From Furniture Maker to Celebrated Guitarist with Pat Coldrick – Episode 54
What if a single moment of inspiration could change the trajectory of your entire life? Join us on the Resonate podcast as we chat with the phenomenal guitar maestro, Pat Coldrick. From the tender age of 12, when he first heard Segovia on the radio, Pat’s love for the guitar was ignited, leading him to a self-taught journey brimming with relentless dedication.
Hear about Pat’s return to playing in his late 40s and the creation of “Lament,” a deeply moving guitar piece that touched hearts and reaffirmed his musical calling. Pat opens up about the raw emotions and cherished memories that fueled this composition. We talked about the importance of pursuing dreams at any age and how creative expression can fill an existential void, bringing fulfillment and purpose to our lives.
Finally, prepare to be inspired by tales of perseverance and triumph as Pat recounts his rise from busking on Grafton Street to receiving standing ovations at the National Concert Hall. Don’t miss the opportunity to hear Pat’s incredible stories and insights into the world of classical guitar.
Aideen Ni Riada:
Welcome to the Resonate podcast with Aideen. I’m Aideen Ni Riada and my guest today is guitar virtuoso Pat Coldrick. Welcome.
Pat Coldrick:
Thank you, Aideen.
Aideen Ni Riada:
It’s great to have you here. Your story is going to definitely resonate with all of the listeners for this podcast and I can’t wait to share it with them. But let me read a little from your bio just to set the scene. So, Pat Coldrick is a guitarist and composer who has been working for the last six years in Ireland, but has also performed recitals in Europe, the USA and Russia. Pat has been described as pushing the boundaries of classical guitar with his musical interpretations and compositions and has made classical guitar exciting, interesting and more accessible to music lovers in general. I think your your um story goes back further than six years. Why is it that you’ve mentioned six years in this particular bio, pat Pat?
Pat Coldrick:
Well, the past six years have been really successful, kind of a culmination of all the kind of work I’ve been putting back into my music since I came back to the guitar about 10, 12 years ago. And so, yeah, it’s been a very interesting six years, playing a lot of concerts in England and around the world and here also in Ireland where I played in the National Concert Hall with the Orfeo Concert Orchestra a sellout concert which was great. So the last six years have really kind of been really fantastic for me and my music, which it kind of has. I’ve more or less established myself as a player on the scene, and that’s one thing I’ve noticed over the past six years.
Aideen Ni Riada:
That’s so interesting, and it’s so interesting how, in your own mind, that’s when started, according to what you’ve written here for your bio, when I know and we’ve spoken about this that things really changed for you quite a while ago, in 2012. Let’s go back a little further, though, and talk about your beginnings with guitar and how you got and how your life, you know, got diverted away from guitar for such a long time, because I know many people love creativity, or they may love an instrument, or they may love something, but they get are told to get the proper job, or you know you can’t make a career out of that or get discouraged in some way, and your story is a testimony to it’s never too late, so let’s tell them a little bit about that beginning for you.
Pat Coldrick:
You started playing guitar at a very young age, I believe well, make yourself a cup of tea and sit back for this one. Uh, this, this is a long one. Yeah, I, um, more or less, was fascinated with the guitar. I think it was about 12 or 13 and it was really I. I never really came from a musical stock as such. I was into playing all sorts of sports and, like any 12, 13 year old, and I remember when, I remember this clearly, one sunday morning, going out and on the radio, I heard this music and it was I, just what’s? I just stopped and anyway, it was the great segovia playing a piece of music and I was. It was like it was just, I just wasn’t. It was incredible and I had to find out what this was. But back in 1972, you know, we didn’t have internet or, uh, barely had. You know, you were very posh if you had a record player and and things like that, but I managed to sort of, uh, suss it all out and, um, uh, decided to. I want this, this is what I want to do. I have to do this, I have to find out how, how this is done. And I remember going and buying myself a guitar. It was three pounds, it was a cheap toy guitar and I literally taught myself how to play and spent hours and hours and hours every day with the guitar and just totally and utterly fell in love with it. Um, but as the years went by then you you know, I bought books and I was self-taught. Basically I never really went to college until later on and when I was 18, 19, I joined various bands as well. I played, you know, just to stay in the kind of realm of music. I joined various show bands around Ireland and played electric guitar and got used to playing in front of audiences and got to know, I learned how to entertain a crowd, which is a very important thing. I mean, at the end of the day, a guitar recital or