Annandale native Pat McGee had to be reminded how many times he’s played Wolf Trap, but he says he’ll never forget being there as a kid, hearing the cannons in the 1812 Overture, and thinking “Oh my God; this is, like, bone-chillingly inspiring.”
On July 7, the Pat McGee Band comes back to Wolf Trap, for what McGee has been told is the ninth time, and brings friends: Emmet Swimming and Virginia Coalition, two bands McGee has known since back when he was “playing covers in bars.”
“That’s always kind of been the goal — to go in there with bands that we share a lot of history [with],” McGee says. “It makes the show feel like a hometown reunion type of thing” for artists and audience alike.
McGee and his band had a brush with the mainstream, signing with Warner Bros. Records “because that’s kind of like what you did back in the late ’90s” and releasing the album Shine, with the breezy, tuneful singles “Runaway” and “Rebecca.”
The label eventually dropped the band — a devastating blow for most bands, but for McGee, it was more like a scratch lottery ticket that came up empty. Having built up such a large and loyal fanbase, “We didn’t rely on the record label thing,” McGee says. So, when Warner Bros. let the band loose, “We just jumped right back into ‘All right; We’re gonna make our own music now.’”
The band’s last record is 2019’s Sugar Packet, a reunion of the original lineup in the studio where the band recorded its first two indie discs. The sound is familiar, but the lyrical focus changed over the years: “I had to challenge myself to not write every song about my kids.”
McGee also runs the Down the Hatch music festival in the Outer Banks and the Ocean State of Mind festival in Rhode Island, where he lives. A new record is in the works — his second with studio legends including Danny Kortchmar, Leland Sklar, Waddy Wachtel, and Russ Kunkel — with recording tentatively set for late this year.
But the touring work continues. McGee plays between 75 and 100 shows a year — down from a peak of 300.
“I don’t really look at it as a work ethic,” he says. “When you’re playing music for a living, it’s just like, ‘This is a blast. Let’s do this every night.’ … I feel a sense of — not responsibility, but part of the joy of the music is that I’m bringing all these people together. And I found that that’s kind of one of my favorite things to do.”
Feature image of Pat McGee Band courtesy Pat McGee
This story originally ran in our July issue. For more stories like this, subscribe to Northern Virginia Magazine.
