LA was proving itself to be every bit as surreal as I’d envisioned it would be.
I was beyond nervous about delivering my talk. I hadn’t exactly accomplished anything of note in my career, and I’d never done any public speaking. The longer I fixated on these two truths, the more apprehensive I became. Luckily, the event organizers had thought to set me up with an acting coach, who would help me edit and fine-tune the timing of my speech. But between trying to memorize my lines verbatim and practice delivering them with the almost unnatural level of enthusiasm my coach was insisting on, the rehearsal left me feeling even less comfortable when my turn came to hit the stage.
I cringe when I watch that talk today—particularly at my halfhearted attempt to jokingly shush the audience—but all in all, it went fairly well, especially given my lack of experience and fraying nerves. In typical, cutting-it-close tech industry fashion, Emote CTRL was finished mere hours before the conference commenced. It worked as planned, though, and I even received a partial standing ovation after closing out my demonstration with a mashup of “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “What a Wonderful World.” After succeeding in not crashing and burning onstage and in making what felt like a solid impression on the very important people of the business world who were in attendance, I was able to walk away with a new sense of purpose and a more secure sense of self. I was going to take these silly online experiments and turn them into a profitable business.
Returning to NYC with an entrepreneurial charge zipping through me and my inhibiting perfectionism finally in check, I decided the time had come to release my first solo piano album, Mashups by Candlelight. As you probably could guess, I used Robert Restaurant as my studio, bringing a flash recorder and two condenser mics to the recording session—which was actually just another night at the restaurant. The tracks I recorded offered a thoughtful and striking contrast to my earlier, more frenetic ragtime transformations. I’m inclined to call my playing more “mature,” but to describe a mashup of the viral “Trololo” song and a popular tune from Sesame Street as “mature” might qualify as a stretch.
Mature or not, I took pleasure in coming up with clever names for the album’s mashups; a Rihanna/Radiohead combo became “We Found Love in a Creepy Place,” and a Coldplay/Tears for Fears mashup became “When I Ruled the Mad World.” The finished product of my Robert recording session was a complete solo piano album that captured my sensibilities as a pianist pretty nicely. I released the album to my fans online, and by the end of the day, I’d made over two hundred dollars in sales, which was about the same sum that I would have earned playing a three-hour gig on the piano. When I woke the next morning and checked my email, I was delighted to see that I’d sold another forty dollars’ worth of downloads overnight—concrete evidence that I was, indeed, making money in my sleep. Now that was an exciting development.
Looking back, I can see now that those early days on YouTube were my artistic equivalent of “naked baby photos.” Many artists hate their naked baby photos, often doing everything in their power to ensure that their early work is never discovered in order to create the illusion that they sprung forth into this world fully formed, like Athena from the head of Zeus. (“Mythology 101” was one of the few classes in high school I never cut.) I think this inclination artists have to bury what’s rough and not yet fully formed is a huge mistake. Fans want to witness the growth and maturation of the artists they love; they want to see the messy false starts, and they recognize that these early works are intended to be representative not of an artist’s entire output but a piece of it. And that piece—every piece—is essential to understanding and appreciating the whole. A body of work, no matter how masterful, is nothing without its individual parts.
FROM PIANIST TO PRODUCER
Even with a few viral videos and a TEDx talk to my name, I still thought of myself as a pianist—and only a pianist. After all, it was my piano playing that was getting me attention on the Internet. It’s a strange phenomenon, but meeting with even a minor degree of success and validation in one field (or, in this case, on one instrument) can make it harder to venture away from that comfort zone and into uncharted territory than if no amount of success or validation had been experienced at all. It took a prominent figure in the video game industry pointing out to me my skill as an arranger before I was able to embrace it in myself, along with the enticement of a top-secret project requiring that I put that skill to use, for me to shrug off my identity as “only a pianist” and step into something less restrictive.
Internet trends have a history of being fleeting, and so I feared my popularity on the web would fade, someday, as quickly as it had arrived. At the same time, though, I was hopeful that someone in the entertainment world would take note of what I was doing with my mashups and offer me a job. And then, in April 2010, my wish was granted.
A man named Jim Bonney, who was the audio lead for a company called Irrational Games, had reached out to me by email after seeing my ’80s-hits-as-ragtime compilation video. He wondered whether I might be interested in putting my skill of turning modern songs into ragtime to work on a big project that he was developing. I wasn’t familiar with many video games post–Super Mario Kart, but a quick Google search confirmed that Irrational Games was a well-known video game studio. Intrigued, and feeling confident that this was a real lead, I set up a phone call with him to find out more.
Jim explained that the project would involve my demoing a bunch of songs from the ’70s and ’80s in a turn-of-the-century piano style, and if the game’s legendary creative director, Ken Levine, felt that my material worked, it would end up in the game itself. Due to the secrecy and speculation that surrounds popular video game releases, I would have to sign a nondisclosure agreement and keep my participation in this project secret for the next couple years, until the game was released. I was told that I would be paid well for all of this, though the fee had yet to be determined.
