DEFER YOUR ENTHUSIASM (23)
By:
June 24, 2025
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating our favorite… late-breaking obsessions, avoided discoveries, and devotions delayed! Series edited by Adam McGovern.
The year was 2003 and I was in search of excitement, revolution and maybe love. I was into punk rock and one of my favorite musicians was at his peak, but I didn’t know it. I was too busy listening to Rancid, NOFX and Green Day to be ingratiated by the greatness that was Johnny Hobo and the Freight Trains, Wingnut Dishwasher Union and Pat the Bunny, all projects of folk punk musician Patrick Schneeweis.
In fact I still did not know any of his music when I toured with folk punk band Chencho in 2015. Finally, at some point it clicked that a lot of this music had not only profoundly shaped the punk underground, but that I also love this music. I heard a kid singing lyrics from “New Mexico” at an open mic in 2013: “As he lights an American Spirit / He asks how I can smoke such shit / I say there’s nothing like chain smoking GPC cigarettes / Because any smokes will kill ya / But these will make you feel like it.”
I figured it was an original and that kid was just some kind of genius from Thousand Oaks. But then I heard the same lyrics at dive bars, behind shopping centers, in graveyards, under overpasses and in semi-abandoned parks. I still had no idea who the artist was, and possibly didn’t realize that there was an artist, perhaps thinking this song was just some kind of secret code that all the folk punks learn written by an anonymous collection of people. I was often under the influence of a few beers, sleep deprivation and ADHD, so I never dug any deeper.
I’m not sure what the moment was that finally gave it away. Maybe it was the homie telling me I reminded him of the lines, “And now he’s driving us 100 miles an hour down the interstate / Another beer in his hand, swearing we won’t be late.”
Whatever the case, I finally found his whole anthology of music, that was so adjacent to my style that I can’t convince my Mom it’s not me singing when I play this music at home. And I give it up to Pat the Bunny for living that hitchhiker life, writing those songs and doing DIY tours for those of us who couldn’t. For me Pat the Bunny is the mythology I was searching for as a teen, in music form.
DEFER YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Adam McGovern | Mandy Keifetz on FAITH | Heather Quinlan on THE GRATEFUL DEAD | Carlo Rotella on SMOOTHER GROOVES | Art Wallace on MICHIGAN | Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons on TAYLOR SWIFT | Josh Glenn on ART | James Scott Maloy on BE-BOP DELUXE | Jake Zucker on LIGHT SLEEPER | Gabriela Pedranti on THE BIG BANG THEORY | Adam McGovern on DOGS | Tana Sirois on COLLABORATIVE EVOLUTION | Rani Som on LED ZEP | Holly Interlandi on HOT SAUCE | Jeff Lewonczyk on TWIN PEAKS | Nikhil Singh on PRE-TEEN DAVID LYNCH PROBLEMS | Christopher Rashee Stevenson on O’NEILL & THE SEA | Fran Pado on SHARKS | Juan Recondo on BEN GRIMM’S INNER LIFE | Miranda Mellis on KARL OVE KNAUSGAARD | Mimi Lipson on SOBRIETY | William Nericcio on ELYSIUM | Crockett Doob on SLEATER-KINNEY | Marlon Stern Lopez on PAT THE BUNNY | Crystal Durant on SEX AND THE CITY | Wendy Chin-Tanner on MY PARENTS’ ART STORE.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!