Pat Irwin: Transcript
Pat Irwin:
And my wife would drive down, idling in front of the studio in the car, and I'd run down with the DAT tape. The FedEx guy down in Lower Manhattan, he was a Rocko fan, plus a B-52's fan, so he knew me, which was kind of cool. And he'd hold the truck just a little bit. So it would be on the plane to LA in the mix for the next morning in a day. And it was like that for a couple of years.
Leah Roseman:
Hi, you're listening to Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman. Pat Irwin is a renowned film and television composer. Some of his scores include Dexter: New Blood, Rocko's Modern Life, Pepper Ann, and Nurse Jackie. He's also a multi-instrumentalist who was a member of the B-52's for 18 years. He founded the Raybeats and Eight-Eyed Spy, and more recently the band SUSS, of which I'm a fan. Pat also teaches film composition at NYU, and this conversation wove its way into important topics for all of us; a life well lived, grief, the importance of creativity and of having a good hang. As always, I've included detailed timestamps, so if you want to jump to his days with the B-52's or Dexter, go ahead. But I hope you'll take the time to listen to this whole episode, which is rich with music and stories.
Pat is as articulate as he is creative. You may be surprised that the episode begins with his time in Paris, interviewing jazz musicians and learning from John Cage. Like all my episodes, this is available wherever you listen to podcasts and as a video on my YouTube channel. The transcript is also linked in the description, along with Pat's links.
Hi, Pat Irwin. Thanks so much for joining me.
Pat Irwin:
Thanks for having me.
Leah Roseman:
I really enjoy the whimsy and the inventiveness in your writing, and also your emotional range and use of texture. And what I find super interesting about your career is that you manage to have such a robust career in film and television composition, but also be a touring band member and have all these other creative projects. And when I was listening to your music, I actually really got into your Lost and Found albums a lot. And then I was listening to SUSS a lot, and then I listened to your album with Walter. So we'll talk about those things. And then I listened to the score for Dexter: New Blood, and I'd heard your earlier music in that. So that was cool.
Pat Irwin:
Oh, wow. Thank you.
Leah Roseman:
But I think for our listeners, what might be interesting is to start when you decided to really pursue music as a profession. It was when you were living in Paris. It sounds like you spent a very interesting year there. So maybe we could start in with that grant you received and the musicians you talked to.
Pat Irwin:
Oh, well, yeah. As a matter of fact, I just found in some storage boxes, some archives and tapes, interviews that I had done with Dexter Gordon and Mal Waldron and Steve Lacey. I didn't study music, and it wasn't encouraged. But I've also, at the same time, been playing professionally for a really long time. Since high school. So rather than getting into the details of that, it was just something that I had to do. But in college, I didn't study music, but I was still playing down at the Holiday Inn on the interstate and things like that. And I picked up things here and there and performed and had a choir. I was a leader of a choir.
But I received a research grant from the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, which is basically a very independent study oriented grant. And my subject was to investigate American expatriate jazz musicians living in Europe. I was really naive. I didn't really know what I was getting myself into, but it was fantastic. I landed in Paris and went out and met people, and I met really interesting people. But I soon learned that a lot of the reasons that I thought musicians may have been living in Europe, particularly jazz musicians, maybe didn't line up with what I thought.
Basically, I think my project was a success, but at the time, I panicked and thought, "I don't know what I'm going to do with this information." I wrote maybe an article in the Village Voice about an expatriate trumpet player named Bill Coleman. Maybe I did a couple other things, but I just didn't want to be a writer. And I certainly didn't want to be a critic. And here I was, meeting these intensely creative people who were basically making a living, and they just happened to be doing it in Paris or in Europe for whatever reason. Dexter Gordon was in Copenhagen, Mal Waldron was in Munich, and I happened to be based in Paris, where there was a pretty robust expatriate community.
And one of the other people that I met was a writer and an artist named Brian Giesen. And he just opened up the world to me. And he said, "Listen, there's two things you've got to do. You either need to study with Nadia Boulanger, or John Cage is putting together a group. A workshop." And I met with Nadia Boulanger, which was fantastic. Life-changing, really. But I knew right away that it wasn't for me. But I met with her a couple times, actually, and that was fascinating.
And then I interviewed with John Cage. I had to audition, and we met, and my whole world opened up about what music could possibly be. What a phenomenon he is. And conviction, and just open-mindedness. Revolutionary. And I got to work with him. And we wrote a piece based on the I Ching, which I knew nothing about, and nor did I actually take it that seriously at the time, which is neither here nor there at this point. And we put on a concert and I was playing a pine cone. It was hooked up to contact mics. And it just changed my life. And at that point, I knew I had to get back to New York, really. It was the only place I wanted to be, where there was phenomenal music going on. And I dove right in. And that's it.
Leah Roseman:
I have a few questions about this. So your audition for John Cage, what did that look like?
Pat Irwin:
Not to be cynical, but in a way, I kind of signed up.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Pat Irwin:
I studied clarinet as a young kid, and I talked about music. We just talked about music briefly. I think it was just signing up, making sure that I was serious.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. Yeah.
Pat Irwin:
It was a very small group of people. All musicians, I think. One was a writer, actually. And that was it. It was a workshop. And I think he just wanted to make sure the people were right, and that was the long and short of it.