When I got off the phone, I drew in a long, deep breath. This was the biggest professional opportunity I’d ever had, and I was determined to knock it out of the park. When it came to contracts, I was a complete neophyte, so the first thing I did was call a lawyer friend to get some advice. I had no idea how to negotiate a contract or even what deal points to include; the extent of my previous business negotiations had, for the most part, revolved around whether I could score a free meal after I’d finished playing a gig. I also contacted a few other arrangers who’d done music for film in the hopes that they’d let me pick their brains.
Over the years, I’ve made a habit of asking professionals with unlike areas of expertise for advice whenever I find myself venturing out of my comfort zone and into theirs for the first time. It’s a habit that’s served me well time and again—and certainly far better than letting ego stand between me and the information I need. There’s no shame in allowing yourself to lean on others’ expertise and become the student again; the only shame would be in not returning the favor should your wisdom be sought out someday. Most people—myself included!—love doling out wisdom, especially on subjects they’ve dealt with for most of their professional lives. It’s a big, confusing world out there, especially in the entertainment industry, and it’s important to actively develop for yourself a team of unofficial advisors that you can turn to for help in navigating the myriad decisions and dilemmas you’ll undoubtedly encounter in life.
As I said, handling serious contracts was far, far outside my wheelhouse, and so it was an exciting milestone for me when I negotiated my first work-for-hire agreement as an arranger. The fee was much larger than any I’d received before, for any type of project. For fun, I included in my notes to the contract a request that my likeness be featured as an in-game character. They made no promises on that one, but they also didn’t say “no.”
I didn’t know so much as the name of the game or even its general plot; Jim just selected a handful of songs from the ’70s and ’80s and told me to go to town on them. I set up my apartment as a mak
eshift studio, connecting my keyboard to my computer and recording simple demos of each song. I toed the line, intent on making the demos sound as authentically period as possible, even when it meant dialing back my own piano style. “Tainted Love,” for instance, got a bluesy Jelly Roll Morton treatment, while I imagined “Shiny Happy People” with an Al Jolson–style Great Depression vibe, in the tradition of upbeat songs like “Happy Days Are Here Again.”
Much to my relief, Jim loved the arrangements. He even found an incredible singer named Miche Braden to sing a Bessie Smith–style blues vocal on “Tainted Love,” which we recorded in Studio B at Avatar Studios in New York City.
Whenever I think back on that experience at Avatar, I break out into a huge smile. It was a fantastic day and probably one of my favorite memories ever. I can see it now with perfect clarity: Miche in the vocal booth at Studio B, cheekily ad-libbing, “Oh, play that piano, Scotty Boy!!” to the piano track I’d recorded. Having grown up in Detroit during the Motown era, Miche truly embodied the stories of the songs she sang. She’d received music lessons from Earl Van Dyke of the Funk Brothers in her youth and had lent her voice to many soul records in the ’70s and ’80s, before becoming a star of the musical theatre stage in New York City. Her recent portrayal of Bessie Smith in The Devil’s Music had earned her a Drama Desk nomination for “Best Actress in a Musical,” and it was through a YouTube clip of this show that Jim learned of her powerful voice.
“I bet it’s a treat to hear that voice singing over your piano,” Jim said, observing my delight. He was beyond right. It was the first time I had ever recorded one of my “vintage” song arrangements with a vocalist, so automatically it was going to have special significance for me. But that this vocalist just happened to be a legend—well, it elevated the experience to utterly new heights. At points during the recording session, I had to silently remind myself that this was real life because it all just felt so beyond my wildest dreams. When Miche leaned into the high notes with the full power of her voice, I got intense chills. It was one thing to play these arrangements on piano, but it was something else entirely to hear them interpreted by an incredible singer.
In the end, many of my arrangements for BioShock Infinite (yes, Jim finally told me the game’s name) wound up getting cut, mostly due to the difficulty of securing rights from the publishers of the original songs. This bummed me out a little, but the immense pride I felt for the tracks that did make it in stopped me from dwelling on the disappointment too long: “Tainted Love,” “Shiny Happy People” (which, fittingly, featured an Al Jolson impersonator named Tony Babbino), the jazz standard “After You’ve Gone,” and a waltz version of the Tears for Fears hit number “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” That last one I pictured being sung by an Irish tenor, and I recorded myself doing my best impression of just that as a temporary vocal on the demo. To my surprise, Ken Levine took such a liking to it that he wound up using it in the game. If you’re playing and make it to the end, stick around for a few minutes; you’ll hear me singing in my best old-timey voice as the closing credits roll.
In March 2013, after a few worrisome delays, BioShock Infinite was released—at long last—to critical acclaim. The anachronistic pop songs I’d worked so hard on were a big hit with players—and with the fictional characters who inhabited BioShock’s world, too. That’s right: They’d been factored into the storyline as the purported compositions of a man named Albert Fink, who infamously stole hit songs from the future and passed them off as his own. Fink’s reputation loomed large in Columbia—the fictional world that provided the setting for the game—despite making only one physical appearance in the game. It was never outright confirmed for me, but it would seem that my request for an in-game character had been honored: His eyes bear a striking resemblance to my own.
