Army of Anyone to rocks Spokane

Band compiled of rock stars

SPOKANE — Army of Anyone hopes to gain new fans and impress old ones with their new sound and attitude when they play The Big Easy in Spokane Feb. 19.

The band is compiled of Richard Patrick of Filter, Dean and Robert DeLeo of Stone Temple Pilots and drummer Ray Luzier.

"This is the first time I've been in a band since I was in high school. When I was doing Nine Inch Nails that was (Trent Reznor's) thing, when I formed Filter that was my thing. This is a band where there's four people," Patrick said. "One's a guitar hero, one's a song writing genius who had 90 percent of the radio (that) was him and one's an incredible drummer. This is a band. Each guy has his own pedigree. Each guy's got his own accomplishments."

The band eventually formed after Patrick and the DeLeo brothers wrote a song together called "A Better Place."

"It sounded so beautiful that it literally arrested my life," he said. "It was just effortless and felt so right that I dropped everything else I was working on."

From that point on the band was formed.

The band wants to provide a sense of unity to their fans.

The human race needs to work together and be on the same page, he said.

"It sounds idealistic and it's almost kind of naive but I think if we all just started saying that more often, maybe it would come true, maybe it would happen," he said. "We're all here together on planet Earth and we should all be in the same army, army of anyone."

He provides his fans with a sense of that unity when he performs.

"There's a big breakdown in the middle of (Leave It) and it's an amazing time for me to kind of walk down to the audience, get really close to the audience and tell them it's all right to loosen up the grip on whatever it is that they're holding onto that's dragging them down," he said.

Some people are in bad relationships, addictions or some other behavior dragging them down, he said.

"It's okay to come down from that and to leave that," he said. "There's this moment in the audience where we're all the same, we're all in the same thing."

It was a trip for him to get to this point in his life. His path to music began when he was a child.

The first song he remembers singing is Cherry, Cherry by Neil Diamond.

"My dad brought home one of the greatest records of all times, Neil Diamond's Hot August Night," Patrick said. "I loved it."

There was a line in one of the album's songs saying, "Hey Rich" he especially liked.

"My name was Richie, so when I was little I was like, he's talking to me," he said excited. "Then my mom and dad bought me a guitar when I was 9. I got this crappy $10 guitar from Sears. About a year later I destroyed it and they got me an electric one."

Going from the living room to center stage is an incredible feeling for him.

"It can be an incredibly wonderful experience. We've been blessed with some of the greatest audiences on this tour and it's wonderful," Patrick said. "You just feel so connected. For me to get up on stage and not have anything in between me and the audience … it's a wonderful thing."