Leah Roseman:
Mm-hmm. A previous guest of mine was the writer and musician, Stephen Nachmanovitch, who wrote Free Play and the Art of Is. And he knew John Cage, and we spoke about him in that interview. And because Stephen's all about improvisation, and he said John was against improvisation. But he said John just opened up lots of creative people to do completely different things than he did, but just gave them that license to try new things.
Pat Irwin:
Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, as a young kid, it was kind of thrilling. But it was also the discipline of it, and the conviction that actually stuck with me. And really the business of it. It was all of it coming together. I was just taking it all in.
Leah Roseman:
Pat has shared quite a few of his compositions for this episode, and I thought it would be fun to take a very short break from this conversation to introduce some music from the animated series, Rocko's Modern Life, which we'll be talking about later in this episode. Remember to check the detailed timestamps. This clip is called the Pogo-Stick Scenario. The Rocko's Modern Life soundtrack is now available on all the streaming services, with a CD and vinyl release coming later with additional tracks. (music)
And you said, when you met with Nadia Boulanger, it wasn't the right fit for you, but it was life-changing and it was fascinating. So what do you remember of those sessions?
Pat Irwin:
Well, I remember being really intimidated, and I remember going down a long hallway. I remember a large portrait of Aaron Copland and other portraits. I certainly knew who were her students. And there was a room full of students sitting around a table. I think they were doing dictation or analysis. I was in no position to go there.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. And in terms of jazz, I know you were a longtime fan, and you had this project to interview jazz musicians, and having played the clarinet when you were younger, you didn't pursue jazz, though, as a player?
Pat Irwin:
No. I've picked it up a little bit here and there, but mostly the vocabulary, not the reality. And maybe the lifestyle.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Pat Irwin:
I mean, even this morning, I was listening to a John Coltrane-Duke Ellington record that I just received on vinyl. And I just find jazz at its best to be electrifying. Just in-the-moment, powerful music. I love blues music. There's a phenomenal documentary on Louis Armstrong now called Black and Blue. Jazz music is of our time. It was here, created here, and it's living and breathing and going forwards and maybe backwards at the same time. I just find it thrilling. Sun Ra. Big bands. The small bands, solo, and the art of improvisation. Charlie Parker. This is superior music at its best.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Would you be willing to share any of your independent things you've created?
Pat Irwin:
Those Lost and Found records aren't at the tip of my tongue. I'd love to go back to them, and I just don't have time. But that was such a fun time. Really, really fun. And something came across my desk where somebody mentioned it. I used to just make those CDs and give them to friends for New Year's.
Leah Roseman:
This tune is called Swing Time and is on volume three of Pat's series, New Sounds From the Lost and Found. (music)
This next one is called Open Window and is on volume four of Lost and Found. The video is Pat's.(music)
Pat Irwin:
But oddly, I've been going through the music for a cartoon that I wrote called Rocko's Modern Life. And I've digitized ... I have miles of this stuff. And speaking of jazz musicians, some of those musicians, they were jazz musicians, not me.
Leah Roseman:
Rocko's Modern Life was a cartoon that ran for four seasons, starting in 1992, with adult humor and a cult following. Later in this episode, we get into Pat's time with the B-52's, and you may be interested to know that the third version of Rocko's theme song was performed by Kate Pearson and Fred Schneider from the B-52's. After the show's cancellation, many of the creators ended up working on SpongeBob Squarepants, including Pat Irwin. What you're about to hear is a track called Rocko Versus Food Boy. The Rocko's Modern Life soundtrack is now available on streaming services, with CD and vinyl releases coming with additional tracks. (music)
Pat Irwin:
The Rocko stuff, it blows my mind. It was so much fun. It was so much fun. We would set up at nine or eight in the morning, set up, sight-read. The music is crazy, and it goes from swinging ensemble jazzy stuff to a loud garage rock kind of thing. And so that's kind of hard on the engineer who has to mix it all. But we would mix it. And my wife would drive down, idling in front of the studio in the car, and I'd run down with the DAT tape. The FedEx guy down in Lower Manhattan, he was a Rocko fan, plus a B-52's fan, so he knew me, which was kind of cool. And he'd hold the truck just a little bit, so it would be on the plane to LA in the mix for the next morning in a day. And it was like that for a couple of years.
But that band on Rocko's Modern Life, the drummer was the engine of it all, a guy named Kevin Norton. And at that time, he was playing with Anthony Braxton, speaking of jazz musicians. And Art Barron, the trombone player, he's still alive. He was the last trombone player to play with Duke Ellington, in the Duke Ellington Orchestra. So it was a cool group.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. So, speaking of trombonists, your friend, Walter Hawkes and you, amazing trombone player, and he's a great composer too. He did Blues Clues, I think, and a whole bunch of other projects.
Pat Irwin:
Yeah. Peg+Cat was the last one he did for PBS that he worked on.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Pat Irwin:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. Because I'm a big Bandcamp fan, so I happened upon that album, and I really love it. And the videos you guys made around that are really beautiful as well.
Pat Irwin:
Thank you.
Leah Roseman:
So that was an interesting collaboration. And maybe you could talk a little bit about the neighborhood you guys live in in Queens, Long Island City. It's pretty interesting. Artist enclave, right?
