It’s 4 p.m. on a Saturday, and Kyle Patrick is finally enjoying some much-needed time off. His band, the Click Five, has just returned from a week-long mini-tour down the East Coast. Friday night’s show was at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park, N.J., which Patrick calls “a legendary place – Bruce Springsteen’s stomping grounds,” and the band didn’t get back into New York City until 2:30 a.m. Because it was the last night of the tour, everyone partied until 4 a.m.
Twenty-one years old, Patrick is at the prime age for partying. But since he joined the Click Five last winter, he and the other members have spent most of their time working. The band, in its original incarnation, started at Berklee College of Music in 2004, where four of the five band members went to school. By the end of the next year, the group had a record deal, and by the following June, the group’s first single, “Just the Girl,” had hit No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart.
However, lead singer Eric Dill decided to leave the band later that year. That’s where Patrick came in.
When the Click Five started its search for a new singer, the group went back to Berklee. When a music business professor suggested Patrick, the band arranged a meeting with him. The five musicians hung out and played a few songs. Eventually, the four Click Five members showed up at Patrick’s apartment with a bottle of Don Perignon and a Berklee drop-out form. The rest, as they say, is history.
A year later, the tall, thin, formerly denim-wearing college student is usually seen on stage in custom-tailored suits. His faux-messy haircut stands in direct contrast to his polished clothing, just like the rest of the band.
Back at Berklee, everyone knew him by his full name: Kyle Dickherber. Now, fans know him as Kyle Patrick.
Today, Patrick is relaxing in a friend’s Greenwich Village apartment. He hasn’t accomplished much so far, having slept fairly late. After all, he spent the previous night celebrating a tour and as the face of the Click Five, he needs his beauty sleep.
SS: Are you recording a new album any time soon? KP: It’s not on our plate because the first single off Modern Minds and Pastimes [“Jenny”] wasn’t a huge success here. So we’re still trying to push that album and our new single, “Empty.”
SS: I heard you recorded the vocals to “Empty” in the fetal position “to capture the isolated, vulnerable sentiment.” What’s up with that? KP: The thing about that song is that it’s really touching. I’ve been in that position. I wrote that song with Ben [Romans], the keyboard player, and he had been through that kind of thing, too. … So we didn’t have to look very far to get inspiration for the song. … In order to really get that mood across, I made, like, a tent in the studio and just sat in there and sang through the song a bunch of times.
SS: Why did you change your name? KP: It was something I had been thinking about for a while. I just didn’t think my real last name, Dickherber, was a coherent last name for a performer.
