In addition to being my second most frequent collaborator, Bill has always been one of the biggest cheerleaders for everyone in Theme Music, and me in particular. He is both a genuine and generous individual who I am pleased to call my friend and band mate. But perhaps more on that later.
Hi Bill!
Hi Bob, thanks for the interview! I’ve been wanting to share my thoughts about my last album and my work in Theme Music, and this is the perfect opportunity.
In addition to playing piano, you ever so occasionally are seen to be playing an acoustic guitar or bass. When did you first start playing a musical instrument? Was it piano?
I took piano lessons when I was seven years old, but only lasted a few months out of lack of interest. I switched to trombone, playing in my school orchestra. Then in my pre-teens, Elton John rekindled my interest in piano. I picked up a chord book, then learned how to play from his songbook by following the chords therein. From there I played in rock bands in my teens and beyond, and yes, in some of those bands I learned and played bass and guitar.
Your first album I Called I was recorded under the artist name Desmond Drive prior to Theme Music and featured a couple of Themesters like Paul Melançon and Sheila Doyle. Did you know them prior to the recording (or did you meet them through Rob Gal, your producer)?
I met them through Rob Gal, who brought them in to the studio because I needed backing musicians. I wasn’t very well-networked at the time because I wasn’t active in the Atlanta music community, having moved in from out of state. And wow, they both sounded amazing! We wound up bringing in Paul a lot, and would have done the same with Sheila had we had more string arrangements.
Were these connections your entry into Theme Music?
Yes! I was an admirer of Paul’s music and followed his exploits on Facebook. He had posted a couple of his Theme Music videos and I got curious about the group. I joined and lurked for a few months. Then one week he encouraged me to post, and I’ve been participating ever since.
How do you feel about that album today? Did you know that the lead track on Amazon’s site is “Happy Tollbooth Guy?”
I’m half-happy with it. For a first album it was a good effort, and I learned a lot about the recording process when making it. Plus, Rob’s production and engineering on it was astoundingly good. I made it during a period in my life when my attention was divided, and it shows in how some of the songs were written. They were rushed. "Happy Tollbooth Guy" was one such song, and I’m surprised it’s the most popular one. This may be a case of being too close to one’s own song to see it objectively.
You completed your second album, The Other Town, while in Theme Music with an array of Themesters on all the tracks. As a person working on album #2, can you tell me how satisfying it was to complete a second album, being able to learn from whatever mistakes you feel you may have made with the first?
Indeed, I learned to let go of songs that weren’t working for me. For the first album I included every song as it was written, and in hindsight some of them weren’t strong enough to have been included.
Ha! That sounds awfully familiar.
I suppose it’s a common mistake, yes? This time around I included only the ones I felt good about over time, and that has made a big difference. The album has another advantage, and that’s the community behind it. As a member of Theme Music, I had the luxury of being able to draw from a large pool of musicians to get the right players for each song.
That said, I wanted a core band for continuity between songs. Lee Flier anchored everything with tracking, engineering, and sometimes playing. I recruited Peter McDade on drums, Thom Bowers on bass, and Jonny Daly on guitar. Peter has that rare combination of rock stable timing plus musicality. He’s also very communicative. It was always easy for us to reach consensus on drum parts. Thom has that same restlessly melodic quality that my favorite bassists, Paul McCartney and Colin Moulding, have. I love it when those guys surprise the listener with a melodic fill that you’d expect from another instrument, and Thom has innovated some doozies for the album. Jonny’s guitar playing reminds me a little of David Gilmour’s. It provides a sense of lushness and, for lack of a better word, class to each song. Beyond the album-making experience, working with Jonny inspires me to continually improve as a musician. You’d think a person of his skills and accomplishments would rest on his laurels and phone everything in, but he remains curious and fearless in exploring new forms of music. That, my friend, is mastery.
Elvis Costello
Kid About It
16 December 2012
16 December 2012
You recorded this collaboration with Jimmy Ether and Bassy Galore, and Jimmy did the video. Did you film your parts with a green screen? The vocal profile is particularly striking.
That backdrop was simply my beige wall -- no green screen. The lighting, framing, color treatment etc. was all directed by Jimmy. Impressive guy, yes?
He is, but I’ll never admit that publicly. Imperial Bedroom seems like the ultimate Elvis Costello album for your sensibility. Is it your favorite?
Yes. Matt Brown knew this too, and as my Secret Santa that year, he gifted me this song knowing that it was special to me.
The closest I ever came to that experience was when someone gave me Elvis’s “Our Little Angel” from my favorite EC album, but at the time it was a bit out of my comfort zone. Can we talk about how you became an Elvis fan?
