Steve R. Patterson
I’m Steve R. Patterson.
This channel is Gen X, music, and what remains when illusion breaks—no headlines, no politics, no news cycle. Just lived experience, memory, and the soundtrack that built us.
Gen X Transplant Bros and the one-hour podcast Free Will Burning are unscripted conversations with my brother Troy—heavy metal, guitar culture, concert stories, top 10 lists, and the meaning we’ve wrestled out of the noise.
Accidental Expat is my solo, evergreen series—life outside the U.S., gear, tone, routine, and real-world observation without chasing the day’s outrage.
And once a month: Steve’s Music Archive—a short road story and an original studio track from the past. The Dead are part of the map. Metal is the backbone.
Gen X: raised analog, aging digital, standing between systems that collapsed and ones that never earned trust.
No scripts. No lessons. Just honest conversation from where we landed.
Steve R. Patterson
This Friday. Live. Unrepeatable.
This week’s Free Will Burning Podcast will be a truly live, one-off session.
Troy and I will be seeing each other face-to-face for the first time in 20 years — and possibly the only time it ever happens.
We’re both transplant recipients. We understand time differently now.
No studio. One phone. No polish. Just the moment.
We’ll post the exact time as soon as it’s clear.
Normal podcast returns next Friday.
3 weeks ago | [YT] | 1
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Steve R. Patterson
🚨 LIVE TOMORROW — 1:00 PM
GENERATION X WAS BUILT THIS WAY
Tomorrow at 1:00 PM, we’re going live to talk about something most of us felt growing up but were never taught to question:
Why Gen X school felt so regimented.
Why independence was forced early.
Why so many of us learned to “handle it” without support.
We’ll walk through the hidden history of the education system that shaped Gen X — from its origins in Europe, through America’s industrial era, into the Cold War version we actually lived inside.
This isn’t nostalgia.
It isn’t a rant.
And it isn’t politics.
It’s a clear look at how a system built over 250 years quietly shaped an entire generation — and why so many men today feel like they’re running the wrong operating system for the world they’re in.
📍 LIVE at 1:00 PM
🖥️ Slides + conversation
🎙️ Real talk, no culture-war nonsense
Bring your memories.
Bring your questions.
We’ll take it from there.
(plus, a special announcement about a Saturday night 1980 show billed Genghis Khan reaction show, LIVE, shhh)
1 month ago (edited) | [YT] | 2
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Steve R. Patterson
Tomorrow morning at 6 a.m., we’re dropping one of the wildest Gen X memories we’ve ever talked about.
Back when everyone claimed the 70s sucked, some of us took it a little too seriously… including showing up at Comiskey Park for Steve Dahl’s legendary Disco Demolition Night. I was there. I watched it go from a joke… to an explosion… to a full-on cultural riot.
In tomorrow’s clip, Troy and I talk about how that moment shaped the whole “Disco Sucks” movement — and why, decades later, we actually love half the music we once trashed.
This one is fast, funny, and straight out of our real history.
Set your alarm. 6 a.m. Friday.
Gen X lived this stuff. Now we get to laugh about it.
1 month ago | [YT] | 0
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Steve R. Patterson
Tomorrow at 10:00 AM we’re dropping a big new episode on Gen X + music—what it was like growing up with ’70s roots, the ’80s explosion, and even a quick peek into the ’90s.
This is the start of a series we’re doing on the topic—and it’s not just “our favorite bands” stuff. It’s the bigger angle: how Gen X as a whole relates to music, why it hit the way it hit, and how it shaped us.
It’s 11:30 PM here, so I’m tossing this out now as a heads-up… and then tomorrow morning: 10 AM. New episode.
Hit Subscribe and ring the bell so you don’t miss it. 🎧🔥
Oh, and if you have not seen it, check out this clip, and remember for all of you Rivet Heads that love our conversations from the front row of Metal in the early 80s, check out the Music Series in our playlists! Up the IRONS!!!
1 month ago | [YT] | 0
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Steve R. Patterson
Today at 11 our Strats, Les Pauls, Marshall, etc., drops, but, check out these thumbnails. This is what one AI came up with as two options.
What does this mean?
Am I suddenly going to grow a lot of hair back, shave, and somehow look like I could sing for Journey?
Oh-Sherry.....
1 month ago | [YT] | 2
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Steve R. Patterson
Our Thanksgiving special premieres today! (Yeah, a day late, but it's a four day weekend, kick back, check it out, no problem)
We sat down and asked one simple question that every Gen Xer feels in their bones (you know you do):
“Whatever happened to the Sears Catalog?”
We flip through the old pages, talk about the guitars we dreamed of, the drum sets we begged for, the ridiculous amps we thought were cool, the 1936 Sears house kits, and that legendary 1984 music commercial that sold Iron Maiden to America’s parents.
It turned into one of the most nostalgic episodes we’ve ever done.
Premieres today at 10 AM — join us live in the chat.
Bring your Sears memories.
Bring your Thanksgiving energy.
Let’s relive the good stuff together.
1 month ago | [YT] | 0
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Steve R. Patterson
Premieres at noon. Grab a coffee and settle in — this one cuts deep.
This is the video I’ll be referring back to throughout the Gen X Transplant Bros series.
If anything in here hits you, drop a comment during the premiere so we can talk about it in real time.
If you’ve ever felt like you were living life on autopilot, or like the script you were handed never fit… you’ll understand exactly why I made this.
Let’s wake back up together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlEii...
1 month ago | [YT] | 0
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Steve R. Patterson
We’ve got the big one coming up at noon today — my full transplant follow-up video.
This is the long version I recorded this morning that picks up the story from waking up after surgery all the way to now. We thought it was going live earlier, but the scheduling glitched, so we decided to repost it properly at noon so everybody sees it.
We’ll be posting some shorts and pieces of it throughout the day, but if you want the whole thing in one shot, the main premiere is at 12:00 PM.
Troy and I will also be going live around midday to talk about some of this and check in with everybody.
See you at noon.
1 month ago | [YT] | 0
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Steve R. Patterson
A lot of you have heard me mention the work I do in substance misuse, recovery, and human transformation, and you’ve also heard me reference “the books I’ve been writing” over the past few years.
I figured it was time to actually show you what I’m talking about.
These are the covers of the books and programs I’ve built — Healing Pathways (both the Companion and Facilitator versions), This Is How It Feels to Heal, and the ASAM Level One Facilitator Guide.
Each one comes out of lived experience, long-form practice, and the real work I’ve done walking with people through recovery and major life change.
If you want to learn more about any of this — what the programs are, how the methods work, or where everything is headed next — I put a link below that explains it all in one place.
Thanks for being here. More to come soon.
valkyriecounseling.com/2025/11/20/rise-with-valkyr…
1 month ago | [YT] | 0
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Steve R. Patterson
I took this photo in El Poblado, Medellin, Colombia in October 2020 when the area was virtually deserted due to the pandemic. I arrived on the day Colombia opened on 10/1/2020.
We talked about this in today's live.
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