Pete Francis:
A New England native, Francis first came to fame in the late 1990s as a founding member of alternative roots powerhouse Dispatch, whose remarkable rise from Middlebury College to Madison Square Garden helped rewrite the rulebooks for modern indie bands. Though few knew it at the time, Francis was fighting an increasingly difficult battle with depression throughout his years of relentless touring and recording, and after taking multiple leaves of absence, he eventually made the decision to step away from the band entirely in order to focus more fully on his health and wellbeing.

“There’s a lot of healing and a lot of forgiveness in these songs,” says Pete Francis. “It can be scary to face your fears and ask the tough questions, but sometimes you have to step into the darkness in order to find your light.”

That juxtaposition of darkness and light lies at the heart of, PTRN SKY!, Francis’ captivating new album and first full-length release since his 2019 departure from Dispatch. Recorded at home in Connecticut, the collection finds the acclaimed songwriter and multi-instrumentalist reckoning with the depression and anxiety that have dogged him for most of his adult life, transforming doubt and pain into growth and transcendence with remarkable grace and empathy. The writing is intensely raw and vulnerable here, even as the lyrics explore a world of improvised abstraction, and the arrangements are cathartic to match, wrapping deeply personal reflections inside layers of lush, dreamy synthesizers. The result is an unflinching glimpse into the subconscious of an artist learning to make peace with the struggle that threatened to rob him of everything he held dear, an aching yet ultimately triumphant testament to the power of love and art to make us feel whole again, even at our most broken

“Sharing is in and of itself an act of healing,” explains Francis. “There’s still a lot of stigma and shame when it comes to talking openly about mental illness, but I think when we share our emotions and our experiences in real and constructive ways, we invite others to do the same, to feel less fearful and isolated, and there’s something really liberating about that.”

That ongoing work informs every track on PTRN SKY!, which opens with the piercing “Can’t Get On With It.” Hinting at everything from Beck to Butthole Surfers, the track balances hope and despair in equal measure, grappling with the guilt and frustration that comes with feeling stuck. Like much of the record, the song is sung to the face staring back in the mirror, asking more questions than it answers in a search for clarity that seems to hang perpetually just out of reach. The airy “Scared Without Your Love,” for instance, wonders if it’s possible to make it through this life on our own, while the trippy “All Your Tears” contemplates if we can ever truly know someone else’s pain, and the hypnotic title track ponders whether abstraction can ultimately lead to revelation.

“I kept coming back to the abstract artist Cy Twombly when I was making this album,” Francis explains. “He made these beautifully emotive pieces that were dreamlike and whimsical but still generated a very strong and grounded emotional response, and that really felt like the essence of what I was trying to do with these songs.”

In the case of PTRN SKY!, the emotional response Francis found himself returning to time and again was love. The tender “Fall Into Your Heart” surrenders to its overwhelming power; the breezy “Eyes Of The Jungle” (a duet between Francis and his wife, Katie, who also contributed the album’s bold and psychedelic cover art) meditates on its primacy; and the stripped down “Mind Over Mind” soaks in its healing waters. It’s perhaps the poignant “Brighter Days,” though, that hits closest to home, with Francis finally finding love in that face staring back in the mirror. “I lead myself to brighter days,” he sings over ethereal synthesizers, his voice both gentle and resolute. “I won’t give up / No I won’t give up.”

“That’s ultimately what this whole album is all about,” Francis reflects. “You can’t fight the darkness. You can only share your light.”

The Tide:
We are a high-energy band covering jamming tunes from rock’s greatest — the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Allman Brothers, Grateful Dead and Tom Petty, to name a few. The Tide was founded in 2020 by fellow UVM alum, Adam Larosa (Drums) and Darryl Pardi (guitar/vocals) as a true Greenwich garage band. Our friend Pete Francis (formerly of Dispatch) introduced us to Matt Barcewicz (keys/vocals) who regularly plays with Pete. Jay Anderson (bass/guitar/vocals) joined soon thereafter and ultimately introduced us to the beautiful vocals of his wife Amanda. Our collective love of music is superseded only by the excitement of a shared experience with a live audience. The Tide regularly plays at OG Social, has done several shows at Windham Mountain in the Catskills, played private parties around Greenwich and graced the stage at Connelly’s in NYC.