Pattern-Seeking Animals began as an offshoot of Spock’s Beard, featuring Beard members and alum Dave Meros, Ted Leonard, Jimmy Keegan, and writer John Boegehold. Over the course of their now 5 record career, Pattern-Seeking Animals have grown to become their own force in the world of progressive rock. Their new record Friend of All Creatures is out on February 14, and keyboardist and writer John Boegehold recently sat with me to talk about it.
Please press the PLAY icon for the MisplacedStraws John Boegehold interview –
On where the title, Friend of All Creatures, comes from – The line came from the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu philosophy. It’s the same one that “I am of death, the destroyer of worlds” came from Oppenheimer. One of the lines was, “I am friend of all creatures”, and “friend of all creatures” just seemed like the perfect album title. I usually write down titles and lyrics and stuff like that, and just reading or whatever, and this one struck me as perfect, so I just made sure no one else had the title, or it wasn’t a band name, and I thought, “Perfect, that’s the album title”.
On if there is a freedom moving to a smaller label – Well, not necessarily of freedom in the creation of the music because both labels don’t aren’t on you as you’re creating the record to do something a certain way. “I like this. I don’t like that”. Both are essentially we turn in the album and that’s the album. There’s no back and forth of the label on the artistic side of it.
The difference in GEP, there’s more freedom as far as promotion and putting things out there. It’s like when I go to GEP and I say, “Yeah, I want to do this or that”. He goes, “Fine, no problem”. I think one of the issues with Inside Out, understandably, because they’re owned by Sony is that there’s certain parameters, you have to turn in videos with a certain. technical quality to it, which is always more to deal with. That’s kind of a pain. Then there’s the scheduling, which can be tough. It can be tough. You have to do this very regimented as far as when certain singles come out. It’s great working with Inside Out, don’t get me wrong, but there’s less rigidity with GEP, which I really like.
On how he goes about creating a Pattern-Seeking Animals record – Well, essentially what happens with every record, unless I have something, which is a holdover from the last record, which happens occasionally. The first song I wrote from this one, I think, was the longest song on the album, which was “Another Holy Grail”. When I was done with that, I said, “Okay, now I’m going to write something, another song”. The idea was to make it sound like it went with “Another Holy Grail”. Or it wasn’t too similar, didn’t sound like it was coming from another record. So, I would just build things up in that, in that way. Just to make them sound like they go with the other material, if I start writing something along the way and I’m thinking, “Well, this is kind of mid-tempo and the same time signature and it has the same vibe as this other song”, then I won’t go ahead with that one because I don’t want anything to be too similar, just to fit.
I just, to me, it just needs to sound like it’s part of the same album. So, usually halfway through doing this, I know exactly what song is going to what position in the album. It’s usually because, “Well, this one sounds great coming out of this one”, or “This one doesn’t sound good coming into that one”. So usually halfway through, I know the exact sequence of the of the album, the songs in the album.
On writing a complex track like “Another Holy Grail” – Well, that one I didn’t write in a linear fashion. I didn’t start out with the very first vocal section of that song and then continue it. About a minute and a half in, it goes into this 7/4 instrumental section, which is like 3 or 4 minutes long. That was from a riff I had from a song a long time ago which I never used, which I always wanted to use again. It’s like 30-40 seconds. So, I took that and built that whole instrumental section. Originally thinking I would start the song with the instrumental section, but decided, “Well, I think I want to start with the vocal section”.
So, I wrote that section. And that section I brought back later in the song with different words and then it goes into an up-tempo thing. Then I just wrote the rest of the song from there. I’d throw in sometimes in the middle, that song is kind of odd that I would just go from section to section and didn’t write it in a linear fashion. Lyrically, it didn’t really guide me as to what I was going to do with the rest of the song. It’s very kind of fantasy imagery. There’s no real meaning to it, even though it sounds like it might mean something, which I try and do a lot, but yeah, that song I wrote kind of in different sections as I ran along.
On writing songs that tend to be shorter than the usual progressive rock tracks – It’s what I’m feeling and the problem, I don’t know if it’s a problem with me, is that even if I am writing something which is getting into the mid-teens, 17, 18 minutes a lot of times I find myself, this happens with not just long songs, but shorter ones, where I’ll be working on a song, and as I’m working on it, listening to all the parts, I’ll start skipping through sections. I think, “If this isn’t holding my interest, it’s not going to hold the audience’s”. So, I just tend to take things out. There are songs I’ve done which start out to be 18 minutes long and end up to be 9. That’s the thing. So, it’s not that I never consciously try. I hear, sometimes in prog you can tell, they wanted to make that song 20 minutes long. It didn’t need to be. It didn’t need to be, but you could tell they’re trying to write a song which is 28 minutes long or whatever. I just don’t get that, because to me that’s just getting in the way of the song. Because there’s stuff that doesn’t need to be in there, and it can be edited.
If something you want to say ends up being 25 minutes. Great. Fantastic. But I think a lot of times it’s just to try and get that whole prog thing. “We gotta have the epic in there”. But of course, people could say the same thing about me in writing. Because I’ve written a couple of which are in the 16-17-minute range in the past. I’m sure people go, “Hey, why are you even writing something longer than five minutes?” Okay, granted, I’ll take that criticism. So, I do get it.