Pat Irwin:
How funny, because last night there was a community meeting. I mean, it's really changing. It was just so welcoming when I got here, even though it was rough. It was rough. There were definitely people living here. I certainly wasn't the first. In fact, there was one of my favorite musicians just two blocks down over here, Ernie Brooks. He still lives there. Ernie was the bass player in the Modern Lovers, one of my favorite groups. The first Modern Lovers record, Roadrunner, is one of the all-time greats. And in that band with Jerry Harrison, who later became in The Talking Heads.
So also down there were Tina and Chris and Jerry from The Talking Heads, where they lived, and that's where they recorded Fear of Music and More Songs About Buildings and Food. And Don Cherry, a jazz musician, he was living there. So there were other musicians and artists around, but basically it was cheap rent. It was a little bit rough. It wasn't residential. And and as I got older and had a kid, then all of a sudden there's other people around. You start to see other people. And the neighborhood of course grew, and then all of a sudden, kaboom.
But Walter has a studio about 10 blocks away. He's a great composer and a friend. And we were basically in the same bag. We wrote music for animation. And Walter pushed it, in a way. He wanted to make the record. I was happy to, but I had to come up with some music. And I'd love to do another one, and we do some playing. We played around here in the neighborhood. We played ... There's a lot of mechanics, we played in a mechanic garage for vintage cars and our gallery. But we're being walled in. Huge buildings are going up. The sound is ridiculous, the construction, and oddly, and somewhat sadly, Walter has been forced out of the neighborhood, but his studio is still here. So he had to move. He took ... Two neighborhoods away or a neighborhood or two away, but he's still here. He plays every Wednesday night, a bar down a couple blocks away. Hopefully, I can go see him tonight. He's a very serious musician. He's really good.
Leah Roseman:
This next track is called In Another Time from the duo album, Wide Open Sky, with trombonist J. Walter Hawkes. (music)
Hi, just a quick break from the episode. I'm an independent podcaster who does all the many jobs required to produce the series, and there are a lot of costs I bear as well. Please consider either buying me a virtual coffee as a tip, or becoming a monthly supporter, starting at $3 Canadian, which is close to $2 US, or two euros, and getting access to unique perks. The link is in the description. Now back to the episode.
Maybe we should talk about when you first returned to New York, and the no wave and the new wave, 8 Eyed Spy, the Raybeats, and B-52s, had already had a big hit before you joined them. Right? They were already pretty big before you.
Pat Irwin:
The Bs?
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, the B-52s. Yeah.
Pat Irwin:
Yeah, they were a band, and had done Rock Lobster, which was a pretty big record in my book anyway. And so they were ... And the Raybeats actually opened for them, did shows with them. And I knew them, mostly Kate and Fred, actually. And then they decided after Cindy's brother died, it was pretty traumatic, understandably so for them. And they took some time, and one way or another just decided to make another record, which they did. And I was really fortunate to come along and be a part of them, and we just ... It got big. That band got really big.
Leah Roseman:
Ricky Wilson died of AIDS, which is, in that crisis, it was hard to, for people who didn't live through it, it was so ever present and horrible.
Pat Irwin:
Horrible.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. And your friend, George Scott, died tragically of a heroin overdose in your other bands.
Pat Irwin:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
So it's a lot to deal with.
Pat Irwin:
Yeah. I think George was 26 and I was 24.
Leah Roseman:
Wow.
Pat Irwin:
And New York was a little bit rough, but incredibly creative. And drugs were part of it. And not everybody came out of the other side. But when I moved back to New York, all I knew ... Well, I didn't move back. When I moved to New York from Paris, all I knew is I wanted to play music. I wanted to be in a band. I wanted to play at either CBGBs or Max's Kansas City. That's all I wanted to do. And I did it. There was a scene going on, and you mentioned it as No Wave, I don't know that ... I think it was called No Wave because of a record called No New York, which was produced by Brian Eno. And there were four bands on that record, Teenage Jesus, The Contortions, Mars, and DNA.
And it was just this little creative scene after the new wave kind of commercial thing. It was like taking it further, much further. And that appealed to me and I just happened to meet George, who came through my ... I was living in a place on 27th Street with ... This sounds ... I don't want to sound like ... But it had no heat on weekends, and it was no bath, raw space in the flower district. And amazing space, but so what in a way. And George came through and said, "I'm putting together a band with Lydia. And let's do it." And then I met Lydia Lunch. And she at the same time was making a record called Queen ... Well, she wasn't ... We made a record called Queen of Siam. So we had some rehearsals and we played, and she made this record, which was a solo. She had a contract for a solo record. It gets a little blurry.
And then we just played constantly. You could do that. And it wasn't commercially successful. And then sadly ... Well, so George also wanted to start an instrumental band. And Don and Jody from The Contortions were interested in starting this band with George, and so they played first, maybe once or twice rehearsing. And George said, "My friend, Pat, will come down and we'll be a band." And we did, and we just went up the block and we played at a place called Tier 3, and then down two blocks further down at The Mud Club, and that was that. We started to play. And 8 Eyed Spy had a record deal, but we were just about ready to go into the studio and record, and George died.