any classical music recital, it’s, it is entertainment. It’s not an education. You don’t try and educate your audience. You entertain them with the music you play and the way you approach it and the way you put it across. So that’s really where I kind of come from. But anyway, I decided at about when I was about 18 to I better go to college and learn this instrument properly if I ever want to kind of become a classical guitarist to a standard where I can go out and play in public and I had a bad experience really in college because everything I had learned my technique and the way I played was kind of all wrong. You know, the music, the way I interpreted various pieces was wrong. And I remember even failing grade three guitar because I put in a bar of music into a back uh brewery which wasn’t even there. But I just thought it sounded nice and I got slated for it and I says, oh, my god, you know, I I’m sort of much freer with the music. I see a music, music on a page, and if I like it and if I want to add to it or take something away from it to do my own interpretation of that piece, I will do it. I don’t play exactly what’s on the page and people might say that’s uh, disrespectful, uh, but but uh, I’ve done it all my life and people, people sort of love it. But anyway, I got a bit disillusioned in college. I was there for a couple of years and I said god, I couldn’t play the way they wanted me to play. And I did win the Feis Ceoil Feskiole, but way back then as well I got the highest marks ever in guitar. I think I got 98% out of 100, playing a particular piece my way and didn’t get slated for it, but I felt I was never going to make it as a guitarist because I wasn’t really trained properly classically.
Aideen Ni Riada:
Yes, I just wanted to reflect on that a little bit, because there can be some you know, ideals, I suppose you could say, in certain genres of music, of music, and that can be a big barrier to people starting to learn an instrument, um, where you feel like you have to do scales for the first three years or whatever. Um, what would you say to someone who is, um, that wants to explore music and and can feel that as a barrier for themselves?
Pat Coldrick:
I would say to them is to forget, forget it and do it, do it. Do whatever your heart tells you to do. Music, at the end of the day, is, is, is is a language, it’s an art form, it’s it’s, it’s a, an expressive tool that we say we as humans can use and access to, we’ll say, describe themselves and also to sort of put across to others. You use it as a language and it’s very important that you have an individuality in music. You have a style. I mean, there are so many players that if you listen to them they all sound brilliant, but they all sound the same.
Pat Coldrick:
It’s very important to have your own identity as a musician or as an artist, and I think sometimes I make a criticise for this.
Pat Coldrick:
If you go through the college methods, the academic methods, too rigorously, you can end up losing a lot of your individual flair by, we’ll say, playing the music as it sort of technically should be, on the piece of paper, on the sheet music, where. Don’t be afraid of somebody saying oh well, if you play it your own way, you’ll be slated and critics will have a feast day on you. No, I’ve done this for years and all I’ve got was praise praise from critics, praise from the classical guitar magazine, but this guy, pat Koldrick, with his interpretation of these pieces, are wonderful, refreshing. So I would say I play the way I hear it in my head and the way it’s natural to me. And I would say that to any musician um, to whatever way you want to portray it, uh, do it the way you want to do it and use the music, use the melody, um, as a guide and rearrange it in such a way that it becomes part of you and it’s comfortable for you to portray that music.
Aideen Ni Riada:
But at the time you didn’t have the confidence to do that as a young person, and I think a lot of young people need encouragement at that age rather than you know criticism, but they don’t always get it, obviously. So what happened for you then? I know you took, you gave up, basically yeah, it’s an interesting one.
Pat Coldrick:
Yeah, I was younger then and probably a little naive and, um, I didn’t have the, the we’ll say the strength of character, and I do now, maybe I. I I mean, if somebody who was an expert in music and guitar was telling me this back then I said, okay, well, this, these, these people know their stuff. So. So I ended up, um, I ended up packing it in. I got so disillusioned and I had spent a large part of my life from about 12, 13 years of age to about 23, 24, playing guitar non-stop. So I took a complete break. I stopped, took up woodwork believe it or not, I taught myself how to do woodwork and wood carving Excuse me, work, believe it or not. I taught myself how to do woodwork and wood carving excuse me and fell in love with that too. Um, and I worked. I had my own, I set up my own business and I was very, very successful um, doing, uh, I loved to do woodwork and again, it was create. It was a kind of a another would say avenue of creation or a creative way to sort of put myself across. So I was enjoying that. But I never even talked about guitar, talked about music, people that I knew through the woodwork and to life.