I actually wasn’t crazy about his music until Imperial Bedroom came along. I had only known his hits before then. They were good, but they just didn’t resonate with me. My college roommate had bought Imperial Bedroom, though, and everything changed. Certainly the production was more elaborate than his previous offerings, but what really struck me was how musical the guy was. The songs hopped genres so effortlessly, his vocals were more dynamic, and the melodies were more appealing than anything he had done before. His subsequent albums range from good to brilliant, and I’m very happy he continues to take artistic risks by exploring new genres, even if it means sacrificing a larger fan base.
The original featured organ and multi-tracked vocals. What was your thinking about changing it? Were you going for more of a Bacharach vibe?
I wanted to see if Bassy, Jimmy, and I could pull it off as a trio with bass, drums, piano, and a single vocal track. It’s such a well-written song that it indeed worked with the simpler arrangement; just a more active piano part was enough to make up for the missing organ track. The Bacharach vibe wasn’t something we forced. It was built in to the song.
Joe Jackson
Be My Number Two
17 December 2012
17 December 2012
Productive week for you, eh?
It was a Secret Santa week, and I was on a staycation. Free time plus cold weather plus great songs equals a recording frenzy.
As mentioned in the intro -- here’s a rare sighting of you playing a 12-string. Did you leave that up to other people in future Shaouy-led collabs in the spirit of inclusiveness?
To borrow a lyric from Imperial Bedroom, many hands make light work. Not only are collaborations easier for everyone, but I always get a kick of the band bonding that occurs in the band chat threads.
This one was co-arranged by Kyle Gray Young. How did that happen, especially since he didn’t play on it?
We brainstormed the arrangement together. It was a Secret Santa song gifted to me by Paul Melançon. The original arrangement was solemn and piano-driven and we wanted to try something different. We wound up with a poppy, guitar-driven arrangement. I forget why he didn’t play, but it may have been the week he injured his hand. I miss the guy. We brought in Jonny Daly to do the guitar parts, and he intuitively understood what we were going for right off the bat. So did Peter McDade on drums and Thom Bowers on bass. We gelled so well that the team was to become the core band for my album.
The video is a cheeky combination of performance footage and Sesame Street. Do you remember if that was your idea? I guess in 12/12 you were already looking for something different than pure performance video?
It was my idea. I did indeed want to do something more than performance video. I read the song lyrics without listening to the music, and the whole thing just screamed Sesame Street to me. I found whatever footage from the show I could about the number two, and even filmed some Sesame Street-style footage of my own.
Original
Candy in Line
26 June 2013
There aren’t words enough to describe how much I love this song and video. Jon Brion wishes he wrote this. I contend as a package it’s never been equaled in Theme Music. Take a bow, maestro.
Thanks Bob, we’re all proud of that one!
First let’s talk about the video: how did you get this professionally done video by Jared Caldwell and Eythan Holladay done?
Jared and Eythan were coworkers of mine, and filmmakers during off hours. For a time Eythan was a full-time filmmaker. They had the gear and knowhow to make a good film. I had approached them about doing a video for the song, and they graciously agreed.
Can you talk about the concept, how the three of you put that together?
Early in the week I had shared my lyrics with them, which really were nothing more than a rephrasing of Dear Prudence, imploring the subject to get off the straight-and-narrow. They developed the story for the video based on this idea, adding a magical, Twilight Zone twist element at the end. I had little to do with the video. While they were developing it over the week, Lee Flier (producer/engineer/guitarist) and I focused on making the music. We brought in Peter on drums, Jonny on banjo, and Nancy Gardos on backing vocals. The song had a lot of tracks and it took the full week to put it together. By the time we were done with the music, Jared and Eythan were done with the video. We were able to put the two together and post on time.
Writing process -- lyrics or music first, or some combination?
Neither. I don’t necessarily recommend this as a way to write a song, but I wrote this around a vowel sound. Seriously. When I started writing the song I had no lyrical subject and no melody in mind. All I had in my head was the vowel sound of a long “I”. It’s an aesthetically-pleasing sound when elongated, made up of a few different vowel sounds -- “AAAAIIIIIIEEE”. I chose the word “line” to contain that vowel sound and put “candy” in front of it to fit the week’s theme (sweetness/candy). The phrase “Candy In Line” makes no sense by itself, so I wrote the verses to explain it.
Musically, I knew I wanted the chorus to be in a different key than the verses. I do that sometimes because I like musical surprises. Most of the chorus is just two chords, C resolving to G. To add spice I added some complexity to the chords, changing the C to a C6 and the G to a Gmaj9. The verse pattern is that of the Beatles’ Michelle, only done in a different time signature. The bridge is two chords in a different key again, with tubular bells clanging in the background, an idea I stole from a Bach piece I had heard on the radio a few years back.
Do you consciously pick a musical style (e.g., waltz) when writing or do you come up with chords or melody first?
Usually a mini-melody first. Often a melody fragment pops in my head of just a few notes, and almost always it doesn’t work as the beginning of a song. So I build the melody backwards from there. If the original fragment comes from inspiration or my unconscious mind, the rest of it certainly gets built out with my conscious mind, like solving a puzzle. Often, but not always, lyrics come after that to fit the melody, and I typically struggle with that.