Actually, yeah, we went to Europe, we came back. We had a little bit of money, I mean little. It didn't take much. And we didn't really know how to deal with him dying very well, and maybe we still don't. But the Raybeats decided to continue and 8 Eyed Spy didn't. Lydia just didn't want to do a band without George, and I really respect that. At the time, I didn't understand. I was like, "Well, let's just do it." So we did some recording and I played the bass parts, but it wasn't the same. I mean, George was completely unique and special.
Leah Roseman:
And you toured quite a bit in your short time together.
Pat Irwin:
Yeah. We did.
Leah Roseman:
What was that touring life like?
Pat Irwin:
Well, I didn't know any better, but it was phenomenal. I mean, we would play. It's crazy. I mean, with the Raybeats, we got Eastern Airlines, you could visit 30 days, 30 cities in 30 days, and so we all got that and flew around. Yeah, every flight got routed through Atlanta. It was rough. And we played, we toured Europe and England. And I don't know how we did it. I mean, you couldn't do it now on that level. There was this infrastructure of magazines and print and record stores and fanzines. And so there was sort of a network, and you could get up to play, for instance in Toronto, where Gary Top and Gary Cormier had a club, and we could play there. And everybody did fine, and we would go on to the next place, whether that was Buffalo or Cleveland. I don't remember. But it was just constant. It was kind of a grind. We did a lot of cool shows. I mean, we opened for James Brown. I mean, we played amazing shows.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. And with the B-52s, you opened for The Rolling Stones, you played all these late night famous shows. And when you joined them, it was a three-week tour that became an 18 month tour or something.
Pat Irwin:
Yeah, yeah. Peg called me up and said, "We're just going to play for a couple weeks. Do you want to do it?" So I didn't really audition. We just showed up. And Sara Lee played bass. I knew Sara. And then this drummer that I didn't know, who was phenomenal, Zach, Zachary Alford. We rehearsed hard actually. I mean, we really rehearsed hard. I mean, that was an eye opener, how hard the Bs worked, actually. It's cool. And we were just going to ... I think our first gig was a little party for a magazine. And then we played CBGBs. And then we were just going to play little clubs. I don't think something as simple as ... I think it was they had really great managers. They had a following. We were somewhere in the Midwest, and we flew back to do a video. We shot the video for Love Shack, and then went back out on the road. And that's when MTV, it just went on MTV. And all of a sudden it went, "Pew," and by the time we got to LA, we had to change the venue two or three times.
And we ended up I think at the Greek Theater. And it was like, "This is weird," and we weren't really ready for it. But the B-52s had it together. And so it was correct. They just really had it together. And so by that I mean not only the band, but the managers. And they had sound people and light people. It was together and it was cool for that, and a real lesson. And they said, "Okay, we're going to maybe play for three more months." And I was going to get married. Well, I did get married. I got married. Because I have pictures of it. And so they took ... We worked it out schedule wise, and I went on my honeymoon and came back, and I was gone. And it ended up not being just a couple weeks or couple months. Ended up being 18 months long.
Leah Roseman:
And how was that for your wife at the time?
Pat Irwin:
Well, not to betray any trust, but I still think it had some impact. I don't think ... It was difficult. It was hard, very hard. But she joined us in Europe and Australia. She would go out every once in a while. But that's, all of a sudden, she's all alone in New York City and that was not cool.
Leah Roseman:
And as a performer, how did you deal with playing the same hits night after night and bringing freshness to it? Did the fans' energy help with that?
Pat Irwin:
The fans.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Pat Irwin:
I mean, they were really there for the band. And they helped, they were essential. I mean, they were ... And there's so much goodwill in that music and in the fans. It was so positive. The energy, I'd never been a part of anything like that. And what a great band, and really, we took it to another level. I mean, we were ready to go to play, and the fans just kept being there for them. And so it's really a lot to do with the fans.
Leah Roseman:
So the 18 years you were touring with them, you had started to write music for TV. And we had talked about these albums you made for fun, where you'd find instruments in pawn shops and by the side of the road. So was that kind of like a creative diary for you, just a way to ...
Pat Irwin:
First of all, it wasn't 18 years of constant touring.
Leah Roseman:
Right.
Pat Irwin:
And so it was tough because I was doing music for television, which is kind of demanding, but I was on the road at the same time. So the crews would take my gear, it wasn't laptops at that time, up in the motel rooms and blah, blah, blah. We'd do it. I'd do it. I was doing a Disney cartoon. Kate and Fred sang on Rocko. They sing the theme song. I was doing an HBO cartoon and Fred wrote some songs for that. I'd have to really think about the actual order of things. But the Lost and Found stuff, it was just something to do. I mean, my studio was down in the meat packing district and I was working on a cartoon with Andre 3000 from Outcast called Class of 3000. And I just found this great, it's right over here, I found this great organ on the street. Again, my wife, obviously she's a part of this interview at this point. It's this big ... This neighborhood was a little abandoned. But there was a big, over by the train tracks over there, I found this big organ that somebody just threw away, and it worked.
My wife is going, "No, no. Don't take it. No, no, no, no." But I did, and we loaded it up into the car. And I just said, "Well, I want to make some stuff with this." And then I would buy a ukulele for a dollar in a thrift store, and then there would be weird, like this weird instrument here, a Buddha box. I would find it, or at least I think it's an instrument. It kind of goes back to John Cage in a way.
