Weed Patch

Growing up amid the San Fernando Valley suburbs gave Neal Weiss an upbringing comparable to The Wonder Years, shifted forward by roughly a decade. Punk and new wave formed the prevailing soundtrack throughout his adolescence. An older sibling’s collection of LPs by The Clash, The Jam, X, and Elvis Costello ignited his interest early, leading him to obtain a guitar once he reached college; there he developed his playing chiefly by fronting a sub-Replacements-style cover band at night while devoting daytime hours to fiction-writing courses. After completing his studies, Weiss established himself as a freelance Los Angeles music journalist and pop-culture critic, a vocation that continued alongside his musical goals. He simultaneously applied his narrative skills to songwriting. During the early and middle years of the 1990s he led the four-piece Good For Nothings, whose sound occupied the territory between R.E.M.-inflected alternative rock and the then-emerging style soon labeled alt-country. The group performed occasionally around Los Angeles and produced two self-financed demo recordings before dissolving. In the ensuing years, between journalistic assignments, Weiss continued writing songs now influenced by Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and the Velvet Underground, among others, while taking occasional solo engagements. The notion of starting a fresh band took hold after he was invited to contribute a track to the compilation Edges From the Postcard, Vol. 3 assembled by the P2 Internet mailing list. Under the pseudonym O’Neill Evans he supplied “50 Miles of Bad Road,” adopting the band name Weed Patch. By summer 2001, with a backlog of unused material and newly motivated by the birth of a daughter, Weiss redirected his focus toward Weed Patch. He recruited Seth Rothschild—previously encountered through the Los Angeles country-rock band Gingersol—to serve as producer. Over the next year the pair assembled a changing roster of studio musicians: bassist/vocalist Gary Eaton (Continental Drifters, Ringling Sisters) and drummer Adam Maples (Earthlings?, Sea Hags, Legal Weapon), both of whom had previously supported Weiss; guitarist Kip Brown, an earlier Good For Nothings bandmate; multi-instrumentalist Ben Peeler (Wallflowers, Minibar, Mavericks); and Minibar’s rhythm section of Sid Jordan and Malcolm Cross. Sessions took place irregularly, nights and weekends permitting, inside a North Hollywood warehouse through summer 2002. The resulting Weed Patch album, Maybe the Brakes Will Fail, surfaced at the beginning of 2003, by which time most of the players had returned to their primary bands. That spring Weiss assembled a new performing quartet that included Brown.