Producer's Corner
By Clay Steakley
JON BRION is a quadruple threat, to say the least. Noted as a producer, solo artist, multi-instrumentalist and soundtrack composer, Brion carved a career for himself by refusing to compromise or to bow to anyone's perception of what makes a successful career in the music industry.
From the artists he's produced, be they Aimee Mann, Rufus Wainwright or Fiona Apple, to his engaging film scores, Brion consistently chooses the spark of intelligence, sonic quality and satisfying melody over easy jabs at pop hits or notoriety. The result is a catalog to envy.
As a composer, he has scored Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Punch-Drunk Love and Magnolia, the last garnering him a Grammy nomination. Most recently, he has composed the soundtrack for David O. Russell's quirky I Heart Huckabees.
In 1994, Brion and former Jellyfish guitarist Jason Falkner formed the Grays and released one widely praised album, Ro Sham Bo. From there, Brion went on to play with and produce a stellar list of artists including Sam Phillips, Badly Drawn Boy, Taj Mahal, Eels, and Robyn Hitchcock.
His contributions to albums like Aimee Mann's Bachelor No. 2 and his production of her “That's Just What You Are,” Fiona Apple's debut Tidal, and Rufus Wainwright's eponymous 1998 album illustrate the broad reach of his taste and contributions as both session musician and producer. In addition, the mixed bag of unusual instruments he provides works both to loosen up artists' creativity and to add new and unexpected timbres to the records. A quick survey of his instrument credits includes optigan, marxophone, mellotron, celeste, and even a little ukelele on Grant Lee Phillips' stunning Virginia Creeper. And that's just the beginning of the closet of oddities Brion has at his disposal.
The year 2001 marked a new stage in Brion's already eclectic career when he released his first solo outing, Meaningless. The critically adored album featured smart and expansive pop that, at times, surpassed the work of the artists he'd produced.
He's also eight years into a wildly popular weekly residency at the Los Angeles haunt Largo, where he delivers a mixed-bag show of improvisation, bizarre requests and reworkings of tunes ranging from Neil Young to Nirvana, plus occasional celebrity guest appearances from folks like Mitchell Froom and Robyn Hitchcock.
In short, one never knows what to expect from Brion. He's always working toward a broader understanding of music and how it's made. He consistently works with artists of the highest caliber and, as a result, produces music of the highest order.
Your most recent film project was I Heart Huckabees. Tell me how that score came together.
It was really a fairly organic thing. I started off writing some instrumental music and, at some point, David Russell, the director, started saying, “No, I want something with more feeling.”
I started talking with him about what that represented to him, and we got into a conversation of my hatred of emotional wallpaper soundtrack music and of gratuitous song placement in films. And about how I wished soundtrack music felt more songlike, rather than having the disparity of this week's rock band crowbarred into the film and some absolutely generic sound behind other scenes. I said I'd really been wanting to do something that felt more like songs, and that I wanted to hear more melody in soundtrack music. My favorite stuff had that — be it The Third Man or something like that where the melody is so strong that you're psyched to hear it if it comes back multiple times.
So somehow while we were sitting there watching the movie, I said, “Just give me a moment to get back in songwriter-head and out of soundtrack guy-head,” and I was just plunking melodies of things I'd written to remind myself of what the difference is to me. In the process of doing it, there was the classic, “What's that?!” I said, “Oh, it's this old thing of mine that was never released.” We put it in and suddenly the scene completely came alive. Then I noticed that the melodies I'd been playing had lyrics that directly related to the scenes.
So I just started doing this weird experiment where I would pick unreleased songs of mine but I wouldn't tell him what the lyrics were. Inevitably, he would pick the one that had the lyrics appropriate for the scene, which told me that he and I had the same emotional reference points with music. If I was writing to a particular lyric, it had a very particular tonality, and it would match up with the scene. It was really something special.
How are the dynamics different between producing a soundtrack you've written in which you're the primary artist and producing a pop artist in the studio?
Oddly enough, there is another artist and that is the director; you're not actually getting to stand in front of an orchestra doing exactly what you want to do. They're the pieces that he deemed right for the movie with the changes that make him comfortable. The very melody itself that made you write the song may be a thing that's like, “Yeah, make that clarinet thing go away.” And this is happening on the floor while you're standing in front of the orchestra. And it's like, “It's all nice, but that oboe thing isn't very good.” And you're like, “OK, once again, that's the melody.”
Or they say, “That other thing, I like that.” And that's the harmony — which is now the melody — which is OK by itself, but then it goes back into the melody at the end of it and it's incredibly awkward, you know? It's changing the architecture and shape of it, and suddenly it no longer does what it was supposed to do emotionally. It's actually kind of confusing and distracting. But, dammit, it's their movie.