Leah Roseman:
Tell us that again. What is it?
Pat Irwin:
It's called a Buddha box. Then I can change the pitch. Actually, this didn't end up on The Lost and Found. This ended up on some SUSS stuff. And there's a synthesizer over here that I found on the street. And oddly, it was made in this neighborhood. Whatever I would find, autoharp, just things, weird guitars. And so I was doing this cartoon, and I oddly had time on my hands, waiting to receive a cut. That show got a little bit out of whack production wise, so all of a sudden, I'd have two or three days. And I was like, "All right, I'll just make something." And so that's how those records really started.
Leah Roseman:
Okay. From The Lost and Found Volume Five, this track is called Early Morning Song.(music)
Pat Irwin:
There's a lot of short things. I like short things.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. I've listened to all those albums. I really love them.
Pat Irwin:
Oh, thank you so much. I started at the beginning of the pandemic I thought, "You know what? I think I'll make another one of those." And I started it, but it all ended up on the SUSS record. Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
Well, I was going to maybe talk about Dexter New Blood first, but I really want to talk about SUSS. So maybe, where do you want to go?
Pat Irwin:
You're the president.
Leah Roseman:
No, I'm not. Well, I think there's a lot of fans of Dexter. I'm not one of them. I just can't, it's too scary for me. I can't handle that stuff. But I did listen. I went on YouTube and we can hear your tracks and then there's little clips from the show, so that was really cool. So I checked out a whole bunch of that just to see what the music is. So weren't the composer of the original series and the fans had waited almost 10 years for the new, they were hoping there'd be a remake. So you had a big responsibility to honor the original score, so it'd have a little bit of the same sound. So how'd you go about that?
Pat Irwin:
Well, first of all, it was a little rough for me too. It's not really my thing, yet I really like the people I was working with. But the actual show itself, I didn't really line up with it, which made it challenging for a while. But I really like the people that were working on it. I went back and watched every episode of the original. So if there was ever a meeting where somebody said, "Well, you know that time where the Bay Harbor Butcher did this, and he threw the bu..." I could go to my notes and I knew it. I mean, it was a great opportunity. I actually had no idea how popular is the show was. I knew it was on Showtime and major, but I didn't know it was mega major. And the sort of whole theme of an anti-hero, like Dexter, I'd seen it, whether it was either The Sopranos or even Miss Jackie, which I worked on, these horribly flawed characters that you're pulling for.
I'm not so sure I would really pull for a serial killer, but that's just something else. That was pretty interesting, actually. And so I had to create a new sound. It was a new show. I just remember the first meeting at being, this is a new show, okay, but at the same time, they wanted to acknowledge some of the thematic material from before and there were some fans that were just very passionate about that music. And that theme was called The Blood Theme.
And so I just kind of in my own way, adapted that material. And to be honest with you, I don't know if this is information you want, but they were in the middle of a pandemic lockdown. So cuts weren't coming. I had scripts, but I was pulling together ideas and I had some ideas with slide guitar. And then when it got down to the cut and none of that music that I had done was working and they wanted a more ambient sound. And I think, I know there were people who really wanted to work with me, but there were others who just said, "Well, is this the guy cartoons and B52s? No, I don't think so." So luckily SUSS pointed towards a sound that they had in mind, kind of a more cold, atmospheric, ambient sound, not unlike, let's say the Social Network or the Watchmen. Chernobyl is another score that I really like, more kind of less melodic and thematic, but more ambient and textural. And they wanted it to be a new sound, a new place, a new show, a new character. And that's what we did.
Leah Roseman:
From Dexter New Blood Suite Part one. This is available commercially on your favorite streaming platform. (music)
So SUSS, can you reveal what the acronym is? It's all capital letters.
Pat Irwin:
It's not really.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Pat Irwin:
It just looks cool, but sort of like, "We're going to suss it out."
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Pat Irwin:
I don't know if you've heard of that phrase.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Pat Irwin:
But I say that from time to time. Let's figure it out.
Leah Roseman:
So another tragic death, your friend Gary Leib, who was a founding member of SUSS, he died quite suddenly of a heart attack-
Pat Irwin:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
And you did decide to continue the band.
Pat Irwin:
Yeah. That was a shock. That was awful. Terrible. I mean Gary, he was just a great guy to work with. We're hanging out in a diner in Midtown, Eisensteins, like an old-fashioned deli actually. And we would just grab a bite and hang out, and I would give everybody the Lost and Found CDs, stuff like that. And one of the members of the band, Bob Holmes, he said, "Let's be a band. Let's make a band." And I was like, "Oh, well that's a good idea." And Bob had the idea for it. Me and Gary had worked together in a band called Rubber Rodeo. So we just got together here in this studio here, and we made a record and it was really fun. And we have very open-minded tastes in music and very compatible tastes in music. So influences were now, that's what we would talk about at lunch. Oh man. Henry would remember a Eno record or Fripp and Eno, or Roxy Music or whatever, and just be nerds and have fun and talk about music.
Leah Roseman:
Ry Cooder?
