Culture & Entertainment Notebook: Singer Pat Silman 'makes things happen'

Singer-songwriter Pat Silman has been writing music since elementary school -- accumulating nearly 1,000 pieces of original compositions.

"I love music," Silman said. "I sang in the chorus at school. They called it the Glee Club."

She has only performed roughly 25 songs from her repertoire since she began taking part in the weekly songwriter's night at Port Cape Girardeau. Each week, Silman performs alongside local artist Bruce Zimmerman and his guitar.

Silman has grown to love the people who show up to perform, she said.

"It's kind of like a little club," she said. "And I think anybody that comes in here to sing feels welcome."

Pat Silman performs Tuesday during songwriter's night at Port Cape.BEN MATTHEWS

She once had an opportunity to travel to Nashville, Tennessee and record, but "just couldn't go," she said.

"It wasn't in the cards for me," she said. "Now, I look back at that and think, 'I wonder why I didn't make that happen?'"

Silman said she now makes things happen.

Earlier on, she saw her interest in music as an obsession, Silman said, which began to leave no room for her responsibilities. But now, Silman said she sees music as therapy.

"I love to sit down and write," she said. "It's like a puzzle."

Pat Silman performs Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2018, during Songwriter's Night at Port Cape.BEN MATTHEWS ~ bmatthews@semissourian.com

Silman was raised in Portageville, Missouri, before moving to Kennett, Missouri, and now lives in Cape Girardeau.

"There weren't many places in Kennett to go to do this type of thing," she said. "So when I came here in 2011, I had been here probably two weeks. I opened up the newspaper and there was songwriter's night."

Silman said she has been part of Stoogefest in Jackson and also has performed at Indian Hills Winery in Puxico, Missouri.

Since retiring from her 32-year career with the U.S. Postal Service, she spends most of her time caring for her parents but still finding time to write songs, poems and stories.

A lot of the songs Silman has written, she did so in 5 to 10 minutes, she said, before going back to improve and "clean them up."

People often ask her how she does it, and Silman has no explanation, she said, other than "it just comes to me."

"Some songs, you just never get finished with them," Silman said, "but it's something that I just love to do."

Silman has "a lot of stuff" she has never recorded, she said, "except for singing into a mic and recording it on a cassette tape."

"I've got boxes of cassette tapes," she said.

Silman would love to go back and "fish this one out and that one out," but she hasn't had the opportunity to do that yet.

"Some people say it's country. I do a little bit of rock. Some people call my music bluegrass. It's a mixture," she said.

Out of her collection, military-themed "Wounded Warrior" has been a fan favorite.

Silman said she barely has gotten through the song on many occasions "because it makes people cry, and it really reaches people," she said.

She has performed with other local artists, but she "sticks with" Zimmerman because he is familiar with her material. Zimmerman and Silman produced a CD in 2014, she said.

"It wasn't really perfected, but we went to a studio," she said. "The album leaned toward the Postal Service. The Postal Service was kind of in trouble. ... It does so much that nobody really ever understands what all we do. It gets a bad name."

Her goal for the album was to write songs to express about the U.S. Postal Service meaning "more than what the eye can see," Silman said.

She said "it's kind of crazy" how songs still fit, no matter when they are performed.

"I had a couple that are really, really country," she said. "And I have some bluesy songs, pop and some love songs."

Silman said, "I know that most writers say this one and that one influenced; I don't really think that's the way it happened for me. I always just did it and never thought about it."

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