Pattern-Seeking Animals began as an offshoot of prog rock legends Spock’s Beard. Over the course of their now six records, they have firmly established themselves as one of the premier bands in the genre. On their latest record, Grimalkin, the band continues to evolve and create accessible progressive rock that demands to be heard. Writer and keyboardist John Boegehold and singer and guitarist Ted Leonard recently took some time to talk about the band and the record.
Please press the PLAY icon below for the MisplacedStraws Pattern-Seeking Animals interview –
On continuing to put out a record per year – John: Boy, I’m just always writing. I just love churning out music, and whether I was releasing an album or not or with this band or whatever, I just write every day. I love doing it, and I love the timeframe of being able to put them out, one after another. Like back in the old days, in the ancient times when bands, they used to put out a couple albums a year.
On if the material is always new or if there are parts that were leftover – John: I go back on some of these songs for a couple decades I had things laying around. We had. like on the new record, “I Dream the World”, I think we’ve been trying to do that one for three or four different albums in the past, and finally got a version that worked. So, it went onto this album finally. I don’t even remember when. it might’ve been for a Spock’s album. It might’ve been. It’s been around for a while, but we would come up with a version and it’d be like, “Eh, it’s okay. It’s not really gelling,” or whatever. I know we tried it on a couple albums ago and it didn’t work, but this time we finally locked into it.
Ted: It’s been around for a while. We used the vocal from when I recorded it way back then, too. I think it was P-SA because I also put the guitar down on it early on, because the solos and stuff were all from when we first tried it. It might’ve been for the first P-SA album. It’s all a blur. But yeah, I haven’t contributed much in writing generally, not just for this band, but in general. The few contributions I’ve made on the albums, they’re usually rehashed old ideas that that either John brings to life or, I’ll just play some old demo and see what he can do with it, and that’s, that was the case with “Much Ado” (from Only Passing Through). That song took on a, a totally different form once John got his hands on it.
John: And grubby little hands.
On whether unique parts, like the vocal in “Slowly Falls The Flying Man” are written in advance or developed in the studio – John: Are you talking about the like in the middle section where there’s vocals crossing over? That’s during writing. Sometimes during recording I’ll write the parts and if Ted hears something else, he’ll add it or he’ll add another part or change something. But the concept of it was definitely there from the beginning. That whole structure. I know there’s the big overlapping vocals. It reminds me of Yes or something like that.
On if there is ever a theme in mind when they start a record – John: Not necessarily in the beginning, but it’s funny because Ted wrote the bulk of the lyrics for “A Flower Yet To Grow” and he came at it from a standpoint of loss, when you’re gone. I thought, “That’s another one,” because “Things I Don’t Do” is similar. So, it ended up, I just think of being a coincidental type of thing.
On Ted’s lyrics for “A Flower yet To Grow” – Ted: It was about the imagining the loss of the one that got away, imagining how would I feel if she passed, having so much time has has has passed really since I’ve had any kind of contact with her. So, I just was just putting myself in that place. “A Flower Yet To Grow” was a phrase that John had already written, and that just where my mind went with that with that thought, that this relationship never really came to fruition.
On staying away from the “prog epic” – John: I think that’s intentional and sometimes not, because the way I write, there are songs which I write which start to be like 19, 20 minutes long. Then I come to my senses and start listening to it and think, “This needs some judicious editing.” I think the first song on the album, “Maybe All a Dream”, was originally like 15 minutes long. At some point I started finding myself skipping through sections and thinking, “You know what? If I’m skipping through these sections, everyone else is going to.” So, I just got the old got the editing chops down and just chopped out a lot of the song. I know you’re talking about prog and vocals. It’s my, joke I’ve told a million times, it’s like prog bands for a lot of times they’ll get killer musicians together. Great guitar, keyboards, drums, bass, and they’ll look around and go, “Oh, by the way, do any of us sing?” So, it’s cool having Ted because he starts off as a great, vocalist from, stage one, which is cool.