Pat Irwin:
Sure. Absolutely. Yeah, Paris, Texas is unforgettable. That looms so large, you have to not copy that. I mean, I love that record. I love that soundtrack. It's a really good soundtrack. It's so beautiful. And so Gary comes at music in it from a really great place. He's an artist. He was an artist. He would draw. If he was doing this interview, he would be drawing pictures the whole time. And he'd have the notebook full of characters. I mean, I still find things around with his drawings on them. He would just come at it with some beautiful creative energy and he would come early. That's why being late for you is still making my heart beat. He was kind of similar to me. It's like, if you're not early, you're late. And he would come by with some stuff. He would have these.. In fact, he really influenced me for Dexter. He would be downloading things for his iPad that you could play and manipulate.
And he would do animation live when we would play also and weird images. And it was so cool. He was just the kind of guy you want to know and work with. And we both teach, or he taught, we both were teachers. He taught at School of Visual Arts. And I teach at NYU and Brooklyn College. So we talk about our students, which is really cool because it's nice to bounce off somebody about that. And we talk about music and art, and he was just a glorious guy, creative. So it was tough, but we didn't want to stop. But we're still dealing. That new latest record still has tracks on it that he was a part of. Just unforgettable energy, positive, really just positive.
When you're in a band or one of these TV shows, at the end of the day, you make music and you do things and you collaborate and it's creative. And at this point, it's my job. But at the end of the day, it's the hang. It's the people you're hanging out with that you go... There's the diner. We'll go have an order of french fries and a cup of coffee or something, and it's tough. All these deaths that you're talking about, it's terrible.
And so with Gary gone, the hang is very different. He's not here and he's really missed. But his inspiration, I'll never forget it, his energy. It was very much Cage in a way where you find music in something like this or in the air and just bring it to make this record to become SUSS. So it's not all about guitars and traditional Western instruments or even pop instruments, let's say. But sounds, and I love it. I just love being in that band. And we have a record out now. We're getting ready to do some rehearsing and playing. I don't know what I would do without it, in a way. And it's a cool hang.
Leah Roseman:
From SUSS, Winter was Hard.(music)
You're a multi-instrumentalist and you've played a lot of different instruments in your various bands. And in SUSS you play different kinds of guitars and maybe some synth, but you don't play the Dobro or the Pedal Steel. It's Jonathan Gregg who plays that. But I was curious. Have you experimented with it. It's such a different way.
Pat Irwin:
I had a pedal steel. I used it on a soundtrack, called for a show called Feed the Beast, which only lasted one season. And I have a lap steel and I... But Jonathan really has devoted himself to that instrument so he can really play it. I would just sort of hack at it. I've been in bands with pedal steel players for a long time. And even when I was a kid.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, I'd never seen one live. So I YouTubed it. I was like, "How does this thing work?" It's pretty interesting.
Pat Irwin:
It's crazy. Levers and volume pedals, and it's great. He can really play it. He's really good.
Leah Roseman:
So, in your work as a teacher, you're working with graduate students in film composing. What kind of things do you work on with them, or what are their biggest challenges that you have to help them with?
Pat Irwin:
Well, the image and the reality,
Communicating with directors. They're all really talented composers. Also at NYU, these guys, they have conservatory training. I mean, they're really talented and they're going to school to learn about composing for film and television. And there isn't going to be work for everyone. And so I just talk about being a creative person, like composing and just, "Oh, great. SUSS. That's an instrumental band. Your music would be great in soundtracks." Well, no, it doesn't work like that. Sure, maybe. But there's a whole nother world of, in an infrastructure of film and television production, of which I'm only aware of just a little tiny fraction of it. It's a big world. It's not based here in New York either. And there's good stuff being made here, fantastic stuff. And I've been really fortunate to have done some of it. And I can share that with the students. And they've heard of it. They've heard of these cartoons that I've done or Dexter. And so I can talk about communicating with a director or a showrunner or a network.
I was just watching, oh yeah...I binge-watched the third season of Logan Roy, the Roy family, the, oh my goodness, the Mega mogul. I can't think of the show right now. But it had a really strong theme. And it's interesting because I was working on a show that was streaming, and the showrunner wanted a really strong theme, and he wanted it to be family entertainment and a strong theme. It had Tony Danza and Josh Groban were the stars of it. It was a really good idea for a show. And I had a really fun time putting it together, kind of a cop show vibe.
I did it live, but we got all these notes from the network that, "Well, we don't want you repeating that theme if they're going to stream it."
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Pat Irwin:
"We don't want that theme going over and over again. "Well, here I was. I was streaming something that's a huge hit on HBO and the theme was coming and I was just, so... But on the show that I was working on, I had to communicate with not only the director, but the showrunner and the network about the music. And so I'll talk about that. So the music itself is kind of the easy part. It's delivering on time, making it sound good.
With Dexter, there were four people on the Zoom call that I had to get notes from. And then the network. So dealing with those four inputs, and if I had been just starting out, I think I would've been like, "Oh, I'm getting all these different opinions. How am I going to do this by tomorrow?" And instead, I realized that it was one opinion. There might be four elements, but it was one. The producers were, it was one. And I really love that challenge. I really love being a part of that kind of thing and a show like that. And so I'll talk about that. And music editing and being organized, getting your work done on time, because if you're not done on time, you're not coming back tomorrow. And it's actually a pretty small world, which is a little bit terrifying as I look out over a group of say, 20 or 25 students because there isn't the work.
