Feature
www.qns.com I LIC COURIER I DECEMBER 2019 37
J. Walter Hawkes and Pat Irwin released their Long Island
City-inspired album, “Wide Open Sky” on Nov. 15.
and I lived in a few other places in New
York and the country.”
Over the last few years, though,
they’ve witnessed firsthand just how
rapidly the neighborhood has changed.
“The name of the record, ‘Wide
Open Sky,’ is a direct acknowledgement
of what the sky used to look like in Long
Island City,” Hawkes said.
“It was like a secret,” Irwin, who plays
the guitar, said about what Long Island
City used to be. “New York changes,
cities change — we just didn’t know it
was going to change the way it has.”
Both Irwin and Hawkes mentioned
the increasing rent rates, lack of afford-able
housing, and tall skyscrapers along
the waterfront — or, as Irwin puts it, the
addition of “a separate economy” — as
examples of developments they didn’t
foresee coming to LIC.
“We’ve had lots of friends that had
to leave the neighborhood because
they got priced out,” Hawkes said. “I’ve
been in a very cool building with a great
landlord since 2007 with other musi-cians
… Now my future is very much
in question here because my landlord
is selling the building.”
They acknowledge the benefits that
come with new developments, such as
libraries and more efficient public transit.
Irwin even remembered a time when he
couldn’t even buy groceries.
“You don’t really wanna sound like,
‘back in the olden days,’” he said. “But
creative people have put a lot of work
into this place. And when we’re being
pushed out, it takes a certain chunk out
of the quality.”
Irwin and Hawkes have already
released several music videos for the
album, but their video for the album’s
opening track, “In Another Time,” feels
particularly nostalgic and intimate.
The video showcases LIC’s many
facets as the duo play their instruments
during one cloudy evening.
While Irwin acknowledged that “Wide
Open Sky” has nostalgic undertones,
he feels that ultimately, it has a way of
“looking back and looking forward.”
Irwin has had a long and diverse
career in music. He toured with the
B-52s for almost two decades and
started several New York City-based
no-wave bands, such as The Raybeats
and 8 Eyed Spy.
Hawkes has won four Emmys and
worked with Billboard’s top jazz artist
of the ‘00s, Norah Jones, and the re-nowned
Elvis Costello.
But other than their love of music and
impressive resumes, Irwin and Hawkes
have another thing in common: they’ve
both scored popular cartoon series.
Irwin worked on Nickelodeon’s
widely popular “SpongeBob SquareP-ants”
and “Rocko’s Modern Life,” while
Hawkes has credits on “Blues Clues”
and PBS’ “Peg + Cat.”
“We’ve done stuff, individually, that’s
had a pretty long reach,” Irwin said. “You
can’t really run into many people who
don’t know ‘Blues Clues’ or ‘SpongeBob’
… but I think we’re both pretty lucky to
know that we’ve done that and now we
can come together and do something
starting from a smaller, local place.”
The two met back in 2005 and
almost instantly knew they wanted to
work together.
After working on “Wide Open Sky”
for about eight years on-and-off due
to their conflicting schedules, Irwin and
Hawkes can now say they have.
“I think at some point we counted
how many tunes we had,” Hawkes said.
“Some tunes were small, just trombone
and guitar, and some of them were
larger, and I think I was half-thinking it
was two different records — but then
we looked at it and we thought, ‘No,
that’s a record!’”
On Sunday, Iriwn and Hawkes
celebrated the release of the album
with a listening party at LIC’s Ten10
Studios.
“This is about us,” Irwin said. “I don’t
think either of us knew what we were
gonna get when we started making the
record, and I don’t think we imposed it
on one another, it just happened.”
Regardless of whether you live in
LIC and are affected by the changes
that it’s going through, Irwin and Hawkes
just want people to enjoy the album.
“I just wanted to make something
beautiful,” Iriwn said.
You can stream “Wide Open Sky”
on all streaming services, including on
Spotify.
Courtesy of Pat Irwin
J. Walter Hawkes and Pat Irwin
Still from ‘In Another Time’
Photo by Lesley Martin, courtesy of Clandestine
YouTube
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