Does it make the decision-making easier, having a little dictator over in the corner?
People think that by producing a record you're expressing your tastes. You're not. You're part of a whole bunch of people. If it's just you and one other artist, you're still deferring to them.
In my case, I'm OK with it because it's the director's movie. If the director wants the music twice as loud or twice as soft as I think is right, that's their prerogative.
With the kinds of directors I'm attracted to, they really are looking into everything and that's why their movies are good — it's not a committee decision. That's why I think committee decision-making for artistic things is almost unilaterally suck-ass.
The artists you've worked with have very distinctive creative personalities. What draws them to work with you?
I think, if there's a personality trait, it's that they make their decisions qualitatively, which is what I do. That may seem like a real simple statement but quite honestly, most people don't do that. Most people, even on creative projects, drop the ball somewhere along the line and start doing things just because they think it's what they should do or they're trying to make it sell more or whatever. [The people I work with] don't buy into any of that stuff.
Regarding qualitative decision making — what do you look for in an artist to produce?
I guess the honest answer is, not much. I just listen to the stuff and I either like it or I don't. I don't work with bands, so I don't have to do “preproduction.” Preproduction is whatever conversations we have. It's whatever records we mention to each other. Somebody says, “You know what I hate? I hate all these records that are like this.” And I say, “Oh, God, we should make sure we avoid that. Yeah. Let's make a list of the things those records do and were not gonna do any of that.” That's more likely to happen.
Do you do demos, then?
I absolutely think that the concept of demos should not exist. I think anytime somebody's recording they should treat it as a recording. They shouldn't waste their first-take energy on making something they are not going to have the guts to release for technical reasons. Don't do it. At most, sing into a Dictaphone or a boombox. But demos, no.
Is that concept difficult to get across to songwriters you work with?
If songwriting for them means making tracks or whatever, those aren't necessarily the people I'd want to work with. When I hear, “This song is about this guitar sound coming in at this point and playing this lick in this way,” to me, that's not a song. It's arranging. It's fine if people are good arrangers, but I hear so many people who put these things together and refer to them as songs, but they don't have much of a melody and they don't have a lyrical perspective. Right now they're chord changes with arrangement things on them. Nothing could bore me more.
Whereas any of the people I work with, generally if they sat down and played the song on the instrument on which they wrote it, it is self-contained. Now, how do we want to color that? Most of the records I've done are absolutely and entirely that. And even if they seem really diverse from song to song, if you actually pay attention, it's the songwriter and instrument they wrote it on. Then there's the rhythm section, then there are little doohickeys squirreling around in the background, gathering nuts on the lawn in your backyard. And then, if the voice stops, something else can come in and make a musical statement almost just to carry you until the voice comes back on again.
So what quality is it that most attracts you to an artist?
My attraction is to somebody who is a songwriter and who has something going on emotionally and intellectually. It's got to be both things. People always talk about one thing at the expense of the other, which is, in truth, fairly tiring. Because the stuff that really breaks your heart is the stuff that gets into your head and hits your consciousness on many levels.
I've heard so many songs by people who have had the worst things happen to them in their lives and they're really very sincere. But it doesn't necessarily make for emotional experience if they don't know what constitutes cliche. Having the genuine experience happen to you is not even enough to constitute a great song. For me to be affected, I want to feel like the songwriter is looking out on the same environment I am and has already sorted through a lot of the same things and is tired of a lot of the same things and is trying to point out something new. When I see that, that's paydirt for me.
So many songwriters I know have said that they write songs so they can find other people like them — so they can create a community.
That's great that they admit that out loud. I absolutely believe that. I've had various ways of saying that for years. The main analogy I always use is that there's a sea of people out there, and even if you stand up on your tiptoes, it just looks like the sea of tops of people's heads. But all of us feel absolutely drowned and smothered and lost and claustrophobic and want to find our community; by sort of making your little banner and holding it up high over people's heads, saying, “I am this. I like these kinds of things.” Then other people who are in the same position as you are, who are looking around, go, “Oh, over there.” And they wander over. Eventually, you can build an incredible community of people around you by really putting your best foot forward and being the individual you are and being loud about it. And by that I don't mean being inconsiderate and I don't mean self-promotional.
I think the people who work with me recognize that I've come to the same conclusions, and that I'm fighting hard to put things into the world that push forward a mindset that both heart and intelligence are good; that quality is good. And that you don't have to be either underground or overground — don't take part in either thing. In truth, don't go for the money and you might actually do OK.
