Jon Bream, Star Tribune, September 11, 2010 (original article at Star Tribune)

A family that plays together

Songwriting sisters Aimee Mann and Gretchen Seichrist have never performed together. That’s about to change.

The Internet cannot solve all conundrums. Google “Aimee Mann” and you’ll learn that the celebrated Los Angeles singer/songwriter grew up in a family of brothers. But nearly every mention of Gretchen Seichrist, the captivatingly arty Minneapolis singer/songwriter, says she is Mann’s sister. What gives?

“We have different fathers,” Mann said when we got them together by phone. “I was in the first litter. And we did not know each other at all growing up.”

Aimee was 14 when she first visited Gretchen.

“You sang a Loudon Wainwright song for me,” Seichrist recalled. “It was that ‘They got drunk last night’ song ['The Drinking Song'].”
It was at least another 10 years before they got to know one another. Now Mann, 50, and Seichrist, 45, will play their first shows together this week at the Dakota Jazz Club.

In a 45-minute conversation, the sisters discussed their music and each other. They sound instantly familiar with each other on the phone. But they haven’t really talked all that much about their Dakota gigs, which Seichrist will open.
Seichrist has been to the downtown Minneapolis club, but she hasn’t told Mann anything about the Dakota.

“Is it made out of ice or is it made out of candy?” Mann jokingly asked.

As of two weeks ago, she hadn’t yet rehearsed for the shows, the first nights of her fall tour with an acoustic trio.

“We’ll probably trade off instruments and we’ll try to simulate a full band sound with three people,” promised Mann, who first gained fame for the 1985 hit “Voices Carry” with the group Til Tuesday, but is best known for her Oscar-nominated “Save Me” from the 1999 “Magnolias” soundtrack.

“I’ve done a couple of acoustic tours before. For me, it’s preferable. It’s easier to connect with your musicians in that great way where you start reading each other’s mind, and you can hear yourself sing better. The more people onstage, the harder it is to do that, because you’re separated by technology in some way.

“Gretchen’s going to have a 20-piece band. You’re providing the spectacle for the evening.”

Mann is just guessing — she’s never seen a performance by Seichrist, who bills her band as Patches & Gretchen and offers artfully eclectic Dylanesque, poetry-reciting, performance-art-inclined rock.

First musical collaboration

Will the two sisters collaborate onstage at the Dakota?

“We have not discussed that at alllllll,” Mann said hesitantly.

“I can’t even collaborate with my shoe,” Seichrist piped in.

Actually, they’ve never played music together. “We don’t even really know each other,” Mann joked. “We’ve had some meals together. We live very far apart.”

Their only collaboration has been “Medicine Wheel,” a song from Mann’s 2008′s album”@#%&*! Smilers.” Seichrist sent poems to Mann, who set one of them to music. They haven’t discussed further joint efforts, but Mann suspects it might happen.

“We’re not planners, me and Gretchen,” she said.

So what are they?

Mann described Seichrist: “She’s extremely creative, probably the most creative person I know. Her creativity bleeds into all kinds of different areas, where like the visual bleeds into the musical and poetry and stuff. I also think she’s very insightful and very tough with her approach to life. There’s this no-[b.s.] stance, like: ‘This is what it is and I’m going to acknowledge the reality of that and not pretend it’s something else.’”

“Except when I listen to Love 105,” interjected Seichrist, referring to the Twin Cities oldies radio station. “I just cry five times a day listening to those songs.”

Seichrist attempted to describe Mann: “Intelligent, beautiful, thoughtful. God, it feels like I’m in grade school here. To me the most important thing that’s different about her, it’s a rare thing but it’s very simple — I’ll say it as an example: At one point when I started showing her some songs in a very crude form, it was what she didn’t say. She didn’t say, ‘Musicians need to play for a long time.’ She said, ‘The problem is you need someone to figure out this part of it. Just find that person.’”

That was the vote of confidence Seichrist needed to become a performing songwriter. She has released two albums on her own, including last winter’s “Sugar Head Pie.”

