I’ve never met Pat “The Bunny” Schneeweis. In fact, at first I didn’t even like the genre he played, folk punk. I remember walking through the halls of my old high school with a friend and him telling me about this new thing he discovered called “folk punk.” He proceeded to play me The Taxpayers’ track I Love You like An Alcoholic, and you know what? I hated it. I thought it sounded like garbage and looked forward to the end of the song so I could go back to listening to Streetlight Manifesto. I don’t recall exactly when it was that I put on an album called To Risk So Much For One Damn Meal (an album also by The Taxpayers) or what it was that drew me in, but from that album forward I was in love with this thing called “folk punk.” After this, I went full dive searching through forum threads and Spotify to round out my folk punk library. Of all the folk punk bands from all the shitty states you could ever name, none spoke to me quite like Pat’s bands. Johnny Hobo and The Freight Trains, Wingnut Dishwasher’s Union, and finally Ramshackle Glory. From the angry guitar work to lyrics that painted an honest picture of the violent nature of every governmental and prison institution that’s ever stood on this earth, Pat’s music was the soundtrack to my life for a time. I began to write music, but nothing ever took shape quite like I wanted it to. I tried to write about drug use and alcoholism but I’d never experienced these things, though they produced the emotions I heavily identified with. Months later, I would sit in front of my aunt playing the lead riff to I Love You Like An Alcoholic. I’d go on to get singing lessons, a new guitar and perform with bands at open mics playing other people’s songs. I knew what I wanted to say but always found my favorite folk punkers said it better than I ever could. Months after that, I would sit in an intensive care psych ward playing the first song I’ve ever written and liked, I Told My Therapist About you, to a room full of teenagers and kids just as desperate and down-trodden as me. It was after this stint in the ICU that I tried to give up folk punk. I told myself that “you can only hate everything for so long” and tried to tune to a calmer frequency. It wasn’t long, though, before I was blasting all my favorite bands in my ears through the halls of that same high school again. The things that brought me to folk punk were the senses of injustice and invisibility that were all too active in my daily life. That just wasn’t something I could escape. In a few months, I would lose contact with everyone who had heard the rendition of my song in the hospital and tell my aunt I didn’t want ever want to hear from her again. For a time, I fell completely in love with Against Me! and listened to every one of Laura’s songs that were on Spotify front to back almost exclusively. It wouldn’t be long after this that I would be standing in the driveway of an alternative high school being promised freedom with Baby, I’m An Anarchist in my ears. I started writing again, and this time it was actually good. I recorded a song and sent it to my therapist. I thought that I might actually be able to make something of musically expressing myself. Then, Pat quit folk punk for a normal life. The friend who had introduced me to it quit folk punk for Donald Trump and the alt-right. Eric Peterson died before we got to see him in concert. I realized the freedom I was seeking wasn’t something anyone else could give to me. I hadn’t listened to Pat’s music in ages, but it was a few days ago I put on a song from a solo album he did before the end of his music career. I broke down crying to the words “If I have to tell you that we are beautiful, maybe you’re in the right place,” thinking about everything I want to do to feel whole. I was thinking about how no matter how loud you sing, or how hard you try, there may never be enough people to make a difference. I was thinking about how hate permeates the human psyche easier than love. I was thinking about a voice surgery I’ll need to feel whole and how it could potentially end a music career I don’t even have yet. I was thinking about having to put out my last album with a blog post like Pat’s. I was thinking about how maybe that might be for the best, that “you can only hate everything for so long.”

I’ve never met Pat “The Bunny” Schneeweis, but he taught me that everything changes, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.