Every Mellencamp fan, every Steve Earle fan, and especially every Neil Young fan
author: Rechelle Malin
Patch of Blue is a great American record. My only wish is that more people could hear it. Forrest writes songs dealing with manic depression and tobacco farming. Lost love, and wanderlust. Every Mellencamp fan, every Springsteen fan, every Steve Earle fan, and especially every Neil Young fan will love this record. It is as solid, simple and as everyman as they come.
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This one has my very favorite Whitlow songs to date.
author: David Hakan, Founder Of Songwriters Circle Of Kc
Forrest Whitlow's CD, Patch of Blue, establishes Forrest as a vibrant new genre all unto himself. Fans of singer/songwriters will have plenty of great images, rich language and lyrical gems here. Yet you can, also, crank this CD up and dance or fly down the highway, singing along to the rock 'n roll choruses.
Coproducer and engineer Steve Phillips has successfully reined in the Crash so the band gives lots of energy and drive to the CD without stomping all over the lyrics. With Todd Wiseman on bass, John Bersuch on drums and Scott Mize on electric guitar, Forrest has plenty of talent behind him to crash on to the national charts. Rechelle Malin, a talented songwriter herself, gives fine vocal support on harmonies without interfering with Forrest's awesome vocals on this CD.
Forrest's signature song, "Depression's Highway," starts out with a nasty, dissonant chord pounding away to cynical hopeless lyrics when all of a sudden a melodic, folksy "patch of blue" comes into the song to pull us out in time. When I'm stuck in a hazy fog of sound-alike music, I reach for Patch Of Blue. I'd rather be in Madagascar.
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using the brush of Neil Young, and a color pallete that embraces Nick Drake, Jon
author: Peter Max Lawrence
This was an amazing listening experience. Forrest has drawn a musical masterpiece using the brush of Neil Young, and a color pallete that embraces Nick Drake, Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan. It actually frightens me that a record this good could be released in the first year of this century. You owe it to yourself to hear the ear candy that he has created. Patch of Blue is obviously a sparkeling diamond in the rough that is the current American musical landscape. I fucking loved this album and you will too.
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...And the song is sung. The truth be told
author: Ian Charles~(Singer/Songwriter)
I look at this disc as one of the desert island indie cd's in my collection. For various reasons many of which fall to a bunch of rhetoric but, the truth be told...
I have listened to this disc as much as I have listened to other singer/songwriters discs. Including classic, and mainstream.Though, Forrest is a different creation. He reaches to this place of ache and finds humor and a seemingly freeform redemption in the song he is writing. That fact alone is the the thing that keeps bringing me back.
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