Gone Green

It’s 9 a.m., and we’re at a cocktail bar.

I had already decided that’s how I was going to start the article — being at such a place at such an hour seemed eccentric enough to warrant it — but the interview subject isn’t here just yet. I get a call on my phone, an 817 number. “Hi, this is Pat,” the caller said in a voice that conveys an everyman while remaining distinct at the same time. “I’m running a little behind, man. But I live close to where y’all are at, so I’ll be there soon.” 

I tell him it’s no sweat. I have all day.

A few minutes later, Pat Green arrives to our joint interview/photoshoot at South Main’s Amber Room. With a guitar in tow, he’s wearing a solid-colored golf shirt and a baseball cap — a slight departure from the head-to-toe denim he wore at Billy Bob’s the last time I saw him. After all, Green’s a dad, and he unashamedly dresses like it. A quick scroll through the gold-certified country artist’s Instagram feed will confirm this. 

He’s tall. Taller than I expected, and with a slight case of nerves removing my filter, I comment on it. While changing into one of the two pearl snaps he brought for the photoshoot, he confirms that he stands a solid 6 foot, 2 inches, and, to my surprise, he also lets it slip that he’s also nervous.

“I have bad anxiety,” Green says with his hand to his chest — a gesture signaling his bpm is likely higher than normal. “I get this way with photoshoots and interviews. I can sing in front of 10,000 people, no problem. But this is the stuff that really makes me nervous.”

He’s proud of the shirt he changes into. He’d bought it recently and allows us to feel how soft it is. The customary oohs and aahs are far from forced — the shirt’s suede-like texture easily triggers an ASMR, and Green is giddy over our reactions. Once comfortably in his new brown button-up and felt hat to match (“I’m a hat guy, especially after I started losing my hair,” he quips), he picks up his guitar — a Gibson chock-full of ornate mother-of-pearl flourishes, another recent purchase — and starts tuning it. The guitar was mostly meant to be a prop for the shoot, but like most who play, Green isn’t going to strum an out-of-tune guitar just for the hell of it. 

Almost immediately, he starts belting out a song. It’s infectious and catchy and on its surface appears meaningful. The lyrics are personal. It’s a love song, and it seems like a hit. Something I’ve heard before, surely. A crossover between the country charts and Top 40.

“If I could say one thing about the way you make me feel,” he sings. He’s strumming basic chords, G, C, Am — standard country fare — but the melody flows differently. I know this song. It’s an obvious hit, so it’d be embarrassing to ask what it is. But it’s bothering me that I can’t quite place it.

“Hey, Pat, what tune is that?” I finally ask.

“Oh, I’m just fiddling around,” he says. “I made that up.”

“Just now?”

“Yeah.”

I almost don’t believe him until he starts searching for a specific chord to continue his melody. He tries a few out, hitting some off-key duds before finally stumbling upon the right one. The structure of the song seems almost complete. 

“I like that,” he says with an affirming nod. “That’s cool.”

The guy who wrote Texas country’s indelible “Wave on Wave” and just released a new record elects to play none of that and, instead, writes an entirely new song the moment he picks up a guitar.

I’m in awe.

An hour later, we sit at the Amber Room’s bar with three plates of shareable appetizers.

In hindsight, it’s pretty ironic. Just as I finally bring out my tape recorder to kick off the interview — beginning at the beginning: his birthday on April 5, 1972 — he starts coughing. Turns out he’s choking on a chicken wing from the batch he’d ordered for all to share. He’s able to get whatever food was stuck in his windpipe out — or down — so no Heimlich is necessary.

“I just almost died,” Green says. “Thing just came apart in the middle. I had the bones in my throat, and I was like, ‘Don’t swallow that!’”

I wryly tell him I’m glad he didn’t choke because I don’t know the Heimlich. 

“Well, I know the Heimlich,” he says. “So, you’re safe, but I’m in trouble, I guess. I’ve actually been given the Heimlich before.”

“Really?”

“Seven years ago in North Carolina. I was eating a chicken wrap. You know, when you get to the end of the wrap, and the end is real tightly rolled. Yeah.”

At this time, Green nearly slings a piece of Parmesan from his order of fries into my whiskey on rocks. It’s early, I know, but the watered-down drink feels apropos. 

“Sorry about that,” he says. “But we might have just discovered a new concoction. Whiskey and heart truffle Parmesan. Awesome.”

