E-Junkies: The Click Five's former singer Kyle Patrick on his new music and bike accident that broke his neck

It's 2024, and you can still hear Jenny by The Click Five frequently playing on the radio in Singapore, 17 years after the song's release.

"It's bizarre, to be honest with you," the band's former lead singer Kyle Patrick told AsiaOne in a recent interview. "I go about my daily life here [in Los Angeles], and it doesn't occur to me that that's happening over there.

"It's not like I'm going to the grocery store here and hearing one of my songs, whereas they're getting played in Asia and I think it's of course incredible."

Kyle, 38, likes that he can just be a "regular dude" in Los Angeles, living a normal life and making music in his home studio without thinking about his voice being heard on the radio on the opposite side of the world.

"It's very strange in a good way to fly from here and show up to a place a 15-hour flight away where there are thousands of people singing along to my songs," he added.

"Some of my most favourite vivid memories are arriving at the airport in Singapore and there being a crowd of people, and just being welcomed with so much love, and screaming. Especially screaming, a lot of screaming."

After the dissolution of The Click Five in 2013, Kyle felt that touring and "not being grounded or rooted in any one place" had taken their toll on him, and he desired a more "normal" life.

Since then, he mostly worked as a songwriter and producer for other artists until a breakup "catapulted" him into writing music for himself again.

He said: "That was in 2019, so I was feeling very recharged and energised to do it again. I had a very small run of shows, one of which was in Singapore, and they went super well."

After an appearance at Emo Night in March 2019 and Music Matters in September 2019, Kyle spent the early part of 2020 in Singapore producing music with local singer Jayefunk, and remembers the time — and his favourite local food bak kut teh — fondly.

"I always love coming back here," he said. "I've made some good friends in Singapore, so it always feels like somewhat of a homecoming," he said.

"Of all the places in the world that I've been to and spent a lot of time in, Singapore has got to be one of the top three probably."

Kyle released the single No Drama under his music project Pacer in May 2024, with the music video following shortly after on June 14, and he plans to return to Singapore soon to showcase his new songs while also performing his old tunes.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhOtjmi3Bs8&ab_channel=KylePatrick[/embed]

Motorcycle accident: 'My first thought was that I just blew it'

Kyle would have released No Drama in 2021, but a motorcycle accident that resulted in him breaking his neck in January that year threw a spanner in the works.

"I had a new motorcycle that was a very fast racing bike, essentially it was a track bike but they just put some turn signals on it and a licence plate and called it street-legal," Kyle explained. "It would get to almost 200 miles an hour."

Kyle frequently took rides in the mountains of California, but a high wind advisory had kept him away the previous day. That day, however, he felt the winds were fine and took his bike out to the canyons.

He elaborated: "To this day, I don't know if the wind played a part in it. It was kind of a blur what happened, but I came into a corner too fast."

He lost traction and was thrown off his bike and over the edge.

"It wasn't a full drop-off, but it was enough to where I was airborne for a little while and I landed on my neck and my head," he said. "I was lucid for this whole thing, I didn't pass out or anything.

"But I immediately felt something like electricity in my arm and neck. And I knew something was wrong."

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He added: "My first thought was that I screwed up. I had just made a music video for No Drama, my first single, and I was riding high, about to release it a few weeks after, it was just about to happen.

"And then I screwed up and wrecked. My first thought was that I just blew it. My whole life, I just blew it."

Thankfully, Kyle was able to climb back up to his motorcycle, and a park ranger who had noticed "a puff of sand go off the side of the road" managed to come rescue him.

Kyle broke his neck in two places, but the delay and the aftermath of the bike accident gave rise to Pacer, his solo project.

"I got really close to dying or being paralysed and not having the ability to write songs, make music or play instruments," he said.

"So Pacer was almost this bucket-list thing. I've always wanted to create an artist name, that was me creating everything but under an artist name.

"At a certain point, my name and writing songs under Kyle Patrick just wasn't exciting anymore, so I needed to shake things up, I guess."

[embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/CZifiwVF_rW/[/embed]

Not recreating The Click Five music

Pacer, with its dreamy pop vocals, has a completely different sound to Kyle's previous works with The Click Five. Though he said the project is meant to "free" him from some of his past, Kyle doesn't want to alienate his old fans either.

"There's always going to be an attachment to it. There was a success that came with The Click Five and I was a big part of that as the singer of that band," he said. "People are going to remember me from that and that's completely fine.

"I welcome that and I'm so excited that anyone even cares in the first place."

Kyle hopes to bring the old fans "along on this journey" with his new music, but he said he can't recreate the same music from an artist's perspective.

"Why would I make a record that sounds like a 2007 album? People aren't making music that sounds like that anymore," he said. "So this is the natural evolution of it being 15 years later, things are just going to sound different, the record-making process is different."

Kyle added that the old The Click Five albums are "always there" for people to revisit, and he is happy people are fans of his old work, as it made him who he is today.

"But I can't recreate it, so this is just me being an artist and making music that I think sounds cool today in 2024."

[embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/C7pJNuVPxXC/[/embed]

Watch our latest E-Junkies video for our interview with Kyle Patrick.

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drimac@asiaone.com

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