Ted: I think part of the kind of conventional appeal of this band is also because of who John chose to work with because we all obviously have a history in prog, but we, but our tastes are rooted in, pop, Beatles all over the place. John’s taste is about as eclectic as it gets. Down to K-pop and everything like that I don’t get but it’s fine.
John: I’m like the only guy within 40 years of how old I am who actually listens to pop radio. I was just coming over here, I was listening to Sirius Hits 1, the latest. I’ve always loved pop music, so to me a song, whether it’s, three minutes or whether it’s 12 minutes, it still has to have those hooks in there. It has to have singable parts you can memorize, and that’s what draws most people to music, I think, are the singable melodies and hooks and stuff like that. To me, I don’t even see the point of doing a song if you don’t have that.
Ted: Totally. I guess I came from the Kansas school of prog. They always had, even in their most complex songs, there was an accessible melody, an accessible hook. I don’t wanna say I wasn’t a fan of some of the other bands but not nearly as much as I was Kansas. I think that’s a big part of it.
On the title Grimalkin – John: I have a constant, probably a lot of people who are songwriters, I have a constant running list. I think the last time I looked it’s 120 pages of a Word doc. I’ll throw in obviously lyric ideas or choruses or verses and cool words I wanna use, but I also throw in band or rather song titles. Song titles and album titles, because coming, trying to come up with an album title is just annoying. It’s just something you just wanna do and get rid of. When I saw the term Grimalkin and learned what it was, I was thinking, “Wow, that would be a really cool album title regardless of what it means.” I looked and no one else had it, so I just said, “Okay I’m gonna go with that one.” And it’s, “phew, that’s out of the way now”. The meaning of it, it was a word which is attributed to Shakespeare, and the original meaning was gray cat, grim malkin. Eventually taken different phrases along the way. At the time when he was doing it, it meant like a sidekick, a witch’s sidekick, someone at the witch’s shoulder to take care of doing spells and stuff like that. I thought. “That’s interesting.” I just thought it was a cool word. No one else had it, so like I said, when you come up with a, with an album title, it’s just a big load off your mind. You just don’t have to think of a title So yeah, that’s where that came from.
Ted: That always felt like it was almost like an afterthought for most of the bands that I’ve been in. It’s always just it’s easy to just take a phrase from one of the better songs or a meaningful song or whatever, like The Archaeoptimist for instance. Or just take it to make something into a title track. I feel like we’ve never done that, right?
John: There’s Only Passing Through. But I had the title before I had the song on that one though. It got to the point I started writing it and singing “Only Passing Through”, but that one, that was the only album we’ve done that with, and but it went backwards. We didn’t take it from a song. The song kind of came from the title.
Ted: I think it puts undue pressure on the song if you make it a title track. Because people are going, “Okay this is what the album’s all about,”.
John: It has to be the best song, and it has to be whatever. I don’t want, I don’t want that happening.
On the album cover – John: What I what I decided I wanted to do, I’ve done on half of the albums we’ve done, is rather than having, have someone design an album cover, because a lot of times they start designing and I go, “Ah, that doesn’t work. Let’s try this.” It’s a lot to think about. But I just decided that I wanna come up with a title and find artwork that fits it, and I follow hundreds of artists on Instagram. For the last couple albums, I would just have the album title in mind, and start going through and just look for an image that captured the, that went along with the title. And cool, I can get contact the artist. Half the time you contact artists and they never get back to you. It’s like, “I’m trying to pay you to license music, please.” Laura, this, this woman in she lives in Argentina, for Grimalkin, she answered me right away. And she goes, “Oh, I like the idea of Grimalkin. It’s cool. I’ll definitely license it to you.” So, the minute I had that, again, one less thing to think about. What was cool with her, rather than just have the one cover image, she had four or five different images along the same subject, which made designing (easy). Thomas Everhart, who’s designed our other album covers, put the graphics all together, and he was happy because, “Wow, there’s all these different images with the same theme to work with.” So, he was happy about that. Ted wasn’t a fan of this cover.
