"Be Good or Be Gone" captures a great mixure of mellow and poppy songs that blend together in a great musical painting. The album is a folk-rock record that sounds eerily like a combination of Bob Dylan and Tom Petty. Patric Westoo's lyrics take the listener on a journey through relationships, hardships and scenes of American culture. Westoo's lyrics on "Perfect Fit" and "You and I Should Get Rid of Me" are captivating. This is an album worth checking out.
- the Daily Athenaeum, Morgantown, W.V
First there was ABBA, then Ace of Base. and most recently the Hives. Patric Westoo doesn't sound like any of them but he definitley is Scandinavian. With the fourth track "Perfect Fit", Westoo's music take on a Tom Pettyesque feel. The song touches on the themes that are common throughout the cd, including the drudgery of small town life. The themes are most obviously captured in the lyrics, "you shoot for the stars/but settle for awkward sex in cars". Westoo's Scandinavian roots are most apparent later on in the album. Though the lyrics are sometimes sad, the uptempo, cherful music tends to mask the lyrical content with intriguing results.
- Columbia Daily Spectator
WVU tennis standout returns to town with A brand-new racket
The first time Patric Westoo came to Morgantown, it was as a tennis
player.
He did well, becoming WVU's No. 1 singles player and ranking 38th
nationally. He's now a coach at New York's Columbia University.
This time, he's coming to Morgantown as a guitar player.
His band, The B-Sides, will perform Friday at 123 Pleasant Street.
If that seems like a long way to travel for a show, maybe you should know
that Westoo's bandmates, Kim Monday and Brian Porterfield, live here.
"I've been doing the acoustic thing for 10 years and finally got to the
point where I had to do something different," Westoo said.
"I wanted to start a band and I was thinking about doing something in New
York."
But putting together a group in the Big Apple proved frustrating, so
Westoo turned to his longtime friends.
"I called Kim and Brian because they've played on my stuff in the past
and it's always been singer/songwriter sort of stuff and they always had
to hold back."
Porterfield is also a singer/songwriter and for years fronted Cheap
Trucker's Speed, Morgantown's top (and now defunct) alt-country band.
Monday produced and played on a substantial number of records that came
out of Morgantown for decades, including everything from jazz to rap,
before he closed his Frozen Sound Studio a few years ago. He plays bass,
drums and keyboard for Westoo.
The B-Sides have released a CD, "Troubleshooting," but have yet to play
the songs for an audience. Friday's show, with local stalwarts The
Emergency and Billy Matheny and the Frustrations (of which Monday is also
member), is the band's live debut.
Westoo's lyrics alone should be enough to keep the crowd entertained.
He's not your typical singer/songwriter.
"I've always been into music that pulls you in different directions and
as a songwriter that's what I'm looking to do as well. Lyrically, I shoot
for a mix of heartbreak and humor with some heavy and trivial stuff mixed
in," he said.
"I try to be a straight shooter and stay away from cliches and what is
expected of a certain type of song."
"I've written pop songs about depression and organic acoustic songs about
phone companies. For The B-Sides, I wanted to write creepy grown-up songs
and get a band that could play them with an unpolished adolescent and
catchy energy."
"Everybody seemed inclined to jump on the punk rock bandwagon, but I
wanted some grown-up themes people with mortgages and families and to
play it with a catchy kind of punk rock energy."
But why would a coach, a married man with two small children, want to
write about weird relationships, odd people and the like?
"You behave and you do good things for so many hours a day so when you
sit down to write you have this outlet for the other side of things," he
said.
"I didn't want to write a bunch of drinking songs. I wanted more mature
writing played in an unmature way."
Westoo came to the United States from Sweden in 1987 and, after a couple
years of junior college in Alabama he was an All-American ended up at WVU
on a tennis scholarship.
"I didn't pick up a guitar until my senior year and pretty much started
writing songs right away. Shortly after that, I tapped into the
`singer/songwriter with an attitude Morgantown scene' that was pretty
happening at the time," he said.
He kept at it for more than 10 years and has done shows around the East
Coast. In addition to The B-Sides recording, he's released solo CDs,
"People's Bills and Thrills" in 1996 and "Be Good or Be Gone" in 2000.
He finds his way back to Morgantown frequently to play and to record.
"I'm fond of the place," he said.
Michelle Wolford - The Dominion Post