Louka Patenaude
Louka Patenaude
Louka Patenaude won’t be the last musician to include a Bob Dylan cover on an album. But his inside-out version of “Don’t Think Twice, It's All Right” will grab your attention. The unusual treatment of the folk classic leads off his new record, Testing Your Patience, and may test the patience of Dylan fans. It did mine at first. But after listening a few more times and embracing how Patenaude re-conceives the tune and makes it his own, I could no longer imagine the song in its original form.
Patenaude takes the melody and recasts it into a minor key. The harmonic shift calls the listener’s attention to drama in the song that goes unnoticed during the umpteenth listening of the original.
“I found a new intensity by reharmonizing it in a way that really made the melancholy hue of the lyric stand out,” Patenaude says. “It almost feels like it changes the meaning. And it makes it more cinematic in a way.”
The Dylan cover is the only non-original on the album. But it’s emblematic of the sonic sorcery Patenaude is capable of. A guitar instructor at the UW-Madison Jazz Studies program as well as a teacher of school-aged students at Madison Music Makers, he’s only recently switched his focus from electric to acoustic guitar. Electric took him into jazz, Latin music and rock n’ roll. The acoustic opened doors to Americana, country and his new preoccupation, bluegrass.
“It’s hard to play acoustic steel-string and not eventually find yourself with at least one foot in the world of country, folk and bluegrass,” Patenaude says.
Full disclosure: I recorded with Patenaude a few years ago. The experience gave me the opportunity to see his artistry up close. It was an analog recording and he fearlessly punched in new guitar lines and vocals on the fly.
Testing Your Patience was composed and recorded over the past three years, during which Patenaude “had to learn [his] way around the acoustic guitar.” During that time he was also building a home studio and selecting amps and preamps — logging many hours of research to do so.
There may be no greater guitar nerd in Madison. Patenaude plays a Collings and two Waterloo six-strings on the record, both brands made in Austin, Texas. He explains that the Collings provides balanced, direct tone. The Waterloo, a re-creation of the cheap catalog guitars of the 1930s, produces the brittle sounds of old blues and folk recordings.
“The Collings is like a cathedral. The Waterloos are like the kitchen,” he says.
The difference can be heard on “Red Ferns,” a cool, fingerpicked rag that would no doubt please Patenaude’s guitar heroes Lonnie Johnson and Eddie Lang. The Waterloo delivers the finger-picking part and the Collings plays the solo.
Due to his versatility, over the years Patenaude has been one of the most in-demand sidemen in Madison. He knows how to break out on a song and he knows when to support. Throughout, his imagination takes others’ music to places they may not have imagined themselves. It’s the kind of creative zone heard all over Testing Your Patience.
Madison jazz composer Paul Hastil provided artistic direction on the new album, as he’s done on past Patenaude recordings. Contributing musicians are bassist John Christensen and percussionists Juan Medrano Cotito and Josh Pultorak.
Patenaude's latest album.
Patenaude says he’s placed all live performances on hold, due to COVID-19. The good news is Testing Your Patience is available on loukasound.com.