Aunt Aimee

Seichrist has lived about half her life in Minneapolis. Her father, Ron, taught design at Minneapolis College of Arts and Design and, in 1993, cofounded the Miami Ad School (there are eight campuses, including Minneapolis, on three continents). The single mother of a 13-year-old boy and an 8-year-old girl, she said Mann is an important aunt.

“She’s perfect for my daughter, who is Ms. Superstar Wannabe,” Seichrist said. “My daughter is very creative and she’s already chosen Aimee as a role model over me. It’s awesome for my daughter to have that role model in the family. It’s not like a Hannah Montana type.”

Mann, an old-school pop craftswoman, had a birthday last week. And her sister will have a bunch of presents awaiting her arrival: “I’m making her a whole line of Patches & Gretchen products. Jelly, barbecue sauce, T-shirt and a hand-crafted, hand-painted slip, tablecloth and a pillowcase.”

At least one of them is a planner. Sometimes.

Jon Bream • 612-673-1719

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYsrsTIkT7w

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDjng1R_xjg

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDRIk8Icixw

www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNTD2MBQDJ0

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUQbOlG7MJ8

Recordings

• CityPages.com Review : Sugar Head Pie

Sugar Head Pie weaves a colorful quilt, from the quiet melancholy of “Sweet Wolves” to theVelvet Underground guitar jangle of “Take the Gauze Off” to the mystic and dulcimer-soaked closer, “Everything Is Indian.” Sugar Head Pie is stunning in its scope and beauty, continually revealing and dazzling—a perennial.

• Sugar Head Pie in MudKiss Fanzine

This is a terrific record, and hopefully the varied approach – musically and lyrically – will give it a broad appeal. Apart from the entry-point Patti Smith and Chrissie Hynde references, there’s a wealth of things to enjoy here – a really tight, flexible and imaginative group of musicians giving their all to some thoughtful and intense songs. There’s generally a raw punky energy to the faster tracks, combined with a hint of the more decadent end of early 70′s rock, and this works really well with the slower, acoustic feel of other songs.

• Star Tribune on Sugar Head Pie

Heretofore best known as Grammy-winning singer Aimee Mann‘s quirky sister,Gretchen Seichrist brazenly steps into her own light on her sophomore disc under the alias Patches & Gretchen, “Sugar Head Pie” — and it’s quite a searing, squint-inducing light at that. Imagine Chrissie Hynde if she were really into barbecue, or Patti Smith if she knew how to make hot dish, and you get an idea of the album’s odd charm and meaty power.

• MinnPost.com: Greetings To The New Dylanette

You know a masterpiece when you hear it. One of those addictions you played the hell out of, start to finish, over and over. An album. A collection of songs written and recorded and sequenced with great care and consideration for the listener, the art lover, the reader, the lucky one who stumbles upon this aural glue that connects you with the past and future and nails what Jon Stewart was talking about at the Kennedy Center Awards recently, about Springsteen’s “ongoing conversation with his audience.” That’s what I have with “Sugar Head Pie” — an ongoing conversation — and it’s a beautiful thing.

• MPR NEWS : Patches And Gretchen Serve Up Sugar Head Pie (March 20, 2010)”quote here”
• Tom Hallett

On her second, Rich Mattson-produced outing, Sugar Head Pie, Minneapolis-based singer/songwriter Gretchen Seichrist drops a bevy of alternatingly bouncy and bittersweet musical bombshells. Kicking off with with the razor-sharp cut “Time Of The Lilacs,” Seichrist plies her plucky, dusky pipes to her dazzling wordplay and positively smokin’ band (featuring, this time ’round, the likes of Terry Eason, Derek Rolando, David Loy, Mattson himself, and more talented local artists than we have room here to list) with all the inherent chutzpah of some of her main influences- Patti Smith, Dylan, and “sister Golden Hair” Aimee Mann. Standout cuts here include the above-mentioned opener, the blazing punk gem “Crying States,” the country-fried confessional “Big Things,” the cut-n’-run classic-to-be title track, and the smoky opus “Sweet Wolves,” but frankly, there’s simply not a bad song in this batch. Seichrist champions the little beauties in life, laments the loss of humanity and compassion in a world growing ever colder, and celebrates the simple joys of family, friends, and community. Which leaves us with one burning question- who is Patches? I am. She is. Her ever-evolving band is. Her family and friends are. Most importantly, you are. Don’t miss your chance to fill in your blank square this Thursday, March 11th, when Patches And Gretchen perform at The Varsity Theater.

