 40 station and play along one song after the next. This not only developed his playing style, but it also influenced his musical tastes. “Like any young kid, I liked what I could do, so the ones that sounded nice and that I could easily play along with became my favorites.” In spite of not being able to read sheet music, and nobody guiding him, Patrick quickly learned how to play the piano and how to compose his own music.
As he grew older, his tastes broadened and so did his experience, and it didn’t take Patrick long to figure out that if he was going to have the career in music that he had been dreaming of, it would take more than just his love and his talent. “I was lucky that I grew up in the MTV era,” Patrick laughs, “because it allowed me to see as well as hear a lot of the popular music of the time. I also realized that it was a lot more than just a catchy hook. You might have a hit single or two with that, but if you wanted a real career, I saw that it would take more than that.” The three artists that Patrick admired most give a strong vision of how he has developed the professional writing, playing and performing skills that have set him on his journey.
First, there was Billy Joel. “As a piano player, obviously I was drawn to people like Billy Joel,” Patrick explains, “but it was also the songwriting that turned me on. Billy Joel writes deeply personal songs about his life and the lives he sees around him. Those are songs that matter to people and I think that it’s what songwriting should be about.” Indeed on his debut album, One For The Ages, one feels that they are given insight into the heart and the mind of this talented young man. Then, there was George Michael. “As a singer, he is just incredible. There’s an inflection in the way he sings that really seems to capture a song. As a songwriter, I want that in my own singing. I want everything from the lyrics to the way I sing them to tell the story.” And finally, there was Elton John. “A lot of people who play piano and sing have a problem figuring out how to perform their music in a way that is entertaining,” says Patrick. “Elton is a perfect example of someone who has overcome that.”
When one sees Patrick Hall live, they can understand where these three primary influences have all come into play. His songwriting is meaningful, personal and deep. His vocals are powerful and fit the lyrics of his songs and the melodies. And his stage performance is exciting and riveting. It was these very elements that caught the interest of Paula Abdul when she was judging a talent competition that Patrick was part of. “She called me up shortly afterwards and offered to sponsor me in the competition for the fifth season of American Idol,” says Patrick. “I kind of wavered back and forth about it for awhile, and talked to some friends and my producer, Nayan Lassiter who had been working on my album with me and they all told me I should go for it.” Figuring that the national TV exposure would help when he released his debut album, Patrick flew to Las Vegas where his first friend was the also-auditioning eventual winner, Taylor Hicks. “We both had doubts that this was the smartest move, but we’d also both figured ‘what the heck’,” Patrick laughs. “I’m really happy for him.”
Patrick, however, didn’t fare as well as Taylor did, and although he made his way through all the preliminary competition and into the quarterfinals, which is where the TV exposure begins, he was eliminated out of the top 24. “When I got eliminated so early in the televised competition, I had a lot of pent up sadness and anger. I found myself questioning my song choice, my wardrobe, and of course my performance. I really felt I never had a chance to show what I am capable of.” Instead of letting those emotions hold him back or beat him down, though, Hall decided to turn that negative into a positive. “I was helped when Nayan gave me a call after I was off the show. He told me ‘Everyone loses sometimes, even Tiger Woods. Nobody wins all of the time.’” That conversation was the spark, and it sent Lassiter and Patrick back into the studio where they wrote “One For The Ages” which is not only about Patrick’s personal experience of being on American Idol and falling short, but about the whole process of trying to win at anything in life. That song was released in late 2006 and received high regards from several sources in the industry as well as some mild radio success across the country.
Now, months later, Patrick has moved on and his eyes, heart and mind are all facing forward instead of backward. “Writing ‘One For The Ages’ was like a healing process for me,” he explains. “When the song was finished, I felt that I’d let it go and could get back into working towards my goals.” Those goals include completing the album he’d been working on prior to appearing on American Idol. It is entitled One For The Ages and many of the tracks are featured here on Myspace. In the meantime, they took the single a step further and made a video that takes an amusing, yet bittersweet look at the whole talent competition concept. “There’s a little bit of parody of Randy, Simon and Paula,” Hall teases, “but also a lot of poking fun at myself. I remember all the trepidation I had in my earliest talent recitals back in grade school. That was as much a motivation for the video as American Idol was.”
“I’ll never be sorry that I did the show,” says Patrick, “but I hope that when people hear my music they will appreciate them for what they are. There is a lot more in the lyrics and the music than just that one experience. A lot of the defining moments and events of my life are there. Music is more than just something I enjoy. It’s a part of me. And the music shows that.”
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