Pat Coldrick:
Those years from about 26 to about 49, I never even knew I played guitar or ever played guitar. I just completely stopped so. But unfortunately, um, the business I was I had developed uh the woodwork business um crashed in the recession 2007, 2008 and I never thought it would, but and so did an awful lot of people with their own particular businesses that failed and I was kind of left oh, didn’t expect that one. And I was left kind of what do I do now? So it was an interesting time for me.
Pat Coldrick:
It was like a crossroads in my life because I remember saying to the good lord up there at 14, 15 years of age says please, god, all I want to do in life is make me good enough to play guitar, classical guitar, good enough to play in front of people. I wanted that so, so much and I prayed for it and it’s funny how God works in mysterious ways. And what I did was I got so kind of depressed and disillusioned at 49 and I had no money at all, I’d lost everything. And I says what am I going to do? Um, so I decided to take the guitar back out of the attic and go busking up Grafna Street, just literally not to show people how good it was, because I wasn’t, I hadn’t played in 25 years, but just to make enough money to get to tomorrow. And we decided to see. You know, I said to myself, ah, this recession won’t last very long, it’ll only last about a few months and I’ll be back up in business again.
Aideen Ni Riada:
One thing I read an article about you in the Irish Independent online and you mentioned that before you even took the guitar out of the attic you hadn’t actually even thought of guitar yet that trying to reconnect with an old friend was really the way that you. I thought that was an interesting story story. I’d love you to tell that because, you know, sometimes we are, we’re trying to logically find our way through life and we’re trying to, you know, follow the breadcrumbs and somehow your life was changed dramatically because of this, uh, this story, and I’d love for you to to tell that story to my listeners, if you don’t mind.
Pat Coldrick:
Sure, this really was the changing point. You know, a lot of things started happening at that time. I was at an all-time low. I was busking up on Grafton Street literally for a couple of weeks and I was quite amazed actually, the way people talked to me and were wondering who I was and how can you play at that level? And you’re only playing on the street. But I was amazed that people sort of thought I was any good.
Pat Coldrick:
But the strange thing that happened during that time was, um, you know, I I was just on the internet one night and I, I, um, was kind of for some reason. I decided to look up an old friend, as you do and what they’re doing now and I, I went out a a girl way back in 1978, 79, 80, that around that time Probably first serious relationship and we were madly in love and all that. But things sort of just didn’t work out. In the end she moved back to England and I went on with my life and we had we just lost contact for so, so many years and I just said I’d like to get in touch with her again and see how things are and how her life is. She’s married now and you know just for something, for something, and I never really thought about her until that moment. And when I looked her up and eventually found a death notice, I found out that she died Only six months previous to me looking her up and I was really kind of of, I was just blown away. It was the first person that read close to me that had ever died and it was a strange sort of a feeling and a very sad feeling and all these memories started flowing back because this lovely girl knew how much the guitar meant to me and um, and, and how much music meant to me and I’m not a composer, or I wasn’t then, but I remember sitting down one night and taking the guitar out and thinking about her and thinking of the great times we had together. And I was playing away and all of a sudden this piece sort of came to me and I wasn’t sort of um mourning, it wasn’t a sadness, it was a kind of um, it was a nice feeling of of. You know, hadn’t been great times together and wasn’t I so lucky to have met that person for five years of my life. And in the background a piece was writing itself which is now called the lament. It’s the first piece I ever wrote. I had never any idea that it would have the effect on people that it had. But when I recorded it on my cayendo album and put it out there, that everybody kept gravitating towards this piece lament. It has sold thousands of copies around the world. It opened up a whole new world for me.
Pat Coldrick:
I got invited onto the Late Late Show here in Ireland, onto radio stations, because this piece is really about, not a piece about sadness, it’s really a piece to remind people that our loved ones who are gone are not gone. They are there with us in spirit and very, very much with us. Remind people that our loved ones who are gone are not gone. They’re there with us in spirit and very, very much with us. And I remember, if I may just say this one thing I remember being on the radio one morning playing this piece and literally the phones jammed with people ringing in, people pulled in in cars. They really gravitated toward this piece of music in cars. They really gravitated toward this piece of music.
