Pat McCusker Interview
Scoring The Ezra Klein Show, Touring with David Duchovny, and Composing for Podcasts
This is the transcript; the podcast, video and show notes are linked above!
Pat McCusker:
It's very distracting. It's distracting from the dialogue that we want our listeners to focus on. At the end of the day, the music one million percent is to serve the story at hand and never get in the way of it. So I think oftentimes it could be fun to joke about like, oh, a podcast composer. Everything's kind of just in the background. What is anything really going on there? But that's so extremely intentional on our end. We are purposefully neutral or minimal or sparse a whole lot of the time.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, you’re listening to Conversations with Musicians, with Leah Roseman.Since I started podcasting, which in my case includes hosting and production, I’ve listened to other podcasts with an awareness of all the details, and I notice things like the music. When I heard composer Pat McCusker’s charming new theme for “The Ezra Klein Show”, Magical Tree Creatures, I reached out to him, because I’ve been interested to feature a composer working in the podcast world for a while. Pat is an audio producer, engineer, mixer and composer based in Brooklyn. Currently, he is a Sound Designer and Composer at The New York Times, and his music can be heard on many shows including “The Daily”, “Modern Love”, and "Interesting Times with Ross Douthat.” He was previously the head audio engineer at The Slowdown media platform, and also worked as an audio engineer at BMG Chrysalis, and has engineered for hundreds of artists. And like most musicians, Pat is involved in music in different ways, and we also got into his career as performer. Pat has toured the world as a guitarist and vocalist with the acclaimed actor and musician David Duchovny.I am someone who used to really enjoy the X-files back when it came out, and I had no idea that David was also a musician as well as actor, podcaster and writer. I really enjoyed this conversation with Pat, who shared his creative process as a composer, how music in podcasts functions, and media music more generally, including why music in shows like Severance and White Lotus is so effective. Fellow composers will also be interested in Pat’s tools, instruments and his positive experience working in a supportive team of creatives at the Times. We also got into topics that will resonate with all listeners: strategies for dealing with anxiety, and the importance of valuing friendship and community. There’s lots more to this episode; you’ll find the track names of the music included in the detailed time stamps. The complete show notes on my website will take you to Pat’s website, other episodes you’ll love with media composers, the video, podcast and transcript for this episode along with different ways to support this independent project for which I do all the many jobs of research, production and publicity. Now to Pat McCusker!
Hey Pat, thanks so much for joining me here today.
Pat McCusker:
Yeah, thank you, Leia. Happy to here.
Leah Roseman:
It's very cool. I found you because I was listening to "The Ezra Klein Show" and noticed this great new theme music for that podcast, and I was like, who is this composer? And I wanted to have someone who's really deeply in the podcast world, and when I saw the range of your career, I was just fascinated. So I'm so glad we could make this work.
Pat McCusker:
Yes, no, this is so much fun. As a fellow podcaster yourself, I love talking about podcasting and podcast music. So yeah, this should be fun hopefully.
Leah Roseman:
So I was looking at your social media and I noticed in January, 2022 you posted, it's been a long, strange trip navigating the music and audio world. I'm so grateful it's taken me here. So you want to tell us what that was about?
Pat McCusker:
Oh boy. Yeah. Okay. 2022. That sounds like it was January early on. And yeah, that's when I started at the Times I believe, if that's the post you're referring to. And it was a long strange journey for sure. Never thought I would be at a place such as the New York Times. I certainly come from a background that was extremely music focused for the first really 10 years of my career in music and in sound as a whole. I do come from a technical background and a lot of what I did in the 2010s was making a lot of music, but also as a composer, but also producing music, mixing it, engineering, that sort of thing. So being behind the board, whether an actual board or the metaphorical board, that's what I did for a long time and still do it to this day. But I felt like I needed to make a little bit of a shift, not a full career shift by any means, but I was just starting to feel the grind of music as you know, the music industry is an extremely difficult one, and I wanted to expand what that meant for me and get, I guess a bit more creative with it.
And I always listen to podcasts since they've been a thing more or less, and I thought, well, maybe that's something I could do. Maybe I could take the engineering skillsets and transfer them over from music to the podcast realm.
I did a pilot podcast to start just to dip my toes into the thing. What does it mean to even make a podcast? And I tried something out. It was a really fun, interesting pilot podcast that focused on music and travel. Did that with a couple friends, pitched it around. It unfortunately didn't go anywhere, but it was a good sort of just introduction for me into the podcast world. From there, with that skillset I initially developed working on kind of a project of my own, that podcast. I then went to work at a media company before the Times called The Slowdown, and I just made a bunch of podcasts with them, both engineering their conversations and mixing them. Eventually starting to compose a little bit of music for that team too. But yeah, I wanted to keep growing and expanding and started looking around. The New York Times job popped up and I applied and thankfully heard back and got the position. So that was a strange trip.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, so I'd mentioned the Magical Tree Creatures theme, so we're going to play a short clip of it. So thanks for that. And I understand the brief was they wanted something immersive, weird and beautiful.