I've known a lot of people who desperately run for the money and all of them make terrible choices. Some of them end up succeeding, which is enough to embolden the rest of them that they're on the right track. Really, the percentage of them who have succeeded isn't all that high anyway. So you get these people who are desperate and stressed out because they're not where they think they're supposed to be.
Tell me about your gig at Largo. It's become something of a phenomenon.
I sort of developed this way of performing because there were two things I was really tired of. One was the four-piece rock band playing their 45-minute rehearsed set, playing the album live, and acting as if they're new or dangerous.
I also hated the singer-songwriter thing, which is a guy on a stool going, “Here's a song about a real tough time I went through and, um, and, um, it's called, ‘My Pain’.” And then he proceeds to play this thing and it's seven minutes long and it meanders and you try and give it your attention. And it's like, “Wow. I just watched seven minutes of my life go by.”
So Largo was developed as a thing that didn't have a set list, and it was literally me trusting that if I just followed what my subconscious was telling me to do, that it would end up working. It took a few years to really learn how to do it and still have it paced to feel like a show, so that people knew I wasn't disappearing up my own backside in search of my subconscious.
How do you balance being a producer, composer and songwriter?
I feel this with my whole career, and it was a conscious decision many years ago: I don't want to do just one thing, I want to do many things.
I chose what was important to me. I've stuck to it and I'm doing fine. A lot of people have thought I'm anti-success over the years, which just cracks me up because I think of myself as wildly successful. I wake up when I want to, I work on the projects I want to, I work with people who absolutely inspire me. Everybody I work with has attributes I don't have, so I get to take part in collaborating with somebody who can bring other things to the table.
For me, that's my banner that I can hold up. And Largo is a screaming example. You don't have to perform the way other people tell you you're supposed to. I've never done a rehearsal and I've done all these gigs. And the nice thing is, there are people who have seen 200 shows. So obviously something is working for them and it's changing up enough that there's value to come back repeatedly.
It's got to be tough, juggling so many roles.
I think anybody who is constantly in charge or constantly subservient or constantly part of a group is going to be unhealthy. It's really fun to be on a session where I'm just one cog in a group of people, and there's an artist and a producer and many other people around who have much more say than I do. It's fun to be the artist and be the person presenting the choices. It's nice to be part of an ensemble playing music and be an almost invisible ingredient in a sound that's happening that requires you to merge with other people.
You can't be the guy who's driving all the time, you can't be riding shotgun all the time, you can't be in the backseat all the time. I think it's unhealthy. It's a wonderful learning experience to be in charge and it's a wonderful learning experience to have someone else be in charge.
When you start working on your own songs and you're the king, do your experiences with other artists leak over into your approaches?
Everything we do in every aspect of our lives leaks into every other aspect. I feel that pretty deeply. Hence, every session I've ever done feeds into my decision I make today, as well as every conversation I've had. This conversation is one more piece of information in my brain and my subconscious may be retrieving it without my knowing it. They get added cumulatively to other experiences. Not to sound too heady about it, but I do think any experience I've ever had from pumping some gas into my car to a conversation to any TV show I've watched — somehow it's all part of the pool of resources. Whatever the brain has stored is going to get accessed at some point.
That relates to what you were saying about the Largo shows, too . . . letting your subconscious work itself out fly by the seat of your pants and create.
That's what the surrealists were about. They were really taken with the notion of the subconscious and they were trying to develop systems that would not allow their conscious mind to be creating the work. And it's very interesting, the things they developed to do that. And a lot of that has been so inspirational to me, even though so much of what I do seems very normally compositional to people, the way at which I arrive at a lot of it is from very fierce improvisation and by pulling the rug out from under myself.
That creative time when you're playing an instrument and you've got a sound up and you don't know how to control it yet ... it's not those first moments when the sound is out of control, it's those first moments when your brain is trying to make sense of it. That's where the magic happens.
It's a lot like when you pick up an instrument you don't know how to play. These melodies start fumbling their way out that nobody who normally plays the instrument would probably come up with because they're “wrong” for whatever reason.
The fact that I collect weird instruments is not just because I love them and think they make beautiful sounds and because I get delight out of figuring out new combinations of pre-existing instruments. That's all true, but one of the things that drives me when I'm picking instruments out in a store or pawnshop is the knowledge that at some crucial moment when we're working together, I'm going to hand someone one of these things and their brain is going to go right back to that pure place we all have when we're trying to figure things out.
All of these things must enrich your work as a producer of other artists.
I guess that's my banner, which is still inherently like some children's book. It's that reassurance of, “Don't let people tell you how your life is supposed to be.” And don't think that if you go with your heart and your head and your own desires, that you're merely going to get shot down by this world. It's just not the case.
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