Ted: This time I was like, “Are we married to that cover?” When he first presented it to me, I wasn’t a big fan. To, to me, it’s just my personal taste. It has a darkness to it, but that I think a lot of people find cool and mysterious and so yeah.
John: I don’t like it when the artwork, when they, people look at it and go, “Yeah, it’s okay.” I like it whether they love it or hate it. I’ve gotten some comments, “Great”, “Ooh, it’s creepy.” “Good”. Okay, good. It’s evoking some kind of some kind of emotional response or something. But yeah, or it’s a hot, sparsely clad girl. Like on Whitesnake, Tawny Kitaen. That kind of deal.
On if the band plans on playing live more – Ted: Yeah, we would love to do more shows. I’s gotten really difficult cost-wise to make tours work, especially in the States. Even for Spock’s, it ends up being just festivals or cruises or things like that. As far as touring in Europe it’s extremely costly too, unless you know that you’re going to pack them in in whatever size club, so it’s just hard to find. Either we need to find another band that has a similar appeal to ours, but enough of a different crowd so that we can merge our crowds and hopefully amass something. The reality is if you can’t bring 300 people into a 300-person club then you’re gonna lose money. I think when we were younger, that was fine, or when we had label support for touring, that was fine. But none of us are willing to lose our butts to go out on the road anymore, is what it comes down to.
John: Also living in America is, it makes it tougher, especially on the West Coast. But it is funny because I look at Prog Magazine every month, right? You go into the back where it has all the live reviews and stuff like that, and all the ads, and there’s pages and pages of just clubs and different clubs in London, all these prog bands you’ve heard of, and it’s yeah, if we lived in London, we could just say, “Hey, let’s just go do a gig at this place,” but just the logistics of getting a band together and especially going over to Europe is way expensive.
Ted: I live on the opposite side of the country now, so-
John: Yeah, he’s in New York.
Ted: For some stupid reason.
On the ProgStock 2025 gig with Bill Hubauer on keys – John: Oh, it sounded great. I’ve just never been a fan (of playing live). Like I’ve always said, I don’t play well enough to play my own music. It would be tough for me to do it. I can barely play two hands at the same time on the keyboards. It takes all the pressure off of me. They sounded great, adding Bill. Before that, when we played before, we got another keyboard and guitar. Same thing this time, so now I can just sit back and enjoy it. I know it would sound great, so I can just kick back and not have to stress about anything.
Ted: Yeah, I would love to get out there and play more shows because it puts a lot of pressure on that one day. It took just as much prep work to be ready for that one show than it does for a tour. You look forward to the third or fourth gig on the tour because things are actually starting to gel, the show is starting to come together, the transitions, which are super important, are being minimized. It’s a bummer to just do a one-off like that and then have to just pack it up. if I had to play that material today; I’d have to relearn it from scratch. That’s true of the stuff I toured on with Spock’s in February, so I have to relearn that for this ProgStock. But yeah, we definitely would like to get it on the road. We just have to find either the right band or the right promoter that some promoter who’s not really, not really profit motivated.
John: Yeah. Someone who’s willing to lose money probably.
Ted: We need a financier or a benefactor.
John: Yeah. We need a sugar daddy.
On the Spock’s Beard set for ProgStock 26 – Ted: I don’t know if I should give it away really, but I think the idea is because it’s a one-off, I think the idea is to do the set we were doing in Europe. Because it’s just gonna be the easiest thing to pull together for everybody. Then for the cruise, we’ll have to figure out how to either divide that set up or add a couple songs to make two completely separate sets. I don’t know, because we haven’t really thought that far ahead yet. But I know for this one, the idea is to do the very same set we did in Europe
On if they are preparing album number 7 – John: As you can see behind me, my studio, everything is on. I have three songs ready to go. Not totally written. Believe me, I have 25 different ideas in my Apple Music, which I shuffle through and think, anything from a just a riff or complete song structures, and I just, for every album I start going through it and think, “Okay, would this make a good song? Will this?” And, “Ah, that’s, this sucks. Oh, this might work.” So no, I’m always writing.