Trying to take off, our intern, Victoria, who helped out our photographer during the photoshoot, is saying goodbye — she has to go to class.. Green bids her adieu by telling her to enjoy life and not to screw it up by taking it too seriously. Advice I hope she follows.

Green’s attention returns to the table.

“I’m sorry, what was your question again? Oh, right, my birthday.”

Pat Green was born in San Antonio three years after his brother, whom his mother carried for 10 months before his birth. “He got an extra month for free in that womb motel,” Green jokes. After his dad got out of the Air Force, and before a toddler Green was making any memories, the family moved to a brand-new home in Hewitt, a suburb just outside of Waco, most famous for being the town where Willie Nelson was busted for weed. 

So, though born in San Antonio, Green spent the entirety of his adolescence in the Waco area. 

I ask why he says he’s from San Antonio so often.

“That’s exactly right,” he says. “I say San Antonio all the time, but I don’t know. I am from Waco.

“I’m a Texas transient. I’ve lived in every major city in the state except Houston and El Paso.”

The son of Baylor grads, the move to Waco seemed logical. The family had a record player — the giant cabinet type that’s connected to the TV and was likely all the rage in 1975-era department stores — which Green credits as his introduction to music.

His parents divorced when he was 5 and got remarried quickly. Suddenly, he found himself with a significant uptick in brothers and sisters. He went from one of two, to one of eight. This made Green an independent kid growing up. The type of rogue 8-year-old who would ride his bike endlessly and aimlessly around town most summer afternoons. The adults, to put it bluntly, didn’t pay much attention to him.

“It bothered me that I didn’t get as much attention as the older kids, but they were going through stuff in their lives that needed more attention. A seventh and eighth grader doesn’t need a whole lot of attention. But when everybody else is 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, it’s a lot of shit going on.”

When Green was 13, he stumbled upon his stepdad’s tax return. 

“It was a big number,” Green says. “Even bigger for 1984. I’ll never forget it — I said to myself at that instant that I’m going to make more than that.

“I don’t know why that was important to me. I have no idea. For a kid, that shouldn’t even enter your brain. And, as I went through life — 18, 19, 20 — I really started understanding how hard it was to accomplish that goal. And, man, I had to make some real-life choices. It was somewhere around 20 or 21 years old when I came up with my own self mott: ‘You can’t outwork me.’”

In hindsight, Green is quick to admit that this wasn’t the right goal. 

“Money isn’t really the trick, is it? Yeah, when you’re young, it’s big house and fancy car, then I’m all set, right? But that’s not at all how it works. I just turned 50 this year, and, yeah, money is a distant eighth or ninth on the list of crap I want to accomplish or achieve.”

After graduating high school, Green went to Texas Tech — compromising with his parents who wanted him to stay in-state, Green made sure his school of choice was at least 350 miles away.

“Learning to play guitar, learning how to play and sing at the same time, and learning how to play in front of people all happened in Lubbock in the first two years,” Green says on his documentary, “The Miles and Miles of Pat Green.”

Most importantly, Lubbock is where Green met Kori, his future wife and the muse for nearly 100% of his songs. The two have been married for 22 years, have two kids, and their intense love for one another is undeniable. It’s a honeymoon-phase kind of love. Except the honeymoon is not just a phase; it’s persisted. In conversation, he touches on the subject of their love frequently because, well, it just might be his favorite thing to talk about. 

“What’s that line? She’s my lobster?” Green asks. I answer in the affirmative.

“I love being around her. I love talking to her. She gets really sick of hearing me talk about her, especially in public. But I don’t know. It’s a special thing. She’s everything, which is kind of sick. Or maybe it’s romantic. Yeah, I’ll choose the word romantic.”

It was Kori’s decision to attend UT Law School, not the city’s reputation for being the live music capital of the world, that motivated Green to move to Austin. The state’s capital is where Green got entrenched in the Texas country music scene and became one of the genre’s most prolific songwriters and performers. He started regularly opening for Willie Nelson and Jerry Jeff Walker. Seemingly overnight, his band started headlining shows for crowds of 15,000. 

After a couple of independent releases, he eventually got the “we’ll make you a rock star” speech from Universal Records, who released the Grammy-nominated Three Days, followed by Wave on Wave, Green’s highest selling album to date.

