John McEueun: Concentrating On Music Scores

When talking to John McEuen you get the impression that the man has done it all. He is an innovative instrumentalist who spent twenty-one years as the musical catalyst of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. He has played with everyone from Jose Feliciano to the Rolling Stones. Most might know John for his enigmatic banjo style, but he plays everything (including the dancing mandolin on “Mr. Bojangles”). If it’s got strings on it, John can pick it.

When talking to John McEuen you get the impression that the man has done it all. He is an innovative instrumentalist who spent twenty-one years as the musical catalyst of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. He has played with everyone from Jose Feliciano to the Rolling Stones. Most might know John for his enigmatic banjo style, but he plays everything (including the dancing mandolin on “Mr. Bojangles”). If it’s got strings on it, John can pick it.

What you might not know about John is that he is a talented composer of film scores. To date his most noteworthy score was for the TNT original film, The Good Old boys directed by Tommy Lee Jones. He also composed the score for the PBS National Geographic documentary Braving Alaska and The Music Of the Wild West for TNN.

John gets all of his scoring gigs on his own by sending tapes to producers and actors just like a songwriter might pitch a demo to an artist. Recently, I had a chance to sit down with John and ask him about film scoring and composition.

“The thing that’s exciting about a movie score is that you’re writing an assignment for a specific purpose,” explains John. “It’s very much like saying, ‘we’ve got this singer and she needs a song with lyrics of this type.’ You don’t want to give a song to a twenty year old singer about divorce if she hasn’t experienced it. So you have certain commands when you go into the job. There’s an opening theme and a closing theme. There’s an underscore that plays under the action and the dialogue. There’s source music that takes place in the background of a scene and there’s the special featured song. So between all those jobs, the scoring person might be responsible for ten different styles of music.”

Part of scoring a film is writing a theme that is immediately identifiable with the central character. While working on The Good Old Boys, John had the chance to collaborate closely with Tommy Lee Jones on how the music would be presented. They got together and John played several different instruments as Tommy Lee listened and read from the script. The character of Huey is a loner drifting through West Texas in the early part of this century. He is torn between settling down on the ranch were he cowboys and coming to terms with his restless nature that drives him down the trail to the next job. John recalls Tommy saying, “You know when you play in that open tuning, that’s Huey.” Whenever you see his character you hear that soulful lone guitar.

The main theme of the film deals with technology slowly making the cowboy obsolete. In one scene, Tommy’s character comes into a store, and John thinks it would be nice to have an old record playing on the Victrola.

“Tommy’s character stands there for a few seconds and marvels at this new machine while the music’s playing. I had to make 1906 style recording. I found the song, arranged it and recorded it with Renee Grant Williams doing an operatic vocal. I had to put scratches on it and wedge it in to the picture. Thirty seconds later in the same scene Sissy Spacek’s character (Spring Renfro) comes into the store. She and Huey see each other for the first time and their eyes meet. This had to be a sensitive underscoring moment that didn’t get in the way of the meeting, that had to reflect the tonality of their tangled discussion with each other and that was all about romance without saying it. Then there was a dead cut to Tommy riding a bronco in a corral that was just straight ahead up-tempo bluegrass with a bunch of hoots and yells and horse snorts under it.”

A few scenes later Tommy needed a song for Spring Renfro to play at the ranch house. This scene was to establish that she was a school teacher and she could play a little piano along with some friend on autoharp and mandolin. John wanted the scene to feel natural and he suggested the players learn to play the instruments and o the take live as opposed to lip syncing.

“I needed a forty-five second song I wrote one called “For the Love of a True Woman’s Heart.” I had to write it to make it sound like an old song.”

Often as a score writer, background sound effects have to be taken into consideration when composing the music that will fit into a scene without crowding the action. John described a hypothetical situation in a film where the music and sound effects have to work together to fit with the overall scene.

“Say you have a two minute scene in a movie. You just sit there and watch it but you don’t realize the underscore. When the hero gets in to his car the radio is blaring the country music. He gets out and runs into the bar and there’s a jazz band playing, and then something else when he comes out of the bar and fires the shots from his gun. If it’s a two minute scene you want a certain tempo, say it’s ninety beats per minute. The scene starts when he says,”have you seen my girl?” (John mimicks a low-end Schwartzenegger type drum beat). When his car door slams you don’t want a whole lot of low end around it. When a gun goes off you don’t want a drum going boom-boom-boom. Every time there is dialogue or a sound effect the score can’t get in the way of anything. It has to be a totally supportive role. You’ll have source music mixed in with the underscore and none of it can get in the way of the music or the sound effects because in the final edit they’ll turn it down and leave it there.”

John worked closely with keyboardist/producer Dave Hoffner on the Emmy nominated documentary Braving Alaska. They had little, if any, time to prepare for the job so it was a real test of their relevant to the piece without knowing anything about it.

“The thing about the music job with film is that it usually takes about an average of seven years to get a project to the screen. In that seven years they spend about six years and nine months making the film. Out of that nine months, the last three is spent editing. Somewhere in the middle of that editing they say,” We need some music. Find a music guy.” They find you and say, “OK, you’ve got six weeks.” You may not have any clue what it is and you’ve got six weeks to write, arrange, record, mix and lay back(to film).”

In film scoring the ego has to be checked at the door. It becomes more important to play the supportive role to the director’s overall vision. As a musician McEuen might hear something that he personally likes aesthetically but it may not fit the scene.

“You must listen to the director. He probably has ideas that may not agree with you but are better for the film. Braving Alaska was difficult because several people had to agree on the final mix. We were playing the music back for approval one day ad the main guy said, “Yeah the opening is just perfect but when the airplane comes over the valley, who died?” It was a little dark and he wanted it ot be happy-go-lucky, so we went to a harmonica. We had made some music that fit in the space but it didn’t set you up for the coming mood.”

Writing for films can be a lucrative way for songwriters to get their music out to the public in a way that is different from just pitching tunes to a publisher or an artist. Performing rights organizations pay pretty decent royalties on even the shortest cues for television, radio, and film.

“I think songwriters should realize that they shouldn’t throw away and melody. If you’ve got a fourteen bar melody that you can’t finish, save it somewhere. There’s a lot of use for things like that in film. Keep in mind that melodies are important in instrumental backup to film. Songwriters should look to what they do and explore the question, “How am I going to make a living in life.” In other words, are you just a gas station or are you also gonna do repairs, or sell some convenience store stuff? Just on the cold front of making a living, it’s tough if you’re only going to write songs for certain kinds of situations. A music score person has the ad vantage that some of what they do might become a commercial record with a person singing it who is already established.

“I’ve got a film job for this winter called The Perfect Christmas. I wrote the theme song for it and I called Crystal Gayle to see if she would sing it. I sent her a demo and she said yes. So that will put me in the studio sometime this fall producing a session of a song I wrote with Crystal Gayle, instead of submitting it to the artist hoping the A&R person will listen to it thinking they might record it a year later (if ever). So it’s a different avenue.” So maybe you’ve got some extra melodies lying around. Maybe it’s a guitar tune or part of a chorus to your favorite song that Don Cook doesn’t have time to listen to. Think about using it in a score. Find a local business that doesn’t have enough money to license the rights to “Like a Rock.”

You may never have thought of film scoring, or it may be you’re main career goal. Either way, it’s an exciting field for an independently minded person to be into. Doing the local ad for the First National Bank of Arkansas may not be very glamorous but it might put some change in your pocket while you’re waiting for Speilberg to call about the theme song for Jurassic Park VI.