Patrick Schneeweis – the man pictured above – is a young man who I most definitely cite as one of my biggest musical and political influences. I’ve loved music since I could walk or talk, and while the Nirvana and The Cure CDs my parents gifted me as my first CDs hold a special place in my heart, nothing as of yet has helped me find the drive to make music like Pat “The Bunny” Schneeweis, during my late middle school and early high school years.

Patrick Schneeweis was born in 1987 in Brattleboro, Vermont. He grew up a teenage anarchist, making and playing music with his brother, going to punk shows, thrashing on an acoustic guitar, and reading texts that to this day I still struggle to read, by the likes of Proudhon and Kropotkin. Whether or not he actually comprehended these texts, I have no clue. Regardless, he first began making music under the name of Johnny Hobo & the Freight Trains, which marked the first period in his music; a period defined by anthems of self-hate and destruction; a chaotic narrative of drunk-driving, chain-smoking, shooting up, and a slurred expression of pissed-off politics. He released his second album (but the earliest still available) when he was sixteen, titled Anarchy Means I Hate You, and this is one of my favorite albums, in general. A dumpster-fire cacophony that I still enjoy listening to while sitting in a ditch, staring at the stars, screaming my lungs out, and pretending I’m a cool kid for doing these things.

Pat wrote a song at some point called Johnny Hobo is Dead/Sellout Song. A great song, that, to my understanding, marks the end of the Johnny Hobo era and the beginning of the Wingnut Dishwashers era. Wingnut Dishwashers Union was a natural evolution from the previous band – smarter politics, a cleaner, and more refined sound, and his outlook on anarchism seemed to go from self-imposed isolation and antisocial behavior to a search for friends and community. Lyrics conveyed a desperation to find happiness, to find meaning, to find hope, to build a better world.

By 2009, Wingnut Dishwashers Union broke up, and Patrick went into rehab. Two years later, upon arriving and settling down in Tucson, Arizona, he emerged again, announcing he’d be starting a band, called Ramshackle Glory. Ramshackle Glory was one of my first folk punk bands, and the first I heard of Pat the Bunny. By the time the album Live the Dream was released in 2011, Pat had put politics, alcoholism, substance use, religion, philosophy, activism, love, respect, and trust on a table and dissected them all meticulously. Songs like From Here to Utopia (one of my all-time favorite songs) and Bitter Old Man speak of the cycle anarchists find themselves going through, from hope, to despair, to hope, to despair, and so on and so forth. Songs like Never Coming Homeinquire about the nature of guilt, and what it means to hurt someone you love. But it all comes back around by the end of the album with two songs, including the anthem of perseverance, Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of Your Fist, the first song I heard by Ramshackle Glory. That phrase alone has permeated not only folk punk culture, but punk rock as a whole and the culture of anarchists. The song gives me chills every goddamn time. The album ends with First Song, Part 2, which closes the album off with a beautiful line:

¨Maybe God isn’t the right word, but I believe in you¨

These aren’t the only albums published by each of Pat’s bands, but in a way the best representations of each period of his musical career. He also released a full-length solo album, and a split with the rapper, Ceschi Ramos. He even was in a rap/hip-hop group, Playtime Posse, but we don’t talk about that.

In February of 2016, Pat essentially released this statement:

“I have grown into a basically ordinary person, albeit a somewhat strange one. Nothing I write feels very skilled at communicating whatever it is I am trying to say, but it just seems important to tell you that I am not really an anarchist or a punk anymore. My viewpoint has changed dramatically in the last six to nine months, and this kind of politics and music is just not where my heart is anymore. I have no interest in convincing anyone of anything, so that’s all that’s important to say about it. I just don’t want people to feel tricked when they buy or listen to my music.”

This shook the folk punk scene. Pat pretty much pioneered the genre, and I know he absolutely hates being put on a pedestal, but it’s true. I’ve heard so many people describe how his music helped them cope with rough times, and in many cases, people would tell stories of how their experience with alcoholism very much aligned with his, and his music made them feel less alone. For me, the things that resonated with me were the emotion, the politics, the hope, and the despair. As an anarchist I’m constantly self-doubting. And to hear this guy with the same doubts – it was cathartic as all hell. I am still an anarchist. I understand to an extent his moving away from punk rock, and to a lesser extent, his moving away from anarchism.

To be an anarchist today is to fight an uphill battle – we have all the theory, the science, the evidence, but they have the firepower, and more importantly, they have the public opinion wrapped around their finger. It’s exhausting to feel like you’re pushing an immovable object like this, and have the working-class citizens right next to you gloat and jeer, and parrot the rhetoric we were all taught in school, the rhetoric that keeps the systems in place. A better world is possible, but it’s so much harder to achieve when you are still trying to shake the idea that it isn’t, the idea that has been ingrained into our heads through years of social conditioning. It’s frightening, but impressive, how successful the powers that be have been in convincing the masses that their subservience is inevitable and a law of nature.

So yeah. I can somewhat understand slowly shifting away from the label of anarchism, after being alienated by both a reactionary society, and by the anarchists themselves – the scene is rife with infighting and disagreements, and we often come across as very bitter people. For valid reasons!

Despite all this, I continue to live a life of truth, adventure, love and rage; as an anarchist, as a friend, as a member of my communities, as an instrument of justice, and as Zoe. Though the moral arc of the universe is long, I ain’t giving up on the work I’ve done thus far.

Thanks, Pat for inspiring a shit ton of youth both away from and towards inaction and despair, you helped us feel something at least. You gave a name to my biggest fears, and you put into words the existential dread that still keeps me up at night. Thanks for sharing your experiences and your art. I hope you’re doing well, and I hope you find some sort of peace.

 

 

Oct. 15, 2018