So I want it to be a rigorous course. I want it to be disciplined. I think the world needs these students in the fine arts. We really need them. And that degree needs to be just as important as an economics degree or a law degree. I want them to go out in the world and be just as important in that degree in the arts as anything else. And they should be prepared to go into financial services or become a senator. I mean, it should be a, and that's want it to be as a teacher. Sure, we're talking about composition and themes and variations and everything, but it's of value. And I want them to know they're of value. It's not just some little finger-painting degree. Sorry.
Leah Roseman:
No, no, learning to just be creative. My older daughter, she's a designer, she lives in the Netherlands, and she did her degree, at first we were like, "What's going on?" They don't have courses the way we imagine them. But it's all about being as creative as possible.
Pat Irwin:
Well that's-
Leah Roseman:
Yeah-
Pat Irwin:
... cool. That's what I'm-
Leah Roseman:
Yeah-
Pat Irwin:
... talking about. Gary Leib helped me with that.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Pat Irwin:
And we would talk about that. Because he's looking out at a classroom full of animators and people drawing. But I just think the world needs people like your daughter. Yeah, let's get these people out in the world who have that kind of creative energy and new ideas, and a fresh way of looking at things. You don't need an economics degree from Penn or wherever. Great school, no disrespect.
My parents were scared to death, they were, they're a little conservative. They were really worried about just making a living, "New York City? Where are you living? You're doing what?" They were terrified. But I don't know, I just see what's happening in the world with politics and values and whatever. Anyway, I won't get too distracted, but I love being a teacher. I love it.
Leah Roseman:
That's no distraction, Pat. I'm a full-time working musician, but I put all of my spare time into the series because I'm just trying to show the world how important music is and what breadth and depth there is to a life in music. It's not just one thing. So having the opportunity to talk to someone as yourself is really incredible. And for my listeners, too, to just realize, "What is it?" All these things that you do are so interesting.
Pat Irwin:
Thank you.
Leah Roseman:
And with SUSS, you do a lot of the mixing, a lot of the final sound.
Pat Irwin:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
How does that work when you guys perform live? Because it seems to me there is so many layers, you can't quite do it in a live setting the same way.
Pat Irwin:
Yeah, that's a good question. Well, we're going to approach it in a different way. And right here, I am going back and I'm transcribing everything that we've played and we're adding a couple additional musicians. When we started to perform without Gary, we only performed twice without Gary, he generated a lot of sound, a lot of the ambience, the beds.
And so we thought we could just take his tracks and just play them back over laptops, but it was dull. So we're going to go back and orchestrate it and maybe find a little bit more life in the compositions and move a little more air. So it'll be like a real, interacting ensemble with improvisation worked in, which is in the recordings as well. But in the past we duplicated the recordings. And I don't really want to do that anymore. I want to just take the bones and make something out of it. And we'll see what happens.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Pat Irwin:
Yeah, we've got a couple really cool shows lined up, really exciting. One thing I'm really excited about is this series here in Queens, where I live. There is a great gallery that Walter and I have played at. We're going to play four Fridays starting the last Friday in March, and then the next three Fridays in April. And we're going to play one side of the latest record on each night. And so we'll see what we're made of. I don't know, we'll try it out. But it's a welcoming neighborhood.
Our first live show was at a theater in this building that I'm in, which was down on the loading dock, or behind the loading dock. And people came out to see us play and it was great, really modest. And this is not mainstream music. So it's not like we can really set up at a rock club and expect that to work. So we'll just see what happens. But you're right, you're absolutely right, how does it work live? It takes a little bit of listening. And it's not like a free jazz band or something where you just read charts and chord changes. It's something else, so that's exciting to me.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah, it took me a few listens to get the band. At first it was just very novel to me, the sounds. But then the more I went back, the more I got into it. And then I was driving one day and listening to one of your albums that I had downloaded and I got it. More just, that you do all these landscapes. Anyway, it's very cool.
Pat Irwin:
Well, thanks. Thanks for giving it that kind of time. That doesn't come easy for a lot of stuff, sticking with it a little bit. And not a lot happens in that music sometimes. So it can come over you a little bit. And it's not a lot of melody, and it's shards of melody come and go. And like I said, I really love it and thanks for giving it a spin.
Leah Roseman:
And you've been influenced a little bit by the minimalist movement, living in New York over the years. Steve Reich and Philip Glass-
Pat Irwin:
Yeah-
Leah Roseman:
... had some connection to that.
Pat Irwin:
Yeah, the Raybeats made a record with Philip which was pretty cool. Yeah, when I heard that music, wow, it just was, "What a sound." It was Steve Reich, Meredith Monk, there were other people doing things in the city. There were some younger composers like Glenn Branca ... They're not young anymore, but Rhys Chatham, who are taking that minimal vocabulary and putting it onto a rock, a guitar-driven sound.
