Free spirits: Patience Gloria likes giving its music away

When Patience Gloria plays shows, Mike Dobbins is out in the crowd, cheering the band on and pumping up the scene.

But Dobbins, of Naperville, is not a groupie or superfan. He's half of Patience Gloria's songwriting duo, and he avoids the stage because he writes lyrics but does not play an instrument.

"It's a thrill to watch other people play what you wrote," Dobbins said.

Dobbins will soon get to watch his band play at the same location where he met his musical counterpart, Charlie Malave, who writes musical scores for the band.

The two said they met about five years ago at the Double Door in Chicago while attending a concert with a mutual friend. And the band will come full circle March 23, when Patience Gloria will play a live set at the Double Door off its second album, "Consequences David."

The tunes of this indie pop-rock band should bring an upbeat vibe to concertgoers.

"A lot of the message is positive, looking for love and maintaining a positive outlook on life," Malave said about "Consequences David," which came out Feb. 9.

Lyrically, the 32-year-old Dobbins said the message of the new album resulted from consideration of life's unexpected twists and turns.

"A lot of it has just been working through emotions over the last year and realizing the consequences of the feelings you get and not knowing what the consequences are going to be down the line," Dobbins said.

The band showed its optimistic perspective by releasing "Possibility," the first song from the new album, immediately after the New Year's Eve ball dropped and 2010 began.

"I stayed up behind my computer and posted the song at 12 to make it the official first song," Dobbins said of "Possibility," which encourages listeners to keep their hearts open for love. "We thought it'd be kind of cool to post something that'd be forward thinking and hopeful."

"Possibility" is available for free on the band's Web site, patiencegloria.com, along with the rest of Patience Gloria's music, including tracks from its first album "About a Girl." Malave said the band gives its songs away to allow people to experience what Patience Gloria has to offer.

"We think money is a barrier," Dobbins said. "There's too much stuff to buy today and we're glad we're giving it away for free."

Malave said Patience Gloria's songwriting has become more focused in the two years since he and Dobbins formed the band.

"At first, our music was going in a lot of different directions, but now that we've been working together for a little while, we've picked a focus or aesthetic to go with, so that feels better," Malave said.

Still, standing out in a Chicago music scene is a challenge. Dobbins relies on friends from his Naperville North High School class of 1996 who live in the suburbs as some of the band's most consistent fans.

With the rest of the band's lineup recently solidified (Nick Davio, Kevin Brown, Richard Clark and Christopher Ezra Lange are the other members), Patience Gloria is working on a live album to be released over the summer.

The band also has about half the new material necessary for a third album, and Dobbins said Patience Gloria's originality will continue to grow as the group reaches out to more people.

"I don't want to say the same thing that's been said before in the same way," Dobbins said. "I want to say it different."