Pat Coldrick:
One lady, uh um, texted in to say that she was in depths of depression for two years, her baby had died and she was there at the kitchen sink, washing her, washing her dishes this is a fact. I have the email and she said a cloud lifted from her shoulders when she heard that piece of music. And I’ve met that lady since and it’s incredible the power of music, how healing it can be. But this kind of that experience kind of launched me into a whole new world of gosh. Um, maybe I’m not as bad as I think I am musically and I felt I got.
Pat Coldrick:
I got I started to felt this confidence grow again in my playing that gosh. If what I play and what I do is having this effect on people, um, let’s carry on with this. You know so it was it. I. I do firmly believe that that that girl up there through some spiritual way guided me back to music and the guitar and gave me the confidence to keep going and re-establish myself and and live my dreams. Basically, this is what I’m doing for the last 10 years, which is what I say to people never, ever, as long as you’re fit and healthy, your dream, go for them, go and grab that dream. Age is only a number and, particularly with music or art, you can create music and art until you’re 110 years of age, in my opinion, I love that idea and guy, we get behind that 100 percent.
Aideen Ni Riada:
Um, I just thought that, that. I just think that that’s an amazing story All true. Yeah, so if anyone is listening and you have that emptiness because it can feel like an emptiness when we’re not expressing ourselves fully- yes, that’s an interesting point, aileen.
Pat Coldrick:
There’s an emptiness when you’re not expressing yourself through some art form. Well, I’d say some art form because I I just don’t think music is the only art form. There are many, um. But let’s say, let’s talk music.
Pat Coldrick:
And I remember, even though I was kind of happy ish to those 25 years, meaning away from the guitar, I always felt there was something missing. Don’t ask me what it was. I was, you know, things were grand, but I was just going through the motions, working away. Oh, this is good, because there’s something, something, something missing. And it really was the day I picked up that guitar again, I started playing it properly, I felt this warmth and this, I felt like it was coming alive again. Absolutely, that whole that void was was being filled again and the clouds parted and the blue sky was there and I’ve I mean, I’m not making anything like the like the money I made when I was doing the woodwork and the carpentry days and and that.
Pat Coldrick:
But it just shows your life is not about making money. I I’m making enough to get by now and doing okay, but I am. So I’ve never been happier in all my life and it just goes to show that what we’re. If I can give a lesson to anybody in life, do in life what your heart tells you to do, and give to others. It’s all about. Everybody has a talent and a gift and our mission on this earth is to share that gift with others. In my opinion, not about making money. That’s a bonus if it comes, and if it doesn’t, so what? Because the true inner happiness you will gain from giving will become you.
Aideen Ni Riada:
You will gain from giving, giving some ability that you have that will make others, other people’s lives uh, richer yeah, and that’s something that’s probably taken me 50 years to sort of learn, but it’s true, very, very true it sounds, and I’ve never been happier, and yeah yeah, it sounds like, because it’s so much a part of your heart, like it’s almost like there’s so much love in your relationship with the guitar, with your relationship with the music and with the language that you’re using and what you’re trying to communicate. That’s what. When you said music is a language, that’s a tool. A language is a tool. What is being communicated is the meaning or the intention behind the tool. So, with you that very first song, that intention was to honor your friend.
Pat Coldrick:
Yes, do all of your compositions have a strong intention behind them? They do absolutely. Um, again, for me, music is a language, it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a way that I, I’m very, very comfortable in expressing myself with. I, I. I find it easier and more natural to express without true music than I do with words, and also I see music as a very visual experience. When I play music it kind of takes me away. I see, I am more how would you say inspired by thoughts and uh in my mind and I tried to create, I tried to paint pictures with music, if that kind of makes sense. Um, I tried to put into the list, I tried to transport the listener, I tried to take them away. It’s kind of like reading a book. I mean, if you give 10 people a book and they read it, everybody will take up, will put themselves in a certain scenario visually, but they’ll all be sort of slightly different. You know, and it’s. It’s the same with music. It kind of transports you from where you are now to a, to a better place, or what the piece of music is. Go with the music and it’ll take you to a place like um, but I’ve always written pieces to describe how I feel, um, like a piece I wrote called city jam, another piece, antarctica, where I tried to create sounds and textures on the guitar that would literally transport the listeners. If you close your eyes, you’re literally in antarctica. You can see it, you can feel it, you are there. City jam, another piece of music, where you’re in the middle of new york city, there’s cards bustling, there’s thousands of millions of people running by, mayhem, chaos. I try to use music to create those images in a people’s mind and and I think I’ve been reasonably successful in doing it, because the feedback I get from people in general about certain pieces that are written uh, they have, the pieces have done what what they say said in the tin. It works, and I really get great satisfaction out of playing music in that way so that I can transport the listener, I can tell them a story, I can bring the music to life visually, um, and that, to me, is what music is all about.