Pat McCusker:
Yes, yes.
Leah Roseman:
So can you talk, I understand you were watching a lot of Studio Ghibli movies at that time.
Pat McCusker:
Yeah, for sure. I was watching a ton of Studio Ghibli and me and my wife just got kind of in this groove putting on film after film. And the one that sort of inspired the energy for this track was Princess Mononoke, and specifically these tree spirits that are part of the film called the kodama. And from what I understand in Japanese folklore, when they are around, it is a sign that the forest is healthy, or in another way they are intended to protect the forest from harm. And I just thought that was a really beautiful and inspiring sentiment.
And as it relates to "The Ezra Klein Show" and the brief being, the prompt being something beautiful and immersive and weird, the kodama in a way felt like all of those things to me; beautiful in the sense that they're intended to protect the forest, immersive in the sense that you are in this beautiful place like a forest surrounded by trees and sounds and just beauty all around you. And weird at the sense that there are these, at least as they're depicted in the Miyazaki film anyway, these little ghost-like things that are cute, but also kind of weird and quirky. And that was enough for me to just kind of take that and run with it and be inspired by that idea as I was composing. And the very first thing I did actually was just collect a lot of sounds of nature and forest sounds and throw them into pro tools and create this sound bed essentially before doing any composing, I just made all of these layers of insect sounds and river streams, wind, that sort of thing, and kind of just started composing over that. So really trying to immerse myself in this place that certainly wasn't Brooklyn where I live. It was I guess this magical forest of sorts. So that's where the title of the track comes. Magical Tree Creatures.
Leah Roseman:
This is a clip from Magical Tree Creatures, the theme for "The Ezra Klein Show" with thanks to the New York Times.(Music)
So as an employee there, you're not having to pitch, you already have the job of composing. They may not accept every idea, but you're not having to pitch independently?
Pat McCusker:
So we always have a process where we have a number of composers on our team, and we're pitching in that sense where we'll all write, we'll get the brief, and depending on what team is requesting something, a group of us will then start writing for that request. And as it relates to "The Ezra Klein Show", there were a number of us writing various ideas for that theme. I wrote three myself, Magical Tree Creatures being the last one. And it did feel really special to me. It gave me that feeling of, oh wow, I don't know what will happen to this, but I hope the team resonates with it because I dunno, I certainly did. But yes, to answer your question, there's a pitch in that sense. We're pitching various ideas for then the various shows to choose from and decide on which one they like the best.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. Yeah, I noticed you write for a couple of other shows. I do listen to sometimes "The Daily" and "Modern Love" and "The Daily", because it's every day you guys have a library of music that's used. I was curious how is it cataloged? Are there funny titles to associate clips with emotion or how does that work?
Pat McCusker:
Well, I think every composer, I mean, how is any piece of music titled? I think for me, and especially with instrumental music, it's sort of just a vibe thing a lot of the time. One thing I like to do personally, because I do write a lot of music at the Times and am always having to submit new pieces, is in order to not be stuck thinking like, oh, okay, I just finished this thing. What do I title it now? I have an ongoing list of oftentimes of little phrases that I'll read in a book or something that's like, oh, that has a fun little twist to it, those few words there, I'm going to put that in my notes app and just add it to the list of the other phrases that also resonated with me whenever I read something. So oftentimes it's that it's just a little few, a couple of words that I think are playful and interesting, and I'll add that to the list. And then when I'm composing something, once it's done, I'll then turn to that list and be like, you know what? Let's call it the Dream Reader. Something like that
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, like for creative prompts. I was just curious about the cataloging. Somebody must have the job of finding these hundreds of little bits, you know?
Pat McCusker:
Yeah, exactly. It works. So the library we use is called Disco, and it's an excellent library in the sense that when you're uploading to it, you can tag your track with various key words such as propulsive or momentum or reflective or urgent, et cetera. And then the producers on those shows when they're putting their episode together, will then go and look and type in those keywords and kind of use that as an initial guide to see what tracks pop up from there, and then turn to those based on the episode's needs.
Leah Roseman:
So that brings us definitely to the function of music and podcasts. But I was striking me, pat, I'm probably wrong, but with other media, film and tv, I think if there's a difficult emotion, the music can be a little more reflecting that. But in podcasts, you just really want to keep people listening, so if the music's too scary, you know what I mean?