• Peter Himmelman

What a haunting piece of work. Amazing stirring lyrical images…who are you girl?

• CityPages on Music From Little Big Pink (with Interview)

Created with borrowed money and the help of generous and talented friends, this CD, named after the legendary album by the Band, captures the sweet-sweet fringy feel of a group of friends playing guitars by a bonfire in the woods circa 1968, hand-painted in lush sepia tones. The images in these songs are both bittersweet and joyful—while the daddies may be gone, the children still spray hoses in the air, slow motion, on a fine summer’s day, but Mama’s mascara is a little smeared and her granny apron is faded, too.

• MetroMag: Review of Sugar Head Pie

Album of the Year (So Far) Sugar Head Pie by Patches + Gretchen Don’t let her tipsy, tobacco-voiced delivery fool you: Local songsmith Gretchen Seichrist is clear-eyed and in control on her second album, a superb collection of broken down Americana bolstered by Seichrist’s evocative, goose bump-inducing lyrics.

• Twin Cities Metro: Minnesota Wierd

Shows

• How-Was-The-Show on the Sugar Head Pie CD-Launch Party

Expanding on the groundwork she laid down on her debut The Big Pink, Sugar Head Pie makes it all the more evident that Seichrist’s artistic vision comes from living in a world that few of us ever even visit. (Some of us never go there, if we’re lucky, or unlucky as the case may be, as it’s a place of often beautiful, though often harsh realities.) As way of metaphor, I found myself relying on how Bill Burroughs described the title of his novel Naked Lunch, which came to him via Jack Kerouac: “A frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork.” Seichrist tells it like it is.

• CityPages: Patches & Gretchen brings her “Freakout Folk Punk” to the Varsity

Avant garde local singer-songwriter Gretchen Seichrist, a.k.a. Patches & Gretchen, took over the Varsity Theater last night for a CD-release show in honor of her sophomore album Sugar Head Pie, which opener Adam Levy called a “freakout folk punk masterpiece.”

• MSPMag.com: Gretchen Seichist

There are plenty of reasons why a 45-year-old painter, poet, and mother of two shouldn’t start a band, and Gretchen Seichrist has ignored all of them. Much to her own surprise, Seichrist’s second CD, Sugar Head Pie, was just released, and her band, Patches & Gretchen, is making the local club rounds.

Interviews

• MudKiss : Acting Out Of Passion

I like names in pairs – it’s funny to me – and I couldn’t figure out at the time who was going to help me do what I was doing so I put a patch on it, because I didn’t feel like waiting for somebody. And you know everything is a fucking patch.

Blood Suitcase-( sugar head pie) 2010 Patches and Gretchen – all rights reserved copyright sandpaper tongue records

Pack your blood suitcase this ones gonna be rough
I’m sick to my stomach but I’m not sick enough
tell that old lady standing in my house
I’m a foster child- for life and she can get the hell out
yeah she can get the hell out
pack your blood suitcase we’re moving again
you know how it feels when it first goes in
once you know you’ll do it again
yeah you’ll do it again- you’ll do it again
pack your blood suitcase – pick up those embryos
we can hide them in the body of a goat
there’s no time to whine just figure out who is yours
and who is still mine- who is still mine?
pack your blood suitcase we’re going again
I’ll hold your thin paper wrist
when we fall through the bed
and the old world is dead
yeah the old world is dead

and blue vein baby
if we find that again
our eyes open and you’re still in my grip
if you’re still in my grip….
or cradled in the y of a branch
i guess we’ll finally know
what is essential and what belongs to the past
yeah what is essential and what belongs to the past
so pack your blood suitcase
we’re going again
i ‘ll hold your thin paper wrist
when we fall through the bed
yeah I’ll hold your thin paper wrist when we fall through the bed
and the old world is dead
yeah the old world is dead
the old world is dead