On the lyrics of “Seventh Sleeper” – “Seventh Sleeper” was just something, there’s the old biblical tale about the seven sleepers in Christianity, and there’s similar things in Islam and other religions. I just like the term “the seven sleepers”. I wrote it down in my lyrics. I’m going to use that someday. Again, it was just imagery. I thought, “Okay, let’s make this the seventh sleeper, and they’ve come out of the cave or whatever”. But it, there’s no real story to that song necessarily. It’s, I guess, ostensibly say, well, there’s someone comes up the mountain and they come across these seven sleepers casting their long shadows, but it’s not necessarily meant to be part of the, the biblical origin. I just I like the imagery of it. So again, and that’s something was a song I wrote in a linear fashion. I started out with the first section. There’s four sections in that song, none of which ever comes back once those sections are done. One thing I thought, in that one I wanted to write it in a linear fashion like that.
I think it built really nicely. But lyrically again, on this album, I’m not really necessarily going with something of a lyric that is about something. I may have an image in my mind or a scenario. situation across, but I like the idea of coming across where the, the listener can, can ascertain their own meanings to the lyrics, like the old prog stuff, yes, and Genesis, same deal.
On getting an incredible vocal performance out of Ted Leonard – It’s kind of like a joke because I can sing enough to get a melody across. I’ll put a scratch vocal down from him, but I never try and put anything in it like, “Oh, this is the vibe you should have”, or “You should have this”. Never. I just sing my flat monotone and I get the melody right and pitch correction. So, he knows the melody. I just give it to him, and he just goes for it. he comes up with these great vocal parts. The most thing I’ll have to do is, every once in a while, what’ll happen is that, “Could you make this word sung a little clearer?” Or I’ll change something on my end. I’ll go, “You know what? I decided instead of “and”, I want to say “if” there”. I’ll say, “Could you just sing it with saying the word and instead?” That kind of thing. But overall, when he gives it to me, it is good to go. It is just a great vocal and it builds, and he comes up with real stylistic things I never would have thought of. So, no, it’s very rare that I come up back with anything on his vocal parts for him.
On if the band will tour – It’s just very hard for a prog band, especially an American one, to do a tour. It’s as simple as that. It’s financially, it’s really tough and logistically. We’re on the West Coast here. Even when bands come from Europe to do tours here, they pretty much, for the most part, stay on the East Coast because everything is close. European bands have trouble anyway, as financially. They’re still, it’s still tough for them. Where they can be in the same amount of time or distance it would take for us to drive just across California, in Europe, you can drive across the same amount of time and be in six countries with six capitals and six, you know, six tours and all these places to play.
But even then, it’s tough for them because a lot of places don’t exist anymore that people use to play. So, it’s tough. We’re trying to get a few things together. We’re booking the ProgStock later in the year. It’s a couple of the things we’ve talked about, but nothing to announce at this point. Unless we team up with some other act and do some other. I don’t see us as actually touring per se. It’s going to be more that, well, if we happen to do this gig, maybe we can do one next to it or in the, you know, close to that, something like that.
On if they will keep their prolific pace or change the way the band works – Business as usual, because even though I try and get Dave and Ted to write, they just don’t want to write these days. I just love writing. I get up every morning, you can see my studio behind me, like I can see yours back there. I just get up every morning and start writing. Even if I don’t have anything specific to write for, I always put stuff down. So, I love doing it. I just absolutely love writing and producing music. So, I’m already, I’ve already written a few songs for the next album, and I’m going to keep doing it.
So when it gets to critical master, there’s enough for the album. We’ll go for it, whether it’s a year from now or a year and a half, whatever, it just depends. I was trying to do it like once a year and the first problem we had was when the pandemic happened, there’s all sorts of issues with getting vinyl made and, and all then supply chain stuff. So that put us back, I think it was almost two years between that, those two albums. That was like a year and a half of the last one, but that was a scheduling thing with the record company. Same thing with this one. It’s just, we decided to do it a little later in the year. I think putting aside not having to deal with record companies and schedules and forces of nature and stuff like that, I don’t think it’s a problem for us coming up with an album a year. I really don’t.
On if the next record is underway – I have a couple songs. Actually, Jimmy’s going on tour next month with ABC and something else. But so as soon as he’s back, I’m going to go into the studio with him at least. So, that’s the kind of thing which can mess up the schedule, but Jimmy’s going to be touring. So, I might slow things down a little bit. But yeah, overall, I think we’re good.
On if he would ever write for other artists or outside of music – I love doing music. I would never think about writing a book. It just seems torture, torturous. I just know myself, I wouldn’t like doing it. I’ve written music obviously for film and TV stuff in the past. I just love writing songs to be produced by Pattern-Seeking Animals. But if some other act came along who wanted to do one of them, great. I’ve had some people ask me to write for them. I’m just not in that mind space at the moment. That’s just not something I want to do. Yeah, it’s just because realistically, let’s say, band whatever, Joe Blow and the Turnip Truck, whatever. Some band came in and said, “Hey, would you write something to us?” That’s the name I just come up with. I got to write that one down. I might have to use it. That’s the next record. The Turnip Truck. But, I know me, and I’d be writing for them, and I would be thinking, “Oh, this is really cool. I want to use this for Pattern-Seeking Animals”. That’s the issue. That’s the problem with writing for anyone else, realistically. Unless someone is paying me, “We’re going to pay you to write a song for this film” or something, well, then obviously it’s something I write for a specific whatever. That’s different. But yeah, I think I’m, I’m very happy writing for us at the moment. So yeah, no other groups.