Pat McCusker:
Yeah, absolutely. No, totally. One joke we have on the team is just everything is neutral. Everything is neutral because yeah, I feel like a lot of the time if something is too detailed in the music or intense or unsettling or whatever, it's distracting. It's very distracting. It's distracting from the dialogue that we want our listeners to focus on. At the end of the day, the music one million percent is to serve the story at hand and never get in the way of it. So I think oftentimes it could be fun to joke about, oh, a podcast composer, everything's kind of just in the background. What is anything really going on there? But that's so extremely intentional on our end, we are purposefully neutral or minimal or sparse a whole lot of the time so that we can serve the story best. And so that music can live in a number of ways across multiple stories. So yeah, oftentimes things are neutral. Sometimes they're neutral, reflective or neutral, momentous or neutral, urgent. But there's always that kind of pullback of we never want it to be too much of one thing, if that makes sense.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. So my instinct was correct. Interesting. Okay.
I'm curious how your experience as a listener of podcasts has changed since you've got involved with producing them.
Pat McCusker:
I mean, it makes me appreciate them so much more, like the really good ones, the ones that are very, very thoughtfully produced and have just a team behind them that just cares so much about the craft. Yeah, when I was first listening to podcasting, Radiolab was always one of my favorite shows to listen to. And before I started working in podcasting, I knew that one felt like I enjoyed it so much because of the sound design as we're talking about, and the little musical elements that happen throughout and the structure of what's going on between the host and weaving in multiple voices in these really creative ways and telling these bizarre and unique stories, whether it be science or health or anything. That always felt fun to me as a listener, but I never quite realized exactly truly how much work goes into making something that is that detailed. And now being on a team of who I think are just some of the most incredible creative people I've ever met, the team thing for me these days is just so special to me to just have a passionate group of people that support each other and are all working together to create this thing.
It resonates with me so much just having that, if anything, just the support from your colleagues to feel like you can all dive into this thing together and do it week after week after week. So yeah, it's still for me shows "Radiolab" or "This American Life", some of the more pioneers of the genre, I guess, of the format. They just blow my mind even more now, just knowing the imagining how those teams function and create what they create.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I find every week I get more involved with this, I listen differently, especially to interview based podcasts, but even the decisions people make about the opening of an episode, I'll get very annoyed if I'm listening and for the first five minutes, I have no idea what this is about. They haven't given any intro. They're just having banter, especially the style of banter. There's just two or three hosts talking.
Pat McCusker:
Right? I can't,
Leah Roseman:
Like they're at a bar and I don't even know-
Pat McCusker:
I know, I know! It seems like there are huge audiences for that. I don't quite get it myself. Where does the banter go? Yeah, I mean, for a long time, and still to say I should say that I always loved listening to Mark Maron. On that note, he has always been one of my favorites as far as just the straight up interview shows go. And I do think that's 'cause, he's just kind of putting it all out there. He's putting it all out there. It's almost, and to your point about openings, although I know a lot of people skip over these, his openings are some of my favorite parts of the show where they're almost like these diary entries of what's happening in his life, and it just feels like you're kind of just riding alongside him year by year. He tells you what he's going through and is kind of neurotic, anxious way. And I love listening to that. As someone that's a little anxious myself, I enjoy him just saying what's on his mind. And then it doesn't hurt that he's an excellent interviewer as well, in my opinion.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, there's that intimacy of the media I think, which a lot of us enjoy.
Pat McCusker:
Totally.
Leah Roseman:
I think Marc's decided to stop doing his podcast.
Pat McCusker:
I know in September. I'm so sad about that, even though I've slipped in my listening. I dunno, I feel like I've always been rooting for him, but what a run. I mean, that was, boy, I think he started in 2009, so that's not bad at all. He deserves to end on top.
Leah Roseman:
You had also shared with me The Big Question Mark.
Pat McCusker:
Oh, sure.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, so we could talk about that also. I mean, I hear your voice in it.
Pat McCusker:
Oh cool, cool. Like my compositional voice or my, okay.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Pat McCusker:
I did actually sing on "The Ezra Klein Show" theme in the sense that my voice is incredibly warped and played on a keyboard sampled. So when you said voice, I was like, oh, are we saying actual human voice? But thank you for saying that. Yeah, that was a fun brief to write for that show is with Ross Douthat, and he loves cinema and television shows like White Lotus and Severance, where some of the kind of shows we talked about when thinking about, so I don't know. I kind of encouraged the team to think cinematically about writing for this show. And strings were kind of a crucial component when writing. And actually at the studio that I'm sitting in right now, we had a few live string players recording on the various tracks that we've written for the show, including The Big Question Mark, one of them being Maria Kowalski on Viola and Violin and Helen Newby on cello.
