In 2019, PATTERN-SEEKING ANIMALS, the California-based band featuring Ted Leonard (lead vocals & guitars), Jimmy Keegan (drums & vocals), Dave Meros (bass) and John Boegehold (keyboards), presented its much-lauded eponymous debut. Just a year later, the group announces May 15th, 2020 as the release date for its newest opus, “Prehensile Tales”, which expands the stylistic niche carved out by the debut and adds additional twists and turns along the way.
For the six songs on the album (the longest clocking in at over 17 minutes), the band introduced violin, flute, trumpet, cello, sax and pedal steel to the sound palette that was once again recorded & mixed by Rich Mouser at The Mouse House.
“I started writing for the second album right as we were finishing up the first one,” says Boegehold, who is again producing. “I wanted to change around some of the songwriting approaches I’d been using and draw from a few different musical influences while not straying too far from the overall vibe of the band.”
Ted Leonard adds: “This album is another collection of lush arrangements and infectious melodies. I mean REALLY infectious. There are certain lines that are the last thing going through my head at night and the first thing in the morning. I think it’s actually furthering my insanity.”
For the striking cover image, P-SA collaborated with Polish artist Mirek (https://www.facebook.com/mirekis7/), whose ‘An evolutionary broadcast’ design Boegehold immediately considered a perfect fit to the album’s peculiar title. “Prehensile Tales is a play-on-words I came up with while writing lyrics and thought it would be a funny album title. As a bonus, it actually seems to mean something that fits the music.”
To coincide with the album’s release, the band is set to perform at RosFest 2020 in Sarasota, Florida on May 9th and is lining up more dates later in the year which will be announced soon.
Prehensile Tails Tracklisting: 1. Raining Hard In Heaven 2. Here In My Autumn 3. Elegant Vampires 4. Why Don’t We Run 5. Lifeboat 6. Soon But Not Today
For the striking cover image, P-SA collaborated with Polish artist Mirek (https://www.facebook.com/mirekis7/), whose ‘An evolutionary broadcast’ design Boegehold immediately considered a perfect fit to the album’s peculiar title. “Prehensile Tales is a play-on-words I came up with while writing lyrics and thought it would be a funny album title. As a bonus, it actually seems to mean something that fits the music.”
To coincide with the album’s release, the band is set to perform at RosFest 2020 in Sarasota, Florida on May 9th and is lining up more dates later in the year which will be announced soon.
“Prehensile Tales” will be released as Gatefold 2LP plus CD, Limited Edition CD, and as a digital album on May 15th, 2020 on InsideOutMusic.
RoSfest Gold tickets go on sale October 19th at 12:00 noon EST.
Gold Seat tickets gives you admittance to three days of the festival for Friday, Saturday and Sunday and will be available for sale at the total ticket price of $355.00 each.
For credit card purchases, add an additional TBA.
Gold Tickets provide you with select premium seating, a special limited-edition Gold ticket wrist band and a 11″ x 17′ RoSfest autograph poster.
How to order tickets. Step 1. TBA
For patrons that donated advance funds to Guardians of the Galaxy, non-for-profit status funding, call George Roldan directly to select your seats. (484-432-7357)
Payment must be received within 10 days or your seat selection will be released. Once payment is received, your tickets will be mailed out to you. That’s it!
Refund Policy: All sales are final. We are unable to offer refunds, exchanges, or receive ticket donations.
About RoSfest The Rites of Spring Festival, better known as RoSfest, is the Premier International Art Rock Festival in North America and has successfully featured 159 Progressive Rock Bands over the past 15 years from around the world. Now in our 16th year, RoSfest is an annual 3-day event showcasing 11 prominent live bands featuring ALL original music from around the globe. Our new home at the Sarasota Opera House (an audio-files dream) located in Sarasota, Florida raises the bar even higher as RoSfest delivers an incredible line-up to perform in a spectacular venue located in one of the best vacation destinations in the USA
2020 Lineup: Cast – Big Big Train – Thank You Scientist – United Prog Fraternity – Pattern Seeking Animals – Arc Iris – Dilemma – Lobate Scarp – Moon Letters – The Tea Club
PATTERN-SEEKING ANIMALS is the brand new group featuring the talents of current & former Spock’s Beard members Ted Leonard (lead vocals & guitar), Jimmy Keegan (drums & vocals) and Dave Meros (bass) as well as long-time contributing songwriter-keyboardist John Boegehold who also produced the album.
The band’s eponymously titled debut album was released via InsideOutMusic in July 2019 and now releases a lyric video for the album’s closing epic ‘Stars Along the Way’. The clip, created by Stan Ausmus at JuzMaintain Productions, can be viewed here:
John Boegehold comments: “Dave and I wrote this a while back from the viewpoint of a guy feeling sorry for his lot in life. I love the bass tone he came up with and Ted’s guitar tone is classic 70s. Is voodoo-swamp prog a genre?”