Pat Coldrick:
I suppose we’ll say trying to play a piece, uh, sonata by baff, absolutely technically, flawlessly perfect. That doesn’t interest me. I play the music in such a way that it will. I try to get into the composer’s mind sometimes. And what’s he feeling, what’s he thinking? You know how would he feel if I play the piece that way. Am I describing it better than the composer really wanted? I remember a story about the great isaac albenez, the great spanish composer, who composed for piano, and he once said that when he heard his music being played on the guitar, he says my music has found its home. Even though he wrote the music on the piano, he felt that really what he was trying to put across, he was nearly playing the piano as if it was a guitar. He, his music, suited the guitar better than the instrument he was actually writing it for wow do you know what I mean?
Pat Coldrick:
so yeah, so it’s, it’s um, and the guitar being such a great instrument as well, I love it because it’s, it’s something you can carry around anywhere way too easy and yet it’s a whole tool, it’s an orchestra, it’s, it’s a magnificent instrument, you it? It can bond a performer and an audience or bond two people together to through that wonderful instrument.
Aideen Ni Riada:
You know it’s, it’s amazing, amazing well, I can see you love it and I know that, um, you’ve had this amazing response to your music from individuals, but you’ve also been really recognized and invited to play all over the world and even in Ireland in the National Concert Hall. Tell us a little bit about the exciting moments of your career before we start to wrap things up a little.
Pat Coldrick:
Sure, well, indeed, I’ve been playing and I’ve been invited to play in America. It was absolutely fantastic. I mean I was, and invited to play in America was absolutely fantastic. I mean I was asked over to play the festival in in Florida and which was brilliant. And when I arrived over I was picked up at the airport and treated like a superstar. I couldn’t believe it. And I remember being asked to go on a radio station to talk about my music and normally when you go on and do an interview on radio, they might play one or two pieces and talk to you for 20 minutes and good luck with the concert and all that. So the host of the show was interviewing me and talking to me there and she played a piece of music and that’s great. But what I didn’t realise is the whole programme was dedicated to Pat Goldrick, which is incredible. I said is it over? Oh no, pat, we have another hour to go. This whole show is for you. We are so happy to.
Pat Coldrick:
You know, I couldn’t believe the response to people abroad, how they thought about my music. I mean, I was the only person really that thought my music was rubbish. You know it’s. It’s kind of like vincent van vaugh, cutting his ear off, realizing that his music or his, his art was rubbish, but yet the whole world thought it was brilliant. And that’s another point that I will say to any musician is that we, as as as creators music creators are probably our own worst critics. You never and you never will hear the music that you write or play the way others will hear it or interpret it. So never judge it yourself. Judge what people say, and not everybody will like it, but don’t mind them. There’s enough people in the world to build an audience for yourself. You know there’s thousands and thousands of people who will love what you do. Your job is to go and find them as an artist.
Pat Coldrick:
But Russia, st Petersburg, was another great concert invitation. But the highlight really was the National Concert Hall with the RT Concert Officer, where they invited me, pat Poldry, the guy that used to bus in Graffin Street, to play a concert of all his own music back in 2019. And I said, I know I did play the concert hall myself in the John Field room twice and sold that concert out, but to play in the main auditorium was a big task, you know, gosh, 1,200 people. You know that’s a big audience for a classical guitar concert, but I sold it out Amazing, which was incredible.
Pat Coldrick:
I couldn’t believe it and that was the highlight and the greatest buzz of my life To walk out onto that stage and for the 1,200 people and get a standing ovation. You know, and I was in tears nearly because you know, 10 years prior to that I was about a mile down the road in graffin street, buskin, so it’s kind of like it’s a rags to riches story well, yeah, but it just shows you if, if you pursue your dream, which I did, I was fortunate where I did come back to it and I did work hard at it and my dream did come true.