And it was just such a fun night to be able to, because we use virtual string instruments to start, and you're probably cringing Leah as I say that you're a violinist, am I right? Yeah. So those are incredibly helpful tools and they've gotten so much better. And I do use them a whole lot of the time because it's just simply impossible to always have musicians of any instrument at your disposal always. I'm happy to say that our team is moving more and more in that direction of as much as possible, hiring outside instrumentalists and recording these pieces in the way that they should be recorded. And this show "Interesting Times" is a prime example of that. So we recorded real strings and that was such a joy, such a joy. I'm excited we're going to be doing more of it.
Leah Roseman:
This is a clip for The Big Question Mark, which is the end credits theme for the show "Interesting Times with Ross Douthat." With thanks to The New York Times. (Music)
You mentioned Severance. I love that theme. And of course I love the show, but what a great theme.
Pat McCusker:
It's such a great theme and that theme and thinking about a show like White Lotus too, those themes are very, and the music in general on those shows, I think have this combination of, yes, they're cinematic, of course, and there are these extremely expressive string sounds happening, but there's also this kind of weirdness to it too, and kind of weird kind of human energy underneath that. So that to me was like, okay, in addition to the host of the "Interesting Times" podcast, liking that music, what do we take from that besides him just liking it? And that's kind of like what stuck out to me was there's, there's a slight unsettling-ness here that feels human. You can't quite put your words on it, but it does feel very human. So when writing for this show, I kind of think of those two realms. Let's make it's have fun and make it a little more cinematic than some other shows. Maybe not as neutral, but also let's make it kind of like human too and slightly urgent in that way, and it relating to the times we're living in, if that makes sense.
Leah Roseman:
I'm curious about some of the technical aspects of creating sound. So are you using modular synthesis?
Pat McCusker:
I use a lot of semi modular synthesis, such as, I love the Moog Mother-32, which is a smaller semi modular synthesizer. I use that a whole bunch on the Ezra Klein theme, and I'm not sure if you're familiar with the device, but it has a patch base, so it's semi modular in that sense where you can change the routing, the wiring within, but it's semi modular in the sense that you can also just plug it in and it's ready to play. And I use that a lot for, there's this kind of cute little tiny finger pads on it that you can play and switch between octaves. And I was playing that a whole lot for actually the Ezra Klein melody, the main kind of synthesizer melody was performed on that as well as the bass sounds and a lot of the pads. Yeah, I just really love working with the cutoff filter.
And for me, having devices that are outside of the box, I love virtual instruments. I'm so thankful for how incredible they are. I also love touching things and playing them with my hands and even with my feet, I'm a guitar player first and foremost. And I think, I don't know, that touching of things kind of probably comes from the guitar pedal obsession and the gear obsession. The tinkering aspect is just so the thing, one of the things that gets me most excited about composing and the quite literal tactile feeling that you get in that live performance of something, I think there's something about recording in that way where you capture that performance. And sure, with whatever digital audio workstation you're working in, you can tamper it a lot, but you have less ability to change it as much after the fact than had you composed with a virtual instrument. So that's a long-winded way of saying yes, I love working with synthesizer with analog synthesizers and analog instrumentation, performing with actual percussion, that sort of thing. Another synthesizer I love is the Moog Sub 37, and a lot of the bass sounds that I use come from that. I play electric bass as well, but I find for podcasting, there's something about the warmth of that Moog Sub 37 that just, it works every time for me. It's always incredibly satisfying from the get go. So the bass line in the Interesting Times outro theme that we listened to, The Big Question Mark is performed on the Moog Sub 37.
Leah Roseman:
There's so much to talk about, but maybe we should talk about your career as a guitarist. You have this longstanding band, Buzzbody, and also you've toured with David Duchovny and recorded with him, for years.
Pat McCusker:
Yeah, this is always the talk about the big question mark. This is always I think the funniest, like, wait, what part about my career?
Leah Roseman:
Hi just a really short break from the episode, and after this you’ll hear how Pat started touring and recording with David Duchovny!I’ve linked several episodes you’ll love in the show notes, with some of the media composers I’ve featured: Pat Irwin, Christoph Zirngibl, Adam Blau, Anže Rozman and Kara TalveIn the show notes you’ll also find a link to sign up for my newsletter, where you’ll get exclusive information about upcoming guests, a link for my Ko-fi page to support this project directly, and my podcast merchandise store with a design commissioned from artist Steffi Kelly. You can also review this podcast, share it with your friends, and follow on your podcast app, YouTube, and social media. All this helps spread the word! Thanks. Now back to my conversation with Pat.
