Making quite a splash lately has been Pattern-Seeking Animals, having released 3 excellent studio albums in the past 3 years, yet never having played live…yet! While Ted Leonard, Jimmy Keegan and Dave Meros have all been members of Spock’s Beard, alongside John Boegehold who has written copiously for The Beard, this new band is turning into something quite different and quite wonderful. Their new album “Only Passing Through” releases April 1st and offers colorful, contemporary prog-rock at its best. They can do short pop-laden rockers, or longer prog epics with equal confidence.
Jimmy Keegan is one of rock’s monster players, he hits those drums heads harder than most anyone else and has a great voice to boot. Likewise, Dave Meros is one of the beasts of the bottom end, you can’t ask for a more solid bass player who really brings the instrument to its deserved place in prog. Ted Leonard’s voice is fairly legendary at this point but in this band he gets to stretch out on guitars as well which is truly a treat. John Boegehold’s array of keyboards and other eclectic instruments in his songwriting is really the band’s special sauce. Together they are making some of the most exciting and accessible music to prog-rock fans today.
For their live shows, Boegehold will be relinquishing his role to Dennis Atlas who will cover the majority of keys and additional vocals. Walter Ino will also be on stage to help cover the extra guitars, keys and vocals that are on the studio albums. With the equivalent of 4 lead singers in the band, the vocal mix is going to be off the charts for these guys. The band will have their concert debut at Rosfest just two weeks before CTTE, so they will have already gotten their bearings and be ready to really rock the house in their two concerts on the ship. Ted will also be the 5th member of Transatlantic, so he’ll have plenty to keep him busy.
It’s hard to over-state how great this band is. Their albums are popping up on Year’s-best charts every year and 2022 should be no exception with “Only Passing Through”. Do not miss their shows on board, they’re going to be top tier.
To give you some more background, enjoy this video interview that we just conducted with Ted and John – Ted’s dry wit is always a treat – or go onto our website and search for the 2 earlier interviews for the previous albums. We’ll also put album review links here down below and some song samples.
- Pattern-Seeking Animals – “Only Passing Through” album review
- Pattern-Seeking Animals – “Prehensile Tales” album review
- Pattern-Seeking Animals – “Pattern-Seeking Animals” album review
