The Sunday Music Drop is a weekly radio series hosted by the KQED weekend news team. In each segment, we feature a song from a local musician or band with an upcoming show and hear about what inspires their music.
At the end of Richmond band Pateka’s song “Night Stairs,” a saxophone plays over the audio of a conversation the band had in line at Wienerschnitzel. It’s a moment that keyboardist Elihu Knowles says perfectly conveys the mood of the song — “When you’re with your friends, late at night, and you’re in the car and there’s just like all this sound and stuff around you.”
The members of Pateka have been friends for over a decade. It’s something that helps them navigate the stress and creative differences that come with performing, but it also informs the writing process. Says Knowles, “I think a lot of what we write, a lot of our songs, reference shared experiences and childhood places where we grew up.”
The song “Night Stairs” began as a dream for Knowles. “I actually had a dream that I was in this high school gymnasium and there were all these instruments and I was just like, I’m gonna write a song. And so I walked around to the drums and the bass and the guitar and I woke up and voice memoed.”
Guitarist Dylan Ransley says that the song is meant to convey the feeling of late nights with friends walking around the east bay. “When I think of Night Stairs, I just think of us walking around Berkeley at night. I think our music in general is just trying to encapsulate our friendship and put it into songs.”
Pateka is performing their record release show at Eli’s Mile High Club in Oakland on October 3rd.