Pat McCusker:
Well, first of all, to talk on Buzzbody, that project is more, I would say it's no longer, even though we never officially ended, but it was with two of my closest music music friends, Mitch Stewart and Davis Rowan, and they perform in the Duchovny band as well. So that's kind of the fun. One of the, I think, most magical parts of music and being a musician and having music friends is that I don't know, your lives kind of shape in these interesting ways where depending on the project, it just creates a lot of fun in your life. And so I did a lot of music with Davis and Mitch in these rock psychedelic projects, but we also get to play together in this band with David Duchovny. And that project that started in 2014, it's been over 10 years now, and it came to us from another good friend of mine, a keyboardist named Colin Lee.
His sister Carrie was on this music label that David came to, and he was looking for people to work on some demos for him. She mentioned that her brother, Colin, my friend, was a musician, and David was kind of going for this Wilco, REM, Velvet Underground kind of thing. And that was very much in our wheelhouse. I'm a huge Wilco fan. I love the Velvet Underground. So we got a few demos sent to us, and we essentially just kind of tried our own rearrangements of them, what we would do if we were the band and melodically, what we might change, what chords might we shift around a bit. And we sent those demos back and he loved them, and we made our first record with him in 2015, and we're coming out with a fourth record next year, and we've got to tour the world, which is so special and so bizarre that it happened to be with David Duchovny. And I never grew up really watching the X-Files much, but everyone loves that show and it's an incredible show and he's excellent in it. But I don't know, I think that for me, it took away some of the intimidation of working with him. I just kind of came into it like, oh, you seem like a cool dude that has some songs and let's try this thing out. And it felt that much more relaxed that way. I've since gone back and watched some episodes and they're great. But yeah, we have a fun thing going with him.
Leah Roseman:
I did used to watch the X-Files
Pat McCusker:
Oh cool!
Leah Roseman:
when it first came out, and so when I saw that you were playing with him, I was like, wait, he's a musician? And then I saw he also has a podcast now, Fail Better.
Pat McCusker:
Yeah, that's right.
Leah Roseman:
I was curious. So in terms of the band chemistry, I mean, you obviously touring, it's super important, but the recordings, were they done remotely?
Pat McCusker:
Well, it sort of depends on the time we're thinking of, but we always do all of the basics together. So all of the core band structure stuff, guitar, bass, drums, keys, scratch vocals, that sort of thing, we always try to lay down together as much as possible. And then from there, overdubs and additional vocals, like the reel vocals we'll do later on the studio. I'm sitting in Long Island City in Queens. We do a ton of the overdub recording here. But yeah, we try to do it together as much as possible because I feel like that just makes it most fun, that band mentality and the kind of feedback of being in the room together and bouncing off ideas in real time. I love that remote. The technology the day we're living in allows you to be able to record remotely like that. That's incredible. And I do do that a bunch, but the preference is to be with my buds in the room, and we try to keep it like that as much as we can.
Leah Roseman:
A previous guest of this podcast, actually, he came on twice, Pat Irwin, I don't know if you've ever met him.
Pat McCusker:
Okay, I don't know, but nice to hear about another fellow Pat.
Leah Roseman:
I was thinking about him because he's been in Long Island. What do you call it again? It's Long Island City.
Pat McCusker:
Long Island City. Oh, cool.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, so we talked about the neighborhood, 'cause he moved there when it first was all these musicians moved there. So he toured with the B 52s for 18 years, but is a media composer mostly for cartoons.
Pat McCusker:
Oh, that's awesome!
Leah Roseman:
and recently Dexter, he's done a bunch of stuff. So yeah, it's because he also has that dual career of playing in rock bands and composing for media.
Pat McCusker:
That's really cool. It feels like someone I should meet at some point.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, he's probably down the street from where you are right now
Pat McCusker:
Pat!
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, so I was curious because when I talked to him about touring with the B 52s and what that was like, playing the same tunes over and over again to these huge crowds and the boredom factor.
Pat McCusker:
Oh boy.
Leah Roseman:
But he said the fans, the fans' energy just gave you what you needed.
Pat McCusker:
Yeah, no, that's very true. The fan energy. But yeah, on the boredom thing, that is an interesting point, especially if you're playing the same songs over and over and over again. We try to vary up the set as much as we can to keep ourselves entertained, I think more than anything. But also we just kind of like to be a little silly on stage every now and then. I think just to keep it interesting, there was one tour years ago where David lifted me up on his shoulders as I was taking a guitar solo. So we do things like that. We kind of sometimes fake that we're rock stars, me and a fellow, another guitar player in the band. We'll do lean our backs against each other as we're ripping a lead sort of thing. But we know we're not rock stars, we're just kind of nerdy music guys. But it's kind of that mentality I think that keeps it fun and not as boring. It's just, I dunno. It's important to not take music. I take music extremely seriously. It's also important to not take it too seriously at the same time, if that makes sense to remember. It's like, I love this thing. I love it so much. I can't ever take this for granted that I get to do this for a career.
