This channel sits at the intersection of Gen X, memory, and what remains when illusion breaks.
Sometimes a peek at headlines, but not political so to speak, not the latest news. Just lived experience, cultural whiplash, stress, adaptation, and the soundtrack that built us.
Free Will Burning is a long-form, unscripted podcast with my brother Troy Patterson. We talk about Gen X under pressure — midlife, work, AI, aging, parenting swings, health scares, music, and the strange shift from analog childhood to algorithmic adulthood.
Gen X Transplant Bros runs alongside it: two brothers born in 1966, both liver transplant survivors, comparing damage, survival, and what it means to still be standing.
Accidental Expat is my solo, evergreen series — my life outside the U.S. (Colombia), routine, tone, gear, and real-world observation without chasing outrage.
No scripts. No lessons. Just honest conversation from where we landed, man.
Free Will Burning Podcast - Steve R. Patterson
Why the 90s Broke Rock: Metal Burnout, Grunge Revival, and the Cobain Myth
There’s a moment in every generation when the cultural engine starts sputtering—when the thing you loved gets repetitive, commercialized, and weirdly fake. For us, that moment hit hard between the early metal years and the grunge wave that followed.
In this episode, Troy talks about burning out on metal and how grunge brought him back to music. Steve comes at it from a different angle: he wasn’t “the grunge guy,” but he watched the whole shift happen—and he’s got a story about memory distortion that ties directly into how cultural myths form and persist.
We also dig into why Seattle mattered, how isolation shapes scenes, and why the Kurt Cobain story still won’t settle. Not as a “headline argument,” but as a question about why some cultural fires never burn out.
Watch the episode Friday, 10 AM EST.
12 hours ago | [YT] | 0
View 0 replies
Free Will Burning Podcast - Steve R. Patterson
Tomorrow on Free Will Burning we’re talking about AI.
Not hype. Not panic. Pattern recognition.
Gen X has seen this movie before — let’s break it down.
1 week ago | [YT] | 3
View 1 reply
Free Will Burning Podcast - Steve R. Patterson
This week we’re slowing things down a bit and approaching reflection differently.
Today I put out a short field note—audio only—about perception, mediation, and the growing sense many people share that the world doesn’t quite register the way it used to. It’s not a claim or a theory. Just an observation worth sitting with.
Tomorrow, a full Accidental Expat episode that builds on this tone and goes deeper into lived experience and memory.
And on Friday, Troy and I sit down with a former bandmate—someone who’s been actively playing music since the early 1980s and is still playing today.
No rush this week.
Just paying attention.
2 weeks ago | [YT] | 1
View 1 reply
Free Will Burning Podcast - Steve R. Patterson
New episode drops at 10:00 AM (ET) today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8MVS...
Top 10 live albums before 1986 — from classic rock to heavy metal — picked blind by two Gen X brothers and revealed on-air.
In this episode of the Free Will Burning Podcast, Steve Patterson and Troy Patterson (the Gen X Transplant Bros) compare their best live albums recorded before the end of 1985. We didn’t coordinate lists ahead of time — so the overlap was real, and the deep cuts got spicy.
We do not reveal the ten here. The show does.
But below is the full listening map of the albums we cover.
Albums we talk about on the show (in random order)
Rush — Exit… Stage Left
youtube.com/results?search_query=Rush+Exit+Stage+L…
Foghat — Foghat Live
youtube.com/results?search_query=Foghat+Live+full+…
Iron Maiden — Maiden Japan (EP)
youtube.com/results?search_query=Iron+Maiden+Maide…
Judas Priest — Unleashed in the East
youtube.com/results?search_query=Judas+Priest+Unle…
UFO — Strangers in the Night
youtube.com/results?search_query=UFO+Strangers+in+…
KISS — Alive! (1975)
youtube.com/results?search_query=KISS+Alive+1975+f…
Rick Derringer — Derringer Live
youtube.com/results?search_query=Rick+Derringer+De…
Thin Lizzy — Live and Dangerous (1978)
youtube.com/results?search_query=Thin+Lizzy+Live+a…
Raven — Live at the Inferno
youtube.com/results?search_query=Raven+Live+at+the…
Cheap Trick — At Budokan
youtube.com/results?search_query=Cheap+Trick+At+Bu…
Iron Maiden — Live After Death
youtube.com/results?search_query=Iron+Maiden+Live+…
Ted Nugent — Double Live Gonzo!
youtube.com/results?search_query=Ted+Nugent+Double…
Grateful Dead — Reckoning
youtube.com/results?search_query=Grateful+Dead+Rec…
Little Feat — Waiting for Columbus
youtube.com/results?search_query=Little+Feat+Waiti…
Aerosmith — Live! Bootleg
youtube.com/results?search_query=Aerosmith+Live+Bo…
Eagles — Eagles Live
youtube.com/results?search_query=Eagles+Eagles+Liv…
Peter Frampton — Frampton Comes Alive!
youtube.com/results?search_query=Peter+Frampton+Fr…
Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band — Live Bullet
youtube.com/results?search_query=Bob+Seger+Live+Bu…
Led Zeppelin — The Song Remains the Same
youtube.com/results?search_query=Led+Zeppelin+The+…
Elvis Presley — Aloha from Hawaii (Live)
youtube.com/results?search_query=Elvis+Aloha+from+…
The Allman Brothers Band — At Fillmore East
youtube.com/results?search_query=Allman+Brothers+A…
Neil Diamond — Hot August Night
youtube.com/results?search_query=Neil+Diamond+Hot+…
Talking Heads — Stop Making Sense
youtube.com/results?search_query=Talking+Heads+Sto…
Ozzy Osbourne — Tribute (Randy Rhoads) (mentioned, but outside our cutoff)
youtube.com/results?search_query=Ozzy+Osbourne+Tri…
Pat Travers Band — Go for What You Know (Live)
youtube.com/results?search_query=Pat+Travers+Go+fo…
Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band — Live/1975–85 (mentioned, but outside our cutoff)
youtube.com/results?search_query=Bruce+Springsteen…
Listen to the show here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8MVS...
4 weeks ago | [YT] | 6
View 0 replies
Free Will Burning Podcast - 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.
1 month ago | [YT] | 2
View 0 replies
Free Will Burning Podcast - 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)
2 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 3
View 0 replies
Free Will Burning Podcast - 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.
2 months ago | [YT] | 0
View 1 reply
Free Will Burning Podcast - 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!!!
2 months ago | [YT] | 0
View 0 replies
Free Will Burning Podcast - 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.....
2 months ago | [YT] | 2
View 0 replies
Free Will Burning Podcast - 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.
2 months ago | [YT] | 0
View 0 replies
Load more