in-studio + interview: Esme Patterson
Tune into WMSE to hear a live set + interview with Colorado-based musician, Esme Patterson. Patterson plays the Cactus Club later that night with Abby Jeanne!
Esme Patterson is a founding member of the large, Denver-based indie folk group Paper Bird. Growing up in nearby Boulder, Colorado, Patterson, along with her sister and band mate Genevieve Patterson, grew up listening to old R&B records, coming to folk and Americana music later on.
In collaboration with another sibling combo, Mark and Sarah Anderson, the two Patterson sisters formed Paper Bird in 2006, focusing on a mix of chamber folk and lush baroque pop. The group went on to release several successful independent albums, tour frequently, and even score music for the Ballet Nouveau Colorado dance company.
Although Patterson had occasionally performed as a solo artist, it wasn’t until 2012 that she had accrued a group of songs she felt weren’t fit for Paper Bird, and she set about making her first solo album, All Princes, I. Inspired by the loose fluidity of Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks and Feist’s Metals, the album saw her collaborating with fellow Denver-ites Nathaniel Rateliff and members of the Czars. In 2013, Paper Bird released their fourth album, Rooms, and Patterson also began writing material for her second solo album, a concept album called Woman to Woman on Xtra Mile Recordings [2014]. Her most recent album, We Were Wild [2016] is out on Grand Jury.