Leah Roseman:
This is David Dni and his band with holding patterns. Pat said Holding patterns was one of his favorites. And thanks to David Dni, whose website is linked in the show notes (Music)
And do you remember the first time you were back performing for a big crowd after the pandemic lockdowns?
Pat McCusker:
Yes. I think if the date is right, we played a festival in Florida that was the first time back, and I think that was probably, it was either 2021 or 2022, and that was so special. That was so special. Playing a festival is always a surreal experience because there's inevitably just going to be way more people there than would typically be at a concert of yours. So combining that with the post pandemic thing and just taking it all in, just, yeah, talk about not taking something for granted. That felt really beautiful. Yeah. How about you? Do you remember your first concert after the pandemic?
Leah Roseman:
I am sure I wrote about it in my journal. I remember the feeling of what I remember is when we first went back and played for tiny audiences in a big concert hall, and so they would allow maybe 200 instead of 2,500, and they would be trying to clap and show us their enthusiasm and they're all spaced apart. And that felt sadder than just doing a livestream.
Pat McCusker:
Oh yeah, totally. Just a little.
Leah Roseman:
So that memory is kind of with me, but I'm sure I should look and see. I must have written about it. I feel like I don't have a great memory and I'm glad I've started writing things down just to keep track of stuff.
Pat McCusker:
I am with you. Not the greatest memory over here, but yeah, the feelings remained.
Leah Roseman:
But in terms of your touring worldwide with David, do you have some memorable stories or experiences from any of that?
Pat McCusker:
Interestingly, we played in Moscow before the war. That was surreal. That was incredibly surreal and one of the biggest crowds we've ever had. I believe it was around 3,500 people or something like that. So that sticks out. I would say one fun part of this whole thing is my dad gets to travel with me sometimes and he never really got to see the world all that much. And having him on the road with me, he goes to a lot of the shows and he's been to Australia with me and parts of Europe and the US and it's so much fun. And of course we get annoyed at each other every now and then because he's my dad and I'm his son. But just knowing that he's there and kind of looking over and seeing him side stage, it's nice. It feels good to know that he gets to experience that kind of thing through me.
Leah Roseman:
That's really touching, wow.
Pat McCusker:
Yeah. Yeah, he's a good guy.
Leah Roseman:
So what was your youth in terms of music and the arts?
Pat McCusker:
I started playing guitar when I was in seventh grade, and it completely rocked my world. Speaking of my dad, sports was kind of a thing that was sort of highly encouraged by my family growing up, and I was not good at any of them. I was pretty bad and I didn't enjoy it, but it was kind of what I knew what to do. It was like, oh, okay, I'm supposed to play baseball, I guess I'll play baseball. I'm supposed to play hockey. I guess I'll do that. And then some of my buds I noticed we're picking up guitar and bass and drums, and that felt immediately more interesting to me. And I'll never forget, the first riff I ever learned on guitar was a song by Blink-182 called Dammit.
And I was just like, this is the most cool thing in the world. I love this so much. I immediately stopped playing sports for the most part. I still played a little bit, but it wasn't year round anymore. It was all guitar. And I took private lessons and just immediately started playing a bunch of punk and ska music. Actually, those were kind of like my roots. I think that goes back to the fun thing and the joking around thing with music. I think punk music and ska music have this natural kind of carefreeness to them and kind of the jokey energy.
So that's always kind of carried with me and kept playing punk music throughout high school and rock music and just started expanding into more alternative realms and things like that. And then I went to Berklee College of Music for college and realized I wasn't nearly as good of a guitar player as I thought was. That was a very humbling moment, being surrounded by world-class musicians already in college. But it gave me this drive too to be like, okay, what do I resonate with? And let's just try things. Let's try playing jazz and screwing up a bunch and being terrible at it. But pushing myself to be like, okay, what can I explore in these new interesting riffs and these chord progressions that I've never exposed myself to or time signatures?
And it just kind of evolved from there. In college, I was playing both in this kind of progressive jazz group and an alternative rock group and not just not really saying no to anything, even if I felt like, oh, I might not be the best at this thing, but I'm going to push myself to explore it because I'm interested. I'm intrigued and these people, these musicians around me are inspiring to me. I want to see if I can hang with 'em. So it's sort of naturally evolved like that. I think a lot of the kind of chordal textures and progressions that I began to understand from the jazz world, I then brought with me back into writing rock music, which has always kind of been, I think the most foundational bit of my music identity. It always kind of comes back to guitar and the chord progressions I find on the neck and melodically, I think a lot from the guitar at first. But then I actually, in college, I started, that's when I started becoming a songwriter too. And that Buzzbody project we were talking about out and my friend Mitch Stewart, he was the one that pushed me to start writing and recording some of the songs that I had written.