Pat Coldrick:
Because I remember when I said to you earlier in in our conversation and I prayed to God when I was 15 please make me good enough that I can go out in front of an audience and play. I mean it’s like a young kid playing football. You know his dream would be to play in Wembley in the FA Cup final or something that that happened to me in a musical sense well, I have a.
Aideen Ni Riada:
I have my own little story, some somewhat related. Um, I had been working. Um, some of you will know that I’m a voice coach now but before I did this work, I was in my 40s and I I made a prayer. I said around Christmas time I had been in a local musical in New Ross and I played Betty from White Christmas and I just said this prayer help me do like spend more time doing music next year. Please tell me how. And three weeks later I had it’s like a voice in my head said do a singing workshop for adults, right? So like this was like my stepping stone wasn’t to go straight and busk, it was to actually teach. And I was like, oh no, I’m not, I’m not a music teacher. My mother is the music teacher in the family. Um, so I knew it wasn’t my own brain came up with that and because I had prayed about it, like kind of had asked for help, I said, okay, well, I better test that idea and it’s developed.
Aideen Ni Riada:
My whole life has developed. Now I do have music out on, you know YouTube and all that kind of thing, but it started with me sharing my passion for singing with other people like me who were adults that wanted to sing um but didn’t have any confidence, and that was an amazing experience so I can really um I can really relate to this idea of here. Help me, you know. And then having that somehow responded to is like it’s amazing it is amazing.
Pat Coldrick:
And and there you go, I’m thrilled that you have found your goal. And you know yes, I mean as I say God works in mysterious ways and if you do, if you do want it that badly, you will get it. You will get what you want. So that’s interesting and that’s great. I’m delighted that’s worked out for you. And, as I say to you, so that’s interesting and that’s great, I’m delighted that’s worked out for you.
Pat Coldrick:
And, as I say to you, there is no better feeling than being able to give what you know to others, that you see that they can enrich their lives from it and enjoying it. It’s brilliant. And you are a good teacher and you know, are a good teacher and you know, I, I, maybe you also. Maybe we’re not academic, theoretical experts in the whole thing of music, but we have experience, we have other ways of um portraying to others uh, other people, sorry portraying to others different avenues of music, different, different interpretations of certain things. That you know. You don’t have to completely be immersed in theory to be able to teach music well, that’s definitely true it’s very simple.
Pat Coldrick:
Yeah, if you simplify it, it can be a wondrous thing. I think the great Chopin said in his deathbed he says the greatest music. This is a person that has written the most complicated, most beautiful music for piano and he said the best music. It took him a lifetime to realize the greatest thing in music is simplicity. Well, you can say as much with six notes than you can say in six thousand notes, and I thought that was an amazing statement to make from his years and years and years of playing music. You can if, if those three notes come from deep in the heart, they can mean as much to you as 6 000 notes that are flying by 100 miles an hour, if that makes sense I just love that it’s and to a realization on the on your deathbed is, uh, a realization indeed.
Aideen Ni Riada:
Um. Thank you so much, P pat, for being um on the resonate podcast with me today. Is there anything else you’d like to say to the listeners before we finish up?
Pat Coldrick:
yeah, um, thank you very much for having me, Aid een. It’s been great to talk and I hope I haven’t gone on talking too much, but I just get so passionate about guitar when I talk to people like yourself music, I mean. We can talk for hours and hours. I’m absolutely thrilled to be invited to the New Ross Guitar Festival. I’ve been following it for the last few years and how successful it has become, and I’m literally really looking forward to going down and performing for you all, because it’s part of the country I don’t think I’ve played in before. Yeah, and it’s just wonderful, and I can’t wait for you to come around and please spread the word everybody and and come and we’ll.
Aideen Ni Riada:
We’ll share some an hour of really nice music and chat absolutely, and if you’re listening to the podcast, after July 2024, I’m afraid you’ll have to find Pat at a different concert. But we’re really excited. I’m from New Ross in County Wexford and everyone is really excited to have you come for the New Ross Guitar Festival this year and we love your story, we love your music and thank you so much, pat, for being on the show. Goodbye.
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