Sweet Wolves- Sugar Head Pie- Patches and Gretchen

copyright 2010 all lyrics gretchen seichrist sand paper tongue records

HIS TEETH ARE THE COLOR OF CORN
AND HIS SKIN IS JUST WORN
AND HE LOVED THE SUN AND HIS MOM IS GONE
AND HE HIDES A BAG OF PORN

SWEET PORN SWEET PORN

IN THE CITY ALL THE SECRETS PASS
ACROSS THE BLACK
A GIRL LOOKS OUT THE GLASS
THE DRIVER IS A TIGER
WITHOUT A MASK
WHAT SHE’S DONE FOR THAT WAD- THAT WAD OF CASH

PICTURES OF PRETTY GIRLS
YA KNOW THEY ALL UNDRESS IN WHITE
AND THE LACE ON THEIR BODIES
LOOKS LIKE DUST IN THE LIGHT

BEHIND MY RADIATOR
BEHIND MY RADIATOR

WIRES YANKED WITH A PAIR OF PLIERS
AND ALL THE JOCKS ARE WAY TOO TIRED
INDIANS RUN AWAY TO FIGHT FOREST FIRES
AND LEAVE THE CHURCH WITH IT’S DESIRES

SWEET FIRES SWEET FIRES SWEET FIRES

I SAW THE BEACH WHERE I USED TO RUN
I WAS WITH YOU – I WAS ALONE
I ALWAYS WANTED TO BE RAISED BY WOLVES
AND BE THEIR CHOSEN ONE

SWEET WOLVES SWEET WOLVES SWEET WOLVES

EVERYONE OF YOU A BIT OF MY ENEMY
BUT I KNOW WHO DOES THE COOKING
AND IF YOU REALLY DID LOVE ME
YA KNOW, I WASN’T LOOKING

SWEET YOU SWEET ME SWEET YOU SWEET ME

SWEET MEEEEE……..

BLACK MARKET – PATCHES AND GRETCHEN SUGAR HEAD PIE COPYRIGHT SANDPAPER TONGUE RECORDS ALL LYRICS GRETCHEN SEICHRIST

COME TO MY BLACK MARKET YOU MIDDLE MAN
I’VE BEEN FINGER PRINTED AND YOU CAN’T HURT ME THAT WAY
YOU MIDDLE MAN YOU MIDDLE MAN

SMOKED FISH HANG ABOVE ME
AND IT’S SO DUSKY BABY-
THE VOYAGER WITH AN ENORMOUS APPETITE
AT LEAST HE’S YOUR FRIEND AT NIGHT

YOU MIDDLE MAN YOU MIDDLE MAN
YOU MIDDLE MAN

COPPER PENNY EYE REFLECTS FROM THE TENT
AND THE FACE IMPRINTED IS MAGICALLY CURED
DISCIPLES HANG AROUND THE FENCE AND YEARN
PICKING THEIR SCABS THEN OFF WITH HER SKIRT
AND IT’S NUMBERS IN FRENZY IN OLD MATH BOOKS

AND YOU BABY- YOU BABY
YOU GOT SOMETHING TO TRADE?
I’VE BEEN FINGERPRINTED
AND YOU CAN’T HURT ME THAT WAY

YOU MIDDLE MAN YOU MIDDLE MAN
YOU MIDDLE MAN YOU MIDDLE MAN

CALLUSES WERE LEFT ON THAT SPOILED MILKMAID
COME TO MY BLACK MARKET ANY WAY – YOU…

MIDDLE MAN YOU MIDDLE MAN
YOU MIDDLE MAN YOU MIDDLE MAN …….(AD NAUSEAM)