But yeah, when I think about composing these days, I think heavily comes from those roots, those types of chord progressions, kind of bits of rock music and jazz music and the different types of tension chords within jazz music and melodically. Oftentimes it's just, I think it comes from me singing often. I'll just do a voice memo and just sing a random melody and put that away. And when I'm unsure about what to write, I'll go to that as a resource. And whether or not that melody gets put on a Wurlitzer or a violin or a guitar or whatever, I think when I'm thinking about composition, it is very much coming from that songwriting and singing melodic place.
Leah Roseman:
So there's this Buzzbody track Full of Fear we were going to share.
Pat McCusker:
Awesome, that sounds great.
Leah Roseman:
This is the band Buzzbody with Pat's song Full of Fear.(Music)
Do you want to talk about it?
Pat McCusker:
Well, I am full of fear a lot of the time. I am not as much anymore, but that song in a way was me trying to expose that and say it out loud, even though of course it's hidden. That's the magic of music. It can be buried in melody and buried in effects and everything, but the lyrics are still, I'm full of fear, have to admit it. I'm full of fear and living in it. But then the verses are more kind of hopeful about trying to let go of that and just trust yourself and just kind of trust the people around you and those you love. And things might feel a bit easier than.
Leah Roseman:
So on a personal level, do you feel that's helped you overcome that anxiety?
Pat McCusker:
That and a number of other things? I love therapy. Therapy is great, but music has always been the thing that I'm actually, I'm so surprised that because sometimes when I get into those more kind of moody moments in life, it's almost like I don't trust that music is going to be the healing thing for me. And then lo and behold, when I pick up the guitar or I play some crappy keys, I instantly feel it. Thankfully, your mind can get in those cycles of just not feeling, feeling great today. And will music help me? I don't know. And I always feel better after I work on music.
Leah Roseman:
I was wondering if you want to talk about some of your personal projects, this Here and There podcast? Did it get produced? I couldn't find it.
Pat McCusker:
I wish it did. So when we talked about that, when I first started exploring what it means to make a podcast, it was the Here and There podcast. And that was a project that we made a pilot episode for. I was one of the producers and mixers and composers on it. And my good friend Sebastian Modak, who is a wonderful travel writer, he's written for the New York Times as the 52 places travel writer, went around for a year writing about a different location each week. And another good friend of mine, Eric Shea, we wanted to try making a podcast that the premise being a focus on both music and travel and each episode would profile a musician from a certain part of the world. We would go to that place with that musician and talking about sound design, record the different sounds of that place, and try to bring the audience there sonically as much as we could through those field recordings, but also through the music of the artists that were profiling.
And then at the end of each episode, there would be a live studio in studio performance of a track by that artist. That was the premise. We were all really excited about it, and we pitched it around for quite some time, and there were trickles of hope throughout from various companies that were interested, but nothing sadly ever came of it. But that was the thing as I was speaking on earlier, that convinced me like, wow, I like making podcasts. I think let me try it in a way less produced way and just see if I can engineer and mix conversations. But yeah, that pilot was only a pilot and nothing more.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. Yeah, it was on your website and it looks so interesting. Another thing. Yeah. So with your partner Simonetta, you had this one year publication of Date, which was a print publication. Was that a pandemic thing?
Pat McCusker:
Oh, wow. No, it was earlier than that. Yeah, Simonetta, Simo, is an incredible designer and artist, and at that time I was experimenting with different diets and I kind of got into the paleo diet for a while and we just wanted to feature some local food businesses that we resonated with. And it was a quarterly magazine. We made four issues. So it lasted one year, and it was one of our first endeavors as partners in a kind of art journalism space. And it was really fun. It was also kind of like we realized we only wanted to do it for one year because it's tough to make a magazine in addition to all the other things you do in your life, but I think we learned a lot about each other's artistic aesthetics and strengths and just, it built our relationship too. It was a growing experience for us.
Leah Roseman:
And the premise, you'd have recipes and also conversation starters.
Pat McCusker:
Yeah, we would have recipes. Did we have conversation starters? I don't know if we necessarily had conversation starters. It's been so long, it's been years since I've actually flipped through the magazine. But we would have a few recipes with the idea of being on a date night at home with either, whether it's one of your first dates or if it's with your longtime partner or if it's just with a friend or anyone in your life, here are the recipes we have to go together to create the meal on that date night.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. So what's it like being with someone who's in a creative field that's different than yours?