John Boegehold has the following to say about this track: “So, let me get this straight. You’re saying that a song that’s more than ten minutes long with inscrutable lyrics, multiple key, time and tempo changes, mellotron and fretless bass with several guitar and synth solos doesn’t stand a chance of toppling Taylor Swift and BTS from the top of worldwide pop charts? Not sure I like your negative attitude, mister.”
We are delighted to announce that US band, Pattern-Seeking Animals, will be entertaining us at RoSfest 2020, as the third band out on Saturday, May 9th in the slot just prior to Big Big Train. Those who are aware of Pattern-Seeking Animals will understand why they have been given this slot, while those unaware may be in for a bit of a surprise.
Pattern-Seeking Animals is a part of the extended Spock’s Beard family of bands. This one instigated by composer and keyboard player, John Boegehold, a regular song-smith for Spock’s Beard but never an actual member of the band himself. He had some material that didn’t really fit the scope of Spock’s Beard and when he asked for some assistance in recording this material this developed into the formation of a new band with Spock’s Beard musicians; Ted Leonard, Dave Meros and Jimmy Keegan joining to form a formidable quartet.
The foursome have deliberately developed the material on their self-titled debut album, which dropped just a couple of weeks ago on Inside Out Music to be different from the type of music that Spock’s Beard tends to explore. Reviews have noted that the band strikes them as being more accessible, but without missing out on any of the typical features expected from a band described as progressive rock.
Pattern-Seeking Animals are doing many things perfectly right from the start. The strength of the material on their debut album saw them signing to major progressive rock label Inside Out Music, and this album is already picking up glowing reviews worldwide. Their second is just about finished as well, this means that this is a band that has paved the ground for a quick succession into the upper ranks of the progressive rock universe. At RoSfest, we are honored to have the privilege to be the first festival to book this fine, new band, and we are certain that their set at RoSfest will be a historic one from a band that appears to be destined to become a household name in progressive rock sooner rather than later.
PATTERN-SEEKING ANIMALS is the brand new group featuring the talents of current & former Spock’s Beard members Ted Leonard, Jimmy Keegan & Dave Meros as well as long-time contributing songwriter-producer John Boegehold. The bands self-titled debut was recently released, and now they are pleased to launch a Jimmy Keegan drum play-through video for the track “These Are My Things”, and you can watch that here
John Boegehold comments: “Dave and I wrote this a while back from the viewpoint of a guy feeling sorry for his lot in life. I love the bass tone he came up with and Ted’s guitar tone is classic 70s. Is voodoo-swamp prog a genre?”
John Boegehold comments of the new album release: “We’re all excited that everyone will finally get to hear the first of hopefully many albums from Pattern-Seeking Animals.”
The album has already been receiving great reviews, find a few of them below:
“shiny and soulful but spiky symphonic prog” – Prog Magazine
“a strong album with top-notch performances from some of the best players in the prog world” – Sonic Perspectives
“a must-have for any respectable music collection” – Power of Prog
Originally a vehicle for a few tracks John had been working on in early 2018, he quickly came up with enough music to work towards producing an album. With that in mind, he enlisted the talents of Jimmy Keegan (drums & vocals), Ted Leonard (vocals & guitar) & Dave Meros (bass), with Boegehold handling all the synths. He adds: “Besides live strings on a few songs and a female backing vocalist on another, it was all done between the four of us with Dave and Ted ending up as co-writers on some of the material.”
With the band obviously being closely associated with Spock’s Beard, John was conscious of exploring different avenues with Pattern-Seeking Animals, whether it was song structures, vocal arrangements, synth sounds or emotional textures. “Pattern-Seeking Animals was a clean slate so I found myself drawing on a few different musical influences and using some contemporary production ideas and sounds that I probably wouldn’t use with SB for various reasons.”
Trak Listing
1) No Burden Left to Carry (9:38) 2) The Same Mistakes Again (5:10) 3) Orphans of the Universe (10:28) 4) No One Ever Died and Made Me King (3:54) 5) Fall Away (4:47) 6) These Are My Things (4:52) 7) We Write the Ghost Stories (3:22) 8) No Land’s Man (5:35) 9) Stars Along the Way (10:20)
As John notes, as the project came together it quickly became apparent that they would want to take this material out live: “Originally it was intended to be a recording project but as it was coming together we started talking seriously about doing it as a live band. Because of the complexity of a lot of the material, it’ll require an additional musician or two to pull it off live. The plan is to tour as much as possible and to come out with a new album at least once a year. In fact, work on the second album is already well under way.”
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