Arrangement -- I’ve heard that you work VERY differently than me in fleshing out your originals. Whereas I have no clue what I’m doing with the overall production and hope lightning strikes through ordered improvisation, you tend to know precisely what you want and tend to give musicians very specific instructions. Do your overall arrangement and production ideas come to you as you write or is there a second iteration of the process prior to band recording?
Usually the latter. When I’m writing it’s usually just me and the piano, and the arrangement ideas come later. For many songs I do ultimately have an arrangement worked out. This has the advantage of getting everyone on the same page and recording the song more efficiently, but has the disadvantage of being overly restricting to the musicians sometimes. In this regard I don’t consider myself a good bandleader. An area I can improve upon is to give musicians more space to improvise and put more of their signature in the songs. More magic can happen that way.
Original
Another God
10 November 2013
The portrait mode came from a request from a comment in one of my early live songs to switch from landscape to portrait, because the commenter wanted to see what I was playing on the piano as I was singing. For recording gear I use a Kawai stage piano (an MP6 at the time, now an MP11SE) MIDI’d in to an iMac running Logic Pro X. My piano sounds are usually from a physically-modeled piano VST called Pianoteq. Vocals and instruments go in to an LA-610 preamp, which in turn go through an Apogee Ensemble A/D converter into the iMac.
Songwriting question -- when you write in the first or second person, how often are you writing autobiographically?
Not a whole lot. These days my songs originate from a melody fragment or even a vowel or consonant sound. I build backwards from there and usually I write lyrics to fit the mood of whatever chords and melody I’ve written. In other words, I rarely start writing a song by saying “Ok, I’m going to write a song about me”. I did more of that in the past, but I’m in a place right now where the melodies, the album motif, or even the theme of the week, tell me what lyrics to write.
How does music contribute to the central metaphor of this song? Or put another way -- music: great god or greatest god? But seriously, “you’re the muse if you choose” is a wonderful turn of phrase that seems to be at the core of the song. You do you, Shaouy.
Haha -- Another God is a good example of not being autobiographically-driven right now. The title was driven by the theme, and the germ of the idea started with a busy, rapid melodic phrase that became “Never never say that he didn’t offer heaven in a day or much faster”. It was driven, again, phonetically. The only way I could pull that rapid melody off vocally was to fill it with easy-to-sing consonant sounds -- “n”, “v”, “th”, “f” and so on. From there, again, I built backwards and the song’s topic revealed itself -- the music business serving double duty as an archetype business, offering its musicians as more than players, but as gods every bit as culturally influential as Zeus, Osiris, Odin, etc. The lyrics implore the listener to be their own, more authentic, god.
I hear a considerable amount of Bacharach influence in the rhythm and lyrical cadence -- and that God Give Me Strength dramatic moment. Is that a fair comparison, and regardless of the answer, how has his work as a songwriter and arranger impacted you?
It’s a totally fair comparison. The song was largely stolen from Anyone Who Had a Heart, maybe my favorite song of his overall. The dramatic moment also was a straight tribute to Bacharach. More generally, Bacharach, Todd Rundgren, and Carole King all use a chord structure that I like to use a lot, taking a straight, vanilla major chord and putting an unusual bass note under it. For example, putting an F bass under a vanilla C chord turns the easy-to-play chord into something richer (an Fmaj9 for those keeping score at home). If you listen through the new album, you’ll hear that kind of structure all over it.
Nat King Cole
Straighten Up & Fly Right
24 December 2013
This couldn’t have been much more charming. I’m curious whether this genre of music was important to you in childhood.
No, I was an AM radio kid, growing up on 60s and 70s pop. I hadn’t had much exposure to anything older than that. Patrick Clark gifted this song to me during a Secret Santa theme. He’s a very tasteful fellow in everything he chooses for himself and others.
That's hard to believe consider how comfortable you seemed with it! The song’s arrangement gave each of the musicians room to shine -- Lee Wiggins’ lovely brush work, the firm grounding of Scott Morris’s upright bass, Kyle Gray Young’s tasteful guitar solo, and your featured piano and vocal. You must have been super pleased with how it came out.
Indeed yes. None of us knew how it would turn out when we were recording it. The original was hard to follow by ear, and the sheet music had chords that we knew were incorrect. So each of us did the best we could with what we had, and the most important thing was that our parts didn’t clash. Everybody played well on this one, and I’m so glad Scott was able to get in on this one particularly.
Although there isn’t your beloved acting exactly in this video, you’ve got costuming and the old-timey TV filter to make provide a distinctive look.
I got a cheap pair of glasses from Amazon.com just for the occasion! They were too big, but I wore them anyway. Lee Wiggins did an amazing job antiquing the video -- it really does look of its time!