Pat McCusker:
And I should also say that Simo works at the Times as well. She's on the licensing team and she's an art director on that team. It's great. I think we give each other feedback in ways that because we're outside of each other's fields, we can come at it from a different angle and just from an outside perspective. But since we're both artistic leaning, I think it's kind of helpful in that sense too that it's like, okay, how am I receiving this from someone that is not visually talented whatsoever, but enjoys looking at things and has gut reactions about, oh, I think this one works because this is how I feel about it. And it might not be the most sophisticated answer, but it's a real it answer it. And similarly, when I have ideas that I'm working on for music, especially several years back when composition was becoming more and more a part of what I do as a musician
And Simo, just telling me there's way too much going on in this piece. I think I for a long time was extremely maximalist as a composer, just like this needs every single instrument and all of these counter melodies and this layer and that texture. And Simo just telling me simple is really important and minimal is really the name of the game a whole lot of the time. And I think that comes from her visual aesthetic of not drowning out any one image with too much distraction. It works the same way in music and especially in podcast composition as we were chatting about earlier, the more space is often the right call, but I didn't know how to do that for a very long time, and she was really helpful there.
Leah Roseman:
Okay, so to close this out, it might be interesting to talk about some of the ways you, well, maybe you have some suggestions for podcasts you enjoy, or we could talk about books or all these things or TV shows.
Pat McCusker:
Yeah, sure. We talked a little bit about podcasts earlier, and I still think even though as prolific as they've been, I still think "This American Life" and "Radiolab" are still my two favorite podcasts. But actually on that note, one of my favorite books that I've read over the last few years is a book called "Why Fish Don't Exist". And it's by Lulu Miller, who's one of the co-hosts of "Radiolab". It's like equal parts biography and memoir biography in the sense that it's about this, what's the word? Interesting and problematic individual named David Starr Jordan, who he was the founding president of Stanford University and he discovered thousands of fish species. And he also has some very questionable later career steps that if you read the book, you'll discover his life was kind of full of chaos in many ways. And it's memoir in the sense that Lulu reflects on her own life both past and present, and somehow ropes in this David Starr Jordan figure with her own kind of love and loss that she's experienced.
And it very much feels like a "Radiolab" episode in that way where there are all these wild twist and turns and you don't quite know how it works, but it does because she's such a creative vivid writer. The book is extremely vivid and visual and a page turner. "So Why Fish Don't Exist" by Lulu Miller, I would recommend that in a heartbeat. Another book that has resonated with me for a very long time is called "The Listening Book" by W.A. Mathieu. And it, it's a little bit of a hippie dippy music listening book, but I'm kind of a little bit of a hippie music guy, and I proudly, I am down with kind of the more the literature on that, but specifically this one little section in it called Symphony of Place where he describe this. He describes listening like wherever you are in the world, like sitting and listening and noting all of the various sounds around you and thinking of that as a symphony almost. So all of the different elements of a symphony in the natural world or in an urban realm or wherever you are thinking of that as music. And that actually thinking of the Here and There project was very much an influence for that project. Like hearing everything around you as music. Sure, it does sound like a little hippie, like I said, but it clicked with me hardcore in college and I kind of just resonate with that to this day. So especially for musicians or anyone that just wants to listen a bit more creatively, I would recommend the listening book. And then just one album that I've loved so much over the last two years, it came out last year, is by Photay, P-H-O-T-A-Y, and the record is called Windswept. He's an electronic musician and a sound artist of sorts. The title Windswept, I think very much relates to his inspiration behind the record, which deals with wind systems and I think specifically wind systems in California using that as inspiration.
And the album very much sounds like that, but through an electronic lens, there are all of these percolating textures and vibrant pads happening, and it's extremely meditative, so you can kind of chill and kind of listen to it while you're sitting and doing your thing. But it also grooves really hard too, and you can dance to it as well. And I think that balance there is that sweet spot I just resonate with so much when it comes back to composition, having something that, oh, okay, it can serve to just, you can sit with it, but also there's all these interesting things happening there too that you can latch onto or you can get up and dance to it. I find that record really inspiring.
Leah Roseman:
Cool. And I was just thinking, I mean, especially in your previous role before you joined the Times you were producing and you were listening to hundreds of interviews, do you have advice for people like me doing interviews?
Pat McCusker:
Oh, I think just be the best listener you can be and you are that it feels that way you're, you're truly listening and absorbing the information, and I think that then hopefully will inform the next question you have and carry things along in what feels like a really authentic and natural kind of way. So yeah, I don't know. Maybe that's the theme for the last several minutes we've just been chatting about listening. That would be my advice. Just sit and listen and let that inform you of what to do next.
Leah Roseman:
Well, thanks so much for this, Pat, really appreciated this opportunity.
Pat McCusker:
Of course. Thank you, Leah. I'm really, really happy that you asked me to come on.
