{"id":478,"date":"2011-03-31T05:12:47","date_gmt":"2011-03-31T10:12:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=478"},"modified":"2011-03-31T05:12:47","modified_gmt":"2011-03-31T10:12:47","slug":"broadway-the-hard-way-a-conversation-with-richard-x-heyman-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2011\/03\/31\/broadway-the-hard-way-a-conversation-with-richard-x-heyman-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"Broadway the Hard Way: A Conversation with Richard X Heyman (part two)"},"content":{"rendered":"

continued from part one<\/a>…<\/em><\/p>\n

Bill Kopp:<\/span><\/strong> There seems to be less reliance on samples and keyboard-sourcing of sounds on the new music; you\u2019re employing real players for the cello, violin, trumpet etc. <\/span><\/p>\n

Richard X Heyman:<\/strong> As much as possible, yeah. We had a budget, so we\u2019d have people come in and play one thing at a time, and then try to make it sound like an orchestra. I definitely wanted it to sound almost like a Broadway pit orchestra, with a really organic feel. I grew up to listening to stuff like West Side Story<\/em>; it\u2019s in my soul. Not just rock\u2019n\u2019roll: jazz, blues, gospel.<\/p>\n

BK:<\/span><\/strong> You call the paired albums a \u201cpopera.\u201d Now, even on something like Tommy<\/em> or Quadrophenia<\/em> there are linking pieces, short compositions that serve to tie things together but that aren\u2019t really designed to stand on their own. On these albums I don\u2019t really hear much of that; every piece seems to move things along. Was that by design?<\/span><\/p>\n

RXH:<\/strong> A lot of that was just to keep the length down. Because as it is, it\u2019s already thirty songs. If it was ever staged as a pop opera, we could retool it. If we just put the songs end to end\u2026you know, if you go to an opera, it\u2019s just a group of songs one after the other. So they just segue from one to the other, and it becomes this whole long piece.<\/p>\n

All that\u2019s semantics. It\u2019s a story told in music. Songs. So what do you call that? A pop opera.<\/p>\n

BK:<\/span><\/strong> What are your plans in terms of performing this music? Will you just work some of the songs into a set? Or would it be more performing it as a unified, start-to-finish piece?<\/span><\/p>\n

RXH:<\/strong> I haven\u2019t even really been thinking about performing it. I\u2019ve been so busy with the Doughboys<\/strong>. I have an idea that we\u2019re going to do a record release presentation with modern dance and ballet. We\u2019re going to rent a theatre out. But it\u2019s going to be the actual record being played, with live dancing and film behind it. That\u2019s something that we\u2019re probably going to film for a DVD. We\u2019ll do that here in New York. So we have the beginning stages of it, and we\u2019re getting dancers together. The songs are so visual; as we were working on it, I kept seeing [in my mind] a ballet on certain songs. I\u2019d say, \u201cThis one would be great with a visual image; maybe we could this or that friend to do a film for this.\u201d I\u2019m picturing a nice theatre with a big screen. And maybe even some play actors doing a pantomime or something like that.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re hoping to get it onstage this summer. We can\u2019t make any promises, because we have to get all these people together. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

BK:<\/span><\/strong> Aside from all this, what else are you up to? What\u2019s next for you?<\/span><\/p>\n

RXH:<\/strong> I\u2019ve already started the next album. What happened was, we recorded a lot more songs than were included. See, this was supposed to just be a single album. I was originally going to get it all on one album. Then I came up with the idea of the twofer. We didn\u2019t want it to seem like a double album; I know when people see two discs in one package, they think of it as a double album. And listening to the whole thing at once is too overwhelming; that\u2019s what I was trying to avoid. I want people to concentrate on the Tiers<\/em> album, and that in and of itself is long: it\u2019s over an hour of music.<\/p>\n

But together, it\u2019s too much. And people are compelled to review it as all-in-one. I was hoping that people would concentrate on Tiers<\/em> as the main course, and then the other album could be reviewed separately. People are set in their ways: they see two discs in one package, and it\u2019s a double album.<\/p>\n

The two are connected. But And Other Stories<\/em> picks up the story with me moving back east, and the songs aren\u2019t in any sort of chronological order. It touches on various things I was interested in. there are songs about 9\/11 on there, and there are songs about friends dying, contemplating the baby boom generation sort of slowly disappearing. Contemplating my own death, really.<\/p>\n

BK:<\/span><\/strong> In connection with some of your more recent albums, you\u2019ve made available a bonus disc for fans. Rightovers<\/em>, for example. <\/span><\/p>\n

RXH:<\/strong> Not that they\u2019re lesser songs, but the tracks on the second album are sort of a bonus album. In hindsight, that\u2019s what I should have done. Because based on the reaction I\u2019m getting from people, they\u2019re so overloaded. In today\u2019s short attention span world, it\u2019s asking a lot.<\/p>\n

BK:<\/span><\/strong> I\u2019ve always liked the clear, straightforward sonics of your albums. I think these new discs are even a couple notches above that. <\/span><\/p>\n

RXH:<\/strong> I think I finally figured out where to keep it empty, to have those \u201choles.\u201d And I think the lack of a layer of guitars opens up a whole spectrum of frequencies. So my vocal is in a different spot, sitting on top of piano and strings. And I really got into how you use a trombone: what role does a trombone play, an oboe play. I based it on listening to a lot of Broadway growing up, and classical.<\/p>\n

BK:<\/span><\/strong> In rock\u2019n\u2019roll, to some extent you can almost hide behind an electric guitar when it\u2019s bashing away. But when you have a bunch of instruments that each can only play one note at a time, the melody and the performance have got to carry the song.<\/span><\/p>\n

RXH:<\/strong> Hopefully. The arrangements serve the song. When I started this album, I said, \u201cI want to do an album like Joni Mitchell<\/strong>\u2019s Ladies of the Canyon<\/em> or Blue<\/em>. There\u2019s virtually no drums on those; maybe a bit of hand percussion. So that\u2019s the kind of album I really wanted to make. But being a drummer, I said, \u201cI want to put drums on this.\u201d So we rented studio time and I cut drum tracks like I normally would. But I did them last; on all my other albums I do the drums first.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t want to make a pop album. I wanted to make something a little more arty, I guess.<\/p>\n

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continued from part one… Bill Kopp: There seems to be less reliance on samples and keyboard-sourcing of sounds on the new music; you\u2019re employing real players for the cello, violin, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interview","cat-41-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}