Q&A: Aaron Frazer of Charlie Patton's War

Local bands Charlie Patton’s War and Swales shared a Bishop bill with Chicago-based Bears of Blue River on Wednesday night. 

The lineup performed to a pumped crowd that enjoyed both music and $3-pints. 

The IDS sat down with Aaron Frazer, an IU senior and drummer and vocalist for blues-rock Charlie Patton’s War, and talked to him about Wednesday’s show, the other performers and his band’s future plans.

IDS: Were you familiar with any of the other bands you performed with Wednesday? What were your thoughts on sharing the bill with them?
FRAZER: Yeah I was. When you’re involved in the music scene in the Midwest, you tend to see some names over and over again, especially if they’re actively touring. The Bears of Blue River bring a really sincere brand of indie folk, and the fact that they have multiple members of the band who can all sing lead lets them give the audience a lot of different looks. It’s awesome to watch.

And Swales — I haven’t heard them as a band, but I actually recorded Peter Oren’s first EP he did here. He has a control of language which allows him to write these pieces straight out of the Woody Guthrie school of songwriting.

IDS: How has your latest release been going? Do you have a release date set?
FRAZER: It’s coming along for sure. We’re all audio majors here, so we’ve been taking the DIY approach to recording, doing it all at Blake’s (Rhein, CPW guitarist and vocalist) house. We have one half of the album tracked, and this weekend we’ll be tracking the second half. I’m really pleased with how it’s sounding so far. We don’t have an exact release date, but we’re aiming for mid-to-late March.

IDS: You guys frequent the Bishop. What sets a performance at the Bishop apart from performances at other local venues?
FRAZER: Yeah I feel like the Bishop has kinda become our home field in a way. I know I personally feel most comfortable playing there over any other venue in town. I think it’s probably half and half in terms of who sets up the shows. Sometimes Dan (Coleman) will have a band coming in on tour and he feels like we’d be a good fit with them, other times we’ll have a group in mind that we’d like to play with. The Bishop, I think more than any other venue in town, strikes a good balance between providing the social atmosphere of a bar, while still keeping the focus very much on the music. It’s become one of the hubs for creative people in this town, so it’s also a great place to network and meet new people. And it’s 18 and up, so it doesn’t exclude a big part of the music scene.

IDS: What other performances do you have lined up in the near future?
FRAZER: We, along with the Broderick, are doing this collaboration with WIUX on the 19th — I think. They’re filming it and starting up this online video blog series, kind of like Midwest Underground. Other than that, we hope to play Culture Shock when it rolls around, and our album release show will be sooner than later, so we’ll be giving updates about that on our Facebook page.