But it was phenomenal energy. And Philip was taking from rock music, like the organs that were maybe used in a Fellini soundtrack or Sam the Sham & The Pharaohs, or some not-traditionally-a-classical ensemble, that's for sure. And the real truth of it is, actually, when I heard that kind of music I got it. Whereas classical music, which I really love, but Mahler or Copeland or whatever, it was out of my reach. Not now, but for me it was made into something unreachable, like I can't go there, I'm a rock musician.
Even though the very first B52s show at CBGB's, I think I was taking clarinet lessons at the time and I played the middle movement in a recital, the slow movement, the Mozart. Anyway, whatever. And the fact that those composers were coming into the rock and roll clubs to get in on that energy, and we see where they are now, all over the world. But at that time it was a part of the neighborhood.
Leah Roseman:
From the SUSS Band, Across the Horizon.
(music)
There's two more things I hope to touch on. One of them was when you had your first break into composing for film. So you had been doing stuff with performance artist in theaters, and you got scouted by a Turner executive?
Pat Irwin:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
And I found it funny, the story, you were brought to a motel room and you were given a Synclavier to work on, which was new to you. I heard this in a previous interview.
Pat Irwin:
Wow. Well yeah, that's right. As a matter of fact, I got a email from the producer last night, at about 2:00 in the morning, of that first documentary I did. Yeah, I did a performance at a club. It wasn't a club, it was a performance space called Dance Theater Workshop. And I did a concert, Philip Glass came, that was nice. But it also got reviewed in the New York Times.
And I don't know how, but somebody at Turner Broadcasting read the review and asked if I could do a documentary, and I did. Well I certainly didn't know what I was doing. And they had this Synclavier down in a studio that they had bought to do content. But they didn't know what it was and I certainly didn't know what it was, but we figured it out.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. And that must be so different than your set-up now. It must be so technical, because you were talking about your tapes getting dropped off at the beginning.
Pat Irwin:
Yeah.
Leah Roseman:
And now with the internet it makes it so easy.
Pat Irwin:
Yes and no. That's a-
Leah Roseman:
Okay-
Pat Irwin:
... whole other podcast in a way, if you want.
Leah Roseman:
Okay.
Pat Irwin:
I'll do that with you. Yeah, technology has changed everything. And uploading files, downloading files, cuts, rough cuts, it's changed the schedule, it's changed production schedules, it's changed budgets. Everything has changed, and including the composition process. And I talk about this with my class, as composers we're getting these sounds available to us, sample libraries that everybody can buy. So if you've got 10 people buying the BBC library or say, 10,000, you're going to have 10,000 people making a soundtrack that sounds like the BBC Orchestra or let alone, maybe something a little more idiosyncratic. But you think you've got something really cool, a unique sound that's available on a library for free, maybe. Well you're not the only one with that sound.
So I did that on Dexter. I used a couple things that, "Oh, God, that's great. That sounds cool. I can get it done." And then I watch back on TV, and I was like, "Oh, shoot, there it is on Yellow Jackets," the same kind of sound. And I'm really concerned about that. And so I love moving air, the instruments. And I tried to do as much of that in Dexter as possible, given the time budget mainly, but using my own analog synthesizers. I'd love to get another shot at it because I'd like to be better, but it was a limited series.
Part of the job of the composer and music teacher is that you're not a composer. You need to be an engineer like you were doing. You need to be a copyist, mixing, technical stuff, learning these programs and it's just constant. It's not sitting watching the sunset, coming up with a scene.
Leah Roseman:
Yeah.
Pat Irwin:
You need to deliver something that sounds almost finished on the first pass. If it doesn't sound finished then they're not going to understand. So you need to keep up and that's part of the job of the composer.
Leah Roseman:
Well, thanks for your time. But to close out, I just have one final question, Pat. In terms of the pandemic, now we're speaking in early 2023, but the shut-downs are still pretty recent memory, did that cause you to reassess your priorities or what kind of perspective did you gain from that, the shut-down time?
Pat Irwin:
Seeing my students in the classroom after not seeing them for two semesters, it was cathartic, really seeing people. But this thing that we're doing now over Zoom, it's going to be here forever. It's going to change they way people do work, have meetings. You say you're a classical musician?
Leah Roseman:
Yeah. I'm a classical violinist.
Pat Irwin:
Oh, how cool. I'm determined to be able to play through the Bach inventions at some point. I just want to be a better musician. I love it. I can't wait to wake up in the morning and practice and play. And I love the sound. It was Steve Reich, I went to go hear him at Carnegie Hall. And it was so beautiful. It was a brand new piece. And there is nothing like being at Carnegie Hall. And you get out of it and everybody is on the street on 7th Avenue, walking down after being through this most glorious thing.
Moving air and sharing that kind of thing, I just live for it. I don't care what it is, if it's got heart and passion and soul I want to hear it, I want to know about it. And I want to keep going. And I don't care whether it's in a club that holds 10 people or a bar that Walter is going to play tonight. I think the pandemic made me just realize how lucky we are to have music in our lives and share that. That's all. I don't know if that makes any sense.
Leah Roseman:
It makes a lot of sense. Well thanks so much for your time today.
Pat Irwin:
Thanks.
Leah Roseman:
I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Thanks for following the series on your favorite podcast player and sharing your favorite episodes with your friends, all of which help find new listeners. I have lots more episodes coming in this season three with a fascinating diversity of musicians and their stories in music. Have a great week.
