Photo Credit: Chloe Mistele
Beach Patrol
Beach Patrol
In mid-December 2019, before the pandemic hit, Green Bay’s Beach Patrol played the Circle A Café in Riverwest. The trio’s energy threatened to blow the roof off the place. It was about as much fun as you can legally have; the catchy, upbeat music was perfect for a Saturday night. Beach Patrol made such an impression that headliners, The Mighty Deerlick (no slouches themselves) considered exiting via the club’s back door and leave the opening act to play another set.
During lockdown, the band decided to make good use of the downtime. They recorded an album of Bob Dylan covers, Every Grain of Sand. All proceeds from the cd will be donated to the St. John’s Homeless Shelter in Green Bay.
Then in January, singer Domenic Marcantonio took aim at Green Bay Alderman Chris Wery. In a song named in honor of the politician, Marcantonio’s broadside called for Wery’s resignation for a Facebook post encouraging extremists to help defend Green Bay from potential unrest in the wake of the unrest in Kenosha. Marcantonio also called out Alderman Wery for suggesting Lambeau Field create a coronavirus super-spreader event by significantly opening up the stadium’s capacity for the Packers Divisional Playoff game.
How has the lockdown affected your creativity?
Well, I got a divorce at the beginning of it so some combination of that and the pandemic has reignited my creativity all the way to the core. Songs have been just tumbling out of me for the past year, and it reminded me of music's incredible healing power. We’ve been recording a lot as well.
We were simultaneously working on two projects during the pandemic. One being this album of Dylan songs, called Every Grain of Sand and the other is our next album of originals called Festivus which we hope to release in Spring or Summer. We dropped the first single for that record a couple weeks ago about a slippery little slime ball that “serves” on Green Bay’s city council.
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Do you have a routine or schedule for staying in practice or working on new material?
It’s a very scatterbrained process that comes in waves. Most often these days songs will just hit me. I’ll have the whole thing ready upstairs before I even get home to my guitar or to find a notebook. There’s no discipline whatsoever, although sometimes I'll fall into little patterns for a while. There was a point in the springtime when I would wake up at precisely 3:33 a.m. every day with a fully formed idea for a song.
Are you making plans for when you can resume playing in front of people again?
Nah, I just plan on continuing to say no to gigs until further notice. I miss it, really I do, but I work with the elderly in long term care and I don't want to put anyone at risk.