Working on BioShock Infinite was thrilling and gratifying for so many obvious reasons, but it was perhaps the quiet, personal revelation it led me to have that made me appreciate it the most: It helped me to understand that my YouTube experiments could be much more than clever, ephemeral viral videos. BioShock afforded me the ability to add renowned vocal talent to my arrangements, and by doing so I came to see—for the first time and with such clarity—that what I produced could stand on its own as great music, gimmicks aside. Suddenly, I no longer viewed myself as merely a pianist. I had become, in my own eyes, a producer.
FINDING INSPIRATION IN THE MOST UNLIKELY PLACES
I want to thank you all…”
I was standing onstage in a foreign country, speaking to a thousand cheering fans who’d congregated that day to see us perform. People were dancing and holding aloft signs, adorned with the name of our group and lines of lyrics from some of the more crowd-pleasing songs we play. Behind me, my band was jamming on a Motown groove that sounded a bit like “Heatwave” by Martha and the Vandellas. Only it wasn’t “Heatwave”; it wasn’t even one of our songs. In fact, it was “How You Remind Me” by the band Nickelback, and my band, A Motown Tribute to Nickelback, was playing at a major Canadian music festival.
Allow me to digress for a minute before explaining how I found myself in this amazing situation. As you may or may not know, Nickelback occupies that most notable position in the pantheon of modern music: the position of being at once extremely successful and extremely reviled. Have you ever witnessed an otherwise reasonable, level-headed person become downright enraged when the topic of Nickelback comes up? Well, I have, and let me tell you, it’s highly amusing. While I perhaps never went out of my way to listen to their songs or see them play, I also couldn’t get onboard the Nickelback Hate Wagon (and not just because it was at full capacity already).
In the scheme of things, Nickelback actually does the “band” thing very well—they play their instruments and sing with skill, they put on a great show for their fans, and, as far as I know, they don’t go around kicking puppies. This might come as something of a disappointment (no, not the puppy part; what I’m about to say), but I have a soft spot for performers who get bashed by critics. The criticism leveled at mainstream acts has the reputation of being harsh and indiscriminate, with bands often judged not just on the basis of their musical ability but also for what they represent.
Watching an inoffensively mainstream act achieve such soaring heights of success has a way of throwing into stark relief the fact that many brilliant, boundary-pushing artists will never receive a fraction of such attention. Critics, meanwhile, seem to justify their vitriol as a tool by which to restore order in the world and knock obscenely successful performers down a peg. It’s one thing to be of the mind that Nickelback is sort of bland; it’s a whole other thing to condemn them as the “worst band in the world.” I’ve been to quite a few open mics and dive bars in my day, and trust me when I say that Nickelback is far from the worst band in the world.
Regardless of my feelings about Nickelback, and regardless of whether you agree, you’re no doubt still wondering how they came to factor so prominently in my life story that they’ve got their own chapter. Pull up a chair.
In the fall of 2011, tens of thousands of Detroit residents were so incensed by the news that Nickelback was booked to play their hometown Lions’ Thanksgiving Day halftime show that they turned to that comfortably low-investment form of activism championed by Millennials everywhere: an Internet petition. Indeed, a change.org petition that cited Detroit’s rich Motown history and demanded that a more suitable musical act take Nickelback’s place was making the online media rounds. I sensed a massive opportunity to exploit this slightly ridiculous headline for viral video glory.
The brainstorming session that led to A Motown Tribute to Nickelback took place over lunchtime sandwiches in a SoHo grocery store. The musicians in attendance: Tim Kubart, my colleague from the pre-preschool music program, drummer friend Chip Thomas, and me.
I raised the topic of the Nickelback drama and proposed that we record a Motown version of the band’s “How You Remind Me.” My thinking was, it would be a g
reat nudge to Nickelback and the hostile change.org petitioners to reconcile their differences—that, and it would likely result in a bounty of media coverage for us. Tim and Chip wholeheartedly agreed that this was a terrific idea, with Tim suggesting that I include a tambourine player on the track, since a lot of televised musical performances in the ’60s included a square tambourine player enthusiastically bopping to the beat.
“I own a tambourine,” Tim volunteered, after a beat.
“Perfect!” I said. “Now I just need a percussionist who can play it.”
“I could play it,” Tim said.
I winced. Tim was a very good guitarist and singer, but I had heard him attempt to play drums before. I didn’t think that was something we needed to subject the entire state of Michigan to.
“Yeah… um… I’ll let you know.”
Setting aside my misgivings about Tim on tambourine, I focused on the bigger challenge: where to find a soul singer who could convincingly channel that Motown sound and really sell the arrangement I’d put together. Miche would have been perfect, but she was in Boston; it was the early days of my burgeoning career as a producer, and I wasn’t yet confident enough in my abilities to bring a superstar vocalist over state lines—and to cover a Nickelback song, no less. With less than forty-eight hours until Thanksgiving and the clock ticking, I had nearly resigned myself to the sad fact that A Motown Tribute to Nickelback would exist only in my dreams.
Then I remembered Drue Davis.
Outside the Jukebox_How I Turned My Vintage Music Obsession Into My Dream Gig Page 7