For some more than others, the musical soundtrack of our lives helps define our memories.
Many of us recall the songs, music genres and oftentimes goofy one-hit wonders who graced the airwaves during our high school days, and songs chosen to mark the bride’s entrance or a first dance at a wedding. Those whose thirst for live music is greater than most can even recall historically significant dates by way of some memorable show attended on or near that particular event.
For example, a multitude of Northwesterners—Missoula residents included—know exactly when O.J. Simpson fled from law enforcement (June 1994) as a passenger in a white Ford Bronco because it occurred while they were in Eugene, Oregon, seeing three days of Grateful Dead shows. If, by chance, Missoula’s summer of 1998 is brought up in conversation, my mind immediately races back to one of my most perfect (of many) Missoula days, the one during which Santana (featuring a harmonica sit-in by Huey Lewis) and Los Lobos played to the sun-drenched August throngs in Caras Park.
And for a boatload of current and former residents, over the majority of the last 30-plus years, Pat McKay’s brand of guitar-driven Texas blues has been the very soundtrack of Missoula.
No more than a month into my Missoula tenure, which began in spring 1994, I had already become an underaged regular at Maxwell’s (now The Badlander), where the Pat McKay’s Blues Band seemingly played once a week. There, I heard Pat lead his rock and blues revue through songs that I would end up hearing him play hundreds of times throughout the course of my 19-year stint in Missoula—songs such as the Louis Jordan classic, “Caledonia (What Makes Your Big Head So Hard),” ZZ Top’s “Cheap Sunglasses,” and “Freedom Song,” written by one of his old Texas friends.
McKay had notable six-string chops and a powerful stage presence. He captivated those of all ages—everywhere from gigs at Out to Lunch in Caras Park to packed-house Friday night shows at the pre-remodeled Top Hat—with his bluesy leads, and a deep, gravelly singing voice that had the effect of chasing your blues away. For more than 30 years he played in multiple combos, including Hog Wild, Pat McKay’s Unnamed Ensemble, and, most recently, his duo with former Gourds bassist Jimmy Smith, Smith McKay All Day.
On stage, Pat walked tall and slung a mean guitar, his head always bopping, nodding and weaving to the rhythm of the song, seemingly with all the confidence of a rockstar playing Madison Square Garden. Off it, he was quite the opposite. He had the vibe of an all-knowing sage. He listened deeply, and spoke softly, with a slight stutter that never reared its head on stage at a gig.
On March 17, just hours after performing a Smith McKay All Day show at Maverick Mountain, Patrick Leland McKay died suddenly and shockingly at the age of 56. And over the past few weeks, his family and many people in Missoula’s music scene are remembering him, not just for his onstage personality, but the way he openly loved his cohorts, and for his role as a devoted family man and fiercely loyal friend. A public jam session to celebrate him is scheduled for Saturday at Free Cycles.
“It’s absolutely insane how inspiring he is,” Christine Miles-McKay, Pat’s widow, says. “We’ve been through a lot as a couple and just as human beings in general, but man, he just loved to love. He loved to make people smile.”
Christine, who was married to Pat for 17 years, says that she was drawn to Pat’s charismatic stage presence. It was spring 2003, the two of them ran in overlapping social circles, which, in Missoula’s music scene, was difficult not to do in those days. When she went to the Top Hat to catch Hog Wild, which featured Pat, co-guitarist John Baker, Steve Jordan (who was the co-owner and chef at the Dinosaur Cafe) and harmonica virtuoso Charlie Hopkins, she was “blown away.”
Baker, once a guitarist in the legendary Missoula outfit Cold Beans and Bacon, said sharing the stage with Pat in those heady days was nearly always a treat, and that’s not always the case between players in a two-guitar band.
“I loved playing music with Pat. It was like going to school,” Baker says. “He cared about the music first and foremost, and was always listening to what was going on on stage.”
Baker, proprietor of Circle Square second-hand in downtown, says that one of his favorite gigs was with the Pat McKay Blues Band. Their usual guitarist couldn’t make a gig, so he got tapped to play last minute.
“No pressure, right?” he says. “But it was a totally fun gig. Pat thought and played so differently than I did, so I just tried to stay out of the way and I didn’t have to sing, so it was a fun gig for me.”
Peter Cox, a former Missoula resident currently in Hot Springs, can’t remember when exactly—early/mid ’90s maybe?—he met Pat, but he does remember that he was immediately drawn to him.
“He’s one of those people that feels like I’ve always known him, like he’s always been here, and maybe he always has been there,” Cox says. “He had that old-soul vibe, like he knew things none of the rest of us could ever know. I always wondered what he was thinking when that sly smirk ran across his face, so kind and gentle.”
One thing Pat knew that most other musicians in the Missoula music scene couldn’t possibly comprehend was what it was like to be a Black man living in Montana.
Baker recently shared on social media a few memories of uncomfortable times for Pat. One was when Baker noticed Pat tensed up, prior to their arrival at a gig in Potomac, and asked why. When Pat said Baker had no idea what it’s like to be a Black man in a bar outside the comfort zone of the Garden City, Baker could only agree, but noted the band killed and the locals loved it.
Pat also had a good sense of humor about being one of few Black musicians in a blues and soul music scene.
“One night after we’d been playing together regularly for a few years, I quipped at the end of a gig, ‘You guys didn’t tell me Pat was Black,'” Baker said. “(Steve) Jordan thought this terribly offensive, but Pat laughed his ass off. I guess this was because I was looking at his fingers [playing the guitar], not his skin color.”
With those he was most comfortable, Pat was at times the one pulling the race card to draw a laugh. Got a little bit of cannabis in your pocket you didn’t want to share?
“Why you gotta hold out on a Black man,” was often Pat’s question to friends at set break.
A few months after that fateful Hog Wild gig where Christine fell hard for Pat, they encountered each other at Charlie B’s, where Pat commented on how long Christine’s hair was, and asked permission to touch it. In response, the Scandinavian-looking Christine, asked to touch the braided, dreadlock-style ‘do atop Pat’s head, and they were off.
They were married in 2007 on the first day of spring, and raised children Quillan and JC on the property along Woodchuck Creek in the Bitterroots that Pat purchased the same month Chrstine first moved to Missoula—August 1998. She says Pat told her he threw himself into his music after his father, JC, died when Pat was 12. Christine thinks Pat’s dedication to his instrument stemmed from being a source of connection to his father.
Christine says that life wasn’t always easy, but she and Pat often talked about how lucky they felt to have each other.
“We always talked about just how amazing it is how things really fell into place for the two of us,” she says. “We knew our boy would be named JC, just like Pat’s father, long before we had him. It was all just like a dream come true.”
In recent years, Pat quit drinking, and the couple ran his painting business, an endeavor Christine said Pat took extreme pride in. But for a lot of folks, Pat was the man who could play your blues away.
“I got to see him a lot more the last few years, as he and Christine were coming up often (to Hot Springs) for those healing waters,” Cox says. “He would visit me at work, and we got to see him play quite a few times at the Barber Shop. Whether it was him going solo or with Jimmy Smith as Smith McKay All Day, it was always a treat.”
A celebration of Pat McKay’s life is scheduled for Saturday, April 20, from 7 to 10 p.m. at Free Cycles Missoula. All are welcome and attendees are asked to bring food and drink to share. The event will also serve as a jam session with several of Pat’s former bandmates expected to be on hand, so, if inclined, bring an instrument of choice, regardless of skill level. Those of us who knew Pat know that’s exactly how he would’ve wanted it.
