Deborah McColl and Patrick Lubow (1992–2007)

I met Patrick in January of 1992 at his gig with Theresa Tudury at Gengis Cohen in Hollywood. He was beautiful in his grey fedora, playing his 90-year-old Martin guitar with so much soul it hurt. I asked him to play music with me that night and we were together in one fashion or another everyday after for the next fifteen years.

That’s Patrick playing all the lead guitar on my CD Naked In The Garden. Thanks to Joe Turano, we were able to make that recording over the course of three years or so, starting in 1996.

When we began, Patrick had already had heart-valve surgery and had a metal valve that we could actually hear on one of the tracks when we silenced everything else. In 1998 Patrick received a heart transplant at UCLA Medical Center. It was like he’d been shot out of a cannon with all that good oxygen coursing through his body and brain again and over the next few years we finished and promoted Naked In The Garden, while Patrick simultaneously blasted through Pasadena City College and UCLA getting his degrees in history. And sharing his wisdom, humor, and love with his friends and family like no one else ever could or would. There was so much of Patrick — there was almost too much of himself for him to handle.

Patrick passed away from heart failure at home on September 25, 2007.