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of “Wave on Wave,” the album’s title track. The song’s opening 15 seconds remain one of country music’s most enduring guitar licks, but it was a departure from the traditional Texas country sound that made Green one of the state’s most popular acts. Genre staples like consistent references to the Lone Star State and raw production were noticeably absent. Recorded in Los Angeles, the tune was catchy and universally adored, but Texas country purists labeled it abandonment. The song became Exhibit A when music critics started deriding Nashville’s poppy influence on the Texas country music sound.

Green, for his part, has never seemed to care. Selling out? You mean, like, wanting people to listen to his music? Sure, Green says, if that’s what you call selling out, he’s selling out.

“I guess I’m opportunistic when it comes to getting myself out there, and that’s really important if you’re going to make it in this business. Why wouldn’t you sell out? Right? If this is what you want to do for a living and this is how you want to pay for your kids’ college, why wouldn’t you sell out? Why wouldn’t you just say, ‘I will do anything on this planet to accomplish the goal of having a career in this?’

“I don’t care if it’s house painting or photography or journalism or whatever it is, put yourself in the best position to make a living doing what it is you love to do. And then most of your life from that point on is really … it’s kind of breezy.”

Equal parts out of convenience — the flights for Green’s touring are easier through DFW — and because of their love for the city, the Greens moved to Fort Worth in 2005 when Kori was pregnant with their second child. Here, the family of four has made a home. Kori has a popular line of jewelry, Kori Green Designs, Pat regularly hits the links for a round of golf, and the family routinely takes in Cowboys and Rangers games. Green’s admittedly not as prolific as he once was, but he’s still occasionally touring and pumping out an album every now and then — mostly when the moment strikes. Here, the soon-to-be empty nesters are happy. They’re comfortable. 

“I don’t think I know anybody who’s ever moved out of Fort Worth since I’ve been here,” Green says. “It’s just, once you get here, you’re like, ‘Eh, it’s pretty good stuff.’

“I don’t write as often as I used to. So, when I write now, it’s just like what happened [when I picked up the guitar] over there when we were just jacking around. I hear something come out, and I’m like, ‘Ooh, that’s pretty darn good.’”

At some point during the interview, Green reminds me of his anxiety and says he’s in interview mode.

Most people, when anxious, will clam up or ramble — one or the other. They’re out of their element, as if dropped in a treacherous wilderness, and they’ll either retreat or rattle words to find their conversational comfort zone. Green does neither.

Nervous or not, it seems his guard is perpetually down. Maybe it’s a wisdom achieved through the years — Green turned 50 this year — but it’s not a stretch to suspect the musician’s comfort zone is simply living. He possesses the full spectrum of emotion and manages to feel deeply while also taking it all in stride. He has a happy-go-lucky disposition — an endearing and enduring pearly-white smile that never seems to disappear — but he’s also quick to tear up when talking about dropping his oldest son off at the University of Texas at Austin, which he did a week prior to our interview.

“I guess I’m just one of those guys who cries and shit,” Green says.

There’s just something inherently disarming about Green. Something … just so damn relatable. Few people have the same inflexions he has when he speaks. He gets excited; it gets you excited. He gets emotional; it gets you emotional. In other words, whether putting on a concert or talking or both, it’s a rare breed who can connect with their audience like Green.

But Green, like a true renaissance man, has outlets of expression outside of music. He doesn’t do music every day. But he does do art every day.

“I do a lot of sculpting, a lot of painting. I write all the time. I love my imagination. My imagination is my favorite. If you really want to get to know me, get to know my imagination. It’s my favorite side. I love expression, and I love being true to expression.”

In 2012, while visiting his children during their stay at a summer camp, Green was fascinated by the design of a collection of chandeliers that were above him.

“They were so intricate and amazing. You could tell that they were handcrafted. And there were these … Oh, I don’t know how to describe it, but they were fantastic. And the owner of the camp, Meg, was sitting next to me. I said, ‘Meg, I want to know who made those chandeliers.’ And she goes, ‘That’s funny, he’s sitting right next to you. Meet Gil Bruvel.’”

Green’s difficulty in describing Bruvel’s art is not surprising; his work would stump any master wordsmith. With that said, I’ll give it a shot: Bruvel creates highly textured, twisting, and complex sculptures and paintings made with various materials, including wood and stainless steel. You shouldn’t hesitate to look it up if you have a minute. 

Bruvel, who’s from France, lives in Wimberley. Since his introduction to Green, the two have become very close friends, with Green occasionally going to Wimberley on weekends. “I’ll go down to his place and just hibernate, or not hibernate … marinate. Marinate in art.” 

