It’s been a heck of a ride for Patrick Hagerman as the country music troubadour gets ready to release his first-ever album, Gathering Turquoise. “It’s a special process making a record,” Hagerman tells Pulp City Magazine, “that experience was great”. The old school crooner just wrapped up a show at Judson’s Live at the Dr. Phillips Performing Arts Center, and when speaking to us, the packed house was delighted to see him finally taking off.

“It’s really special to be in that room. They’ve got some really state-of-the-art sound stuff going on.” Hagerman did a full set of new songs, then stuck around during the band’s break to play some acoustic songs with Matt Walker, a well-known guitarist around Orlando, most famous for his years-long work with Kaleigh Baker. As the band returned for a raucous second set, Patrick looked to the crowd, smiling, “To see some familiar faces and some new faces that are out here for the first time because maybe they are listening to the songs that we just put out.”

Gathering Turquoise is set to be released on April 3rd, featuring ten new songs. When asked about his first time listening to the finished product? “You hear it so many times, but the first time we listened to it loud in Blue Jay (the Blue Jay Listening Room in Jacksonville Beach)” he proudly replied, “that was the time where it was like ‘holy shit we did it’.”

After growing up in Springfield, Illinois, Patrick moved here with his retiring parents in 2003 and spent a little over a decade in The Villages before a permanent move to Orlando. When he arrived, a boost from scene veterans like Thomas Wynn, Hannah Harber, and former New Standard owner Nate Landwer allowed Hagerman to spread his wings. 

“I think this is my home market still for now. It moves around for me a lot, but this has always been the center,” the wanderer says. Patrick Hagerman has spent time in Sanford and Daytona Beach and now splits his time between Orlando and Jacksonville Beach, always with an eye on the city he loves. “No matter where we go, we get to come back here, and we get to play Lil Indies or Will’s”.

While country is popular on the radio in Orlando, you won’t find many venues in town that feature the kind of down-home storytelling similar to 20th-century stars like Merle Haggard.