Becoming a bit of a protégé, Green even interviewed Bruvel for Juxtapoz, a highly influential art and culture magazine based in San Francisco. Bruvel and Green, who’s no slouch at interviewing, chatted about metaphysical flow, creating art in the meditative state, and how lighting affects the color palette of an artwork. It’s an excellent interview that, if you’re still in the mood to read after finishing this article, I highly recommend checking out.

Since diving deep into painting and sculpting, Green opened an art space that housed his and other artists’ works. While the gallery, which opened in 2018, has since closed, Gallerywinter Gallery remains an art collective that routinely collaborates.

Speaking to the serendipitous circumstances in which he met Bruvel, Green is convinced it’s no coincidence.

“When we met, I was dabbling in sculpting and painting, but I wasn’t serious,” Green says. “Call it what you want, but I believe there’s a higher power in this universe. I really believe in that. And I don’t necessarily think about things like fate because I don’t think He’s really trying to throw you in one direction or another, but I do believe that opportunities present themselves that are good for your life.

“I mean, here I was sitting next to a guy who changed my life. That’s been the thing that I think of when I’m talking about the higher power, the spirit of the universe. I don’t care what you call it. God. Jesus. It doesn’t matter. It’s there. I got to learn from Willie Nelson and Jerry Jeff hands-on. Hands-on, right next to them in the flesh. So, it’s like I’ve been given this tremendous pile of ‘Hey, open door.’ I’m the happy idiot.”

Green’s new album, Miles and Miles of You, was just released to the streaming public. That’s why we’re talking. That’s why we’re photographing him. 

It’s his first album in seven years, it’s getting a lot of positive press, and it’s really damn good.

Green calls the record a release valve for COVID. After losing 40 pounds and being in the deepest darkest depression of his life — and Kori threatening to burn the chair he incessantly sat in — he got to work on a new record.

“It was very painful to come out of that, but in that spirit came a lot of release-valve songs,” Green says. “Songs like ‘I’m Going Home,’ songs like ‘Bad Bones,’ songs like ‘Steady.’ All these songs that are about being a little vulnerable and talk about ‘Hey, here’s what’s going on.’

“I tend to do that with my work. Some people write songs in their niche. Jimmy Buffet has a niche. He fills that spot and writes about specific things and legions of people will show up. Now, I foolishly didn’t do that with my work. I write exactly what I think right then.”

Continuing a theme from his 2015 album, called Home, that very word, “home,” is also splattered throughout the songs on his latest release.

“In all these years, I spent a lot of time on the road being in Nashville and New York. Those were the places where my record label was and still is. But my roots are here in Texas. I’ve never lived anywhere else. The state of Texas is almost shaped like [a baseball field’s] home base. It’s almost a perfect home base, right?

“Yet, there’s so many people who go to these big cities to be movie stars, country singers, rock and rollers, whatever they want to be. And they go to these places to be something that they’re not or something that they want to be, which is fine. Hey, I’m not taking that away from anyone because it works for a handful of people. 

“While I signed my record deal in New York, and I had a record deal in Nashville, I was still a Texas artist who wanted to be in Texas.

“It’s not even a long story to tell. Home is Texas.”

Pat Green is a Texan through and through. And Pat Green is an artist through and through.

Like the paintings and sculptures he produces, Green does what he wants irrespective of and unrestrained by genre or classification. Call it country, call it music, heck, just call it art.

When one takes a cursory glance at artists who have collaborated with or paid tribute to Green, they’ll find a murderer’s row of respected industry personalities: Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker, Chris Stapleton, Lyle Lovett, Sheryl Crow, Cory Morrow, and Marc Broussard, just to name a few. But they’ll also find a wide range of artists who themselves defy any tropes of a specific genre. 

All of this begs the question: At what point is being authentic simply staying true to you and not a specific subgenre with a myriad of constraints?

Of course, to Green, I’m posing a futile question and likely wasting ink writing about the gatekeepers of Texas country, red dirt country, New Mexico country, and fill-in-the-blank country. Pat Green could not care less what they think. Just attend one of his live shows, and you’ll see he has the ultimate trump card.

“I love that people sing along to my songs. I love that I have had a lifelong career, and I love that I love music.” Green playfully hits the stop button on my recorder. While his silver tongue has a wonderful way with words, he couldn’t possibly come up with a better line to end the interview. I agree.