Pushkin.
Patrick Watson first came to international attention in two thousand and seven when his album Close to Paradise won the Polaris Music Prize that's Canada's most prestigious award for Canadian artists. Over the course of his career, the Montreal based singer and composer a built a devoted following through his orchestral pop arrangements, his remarkable tenor voice, and live performances that blend intimacy with a theatric sensibility. Watson's music has found
his second life far beyond his core fan base. His song Jette Lacere des Mont became a viral phenomenon years after its release, accumulating hundreds of millions of streams after being discovered by a new generation on social media. His songs have also found their way to television shows like The Walking Dead and Grey's Anatomy, bringing his sound to
audiences worldwide. On today's episode, Bruce Seldom talks to Patrick Watson about making his playful and adventurous new record uh Oh, an album he recorded after recovering from a vocal cord hemorrhage on tour. Because of his injury, Patrick chose to feature a ton of guest artists on his new album in the style of hip hop features This is broken record,
real musicians, real conversations. Here's Bruce Headlam speaking to Patrick Watson to begin with the performance of a song called House on Fire featuring Ariel Engel also known as La Force sitting in.
I'll be ro and yoube right.
I don't know.
That's all right.
I keep trying to see your side, even though I just I don't know.
How we are words, we are stones, swirls down silver weed, areful wain did all go?
How'd your eyes got?
So you can wrap your truth and riveted bows? But I just don't know how to be alone? And I'm a man made out of homes. But tell me something loud already I'll be wrong, You'll be wrong. I don't mind it's wrong. I just want to make and man.
Just can fly his.
King cross while said our house so far, our.
House is a very fine out speak got housh we gole you take your hands and cuppy wars screams so loud that the neighbors.
Can be.
But I don't want you this. I was yours, your man. There was so much on the line you're not keep chance your sad.
Es.
Here's some Milosnamaker.
Drank the rain and bent to the sun.
When we will now we're counting down, when.
We can take the pictures off the walls, the budgets in the hall, when we walk down the doors.
I don't love you anymore? Can't you hear those voices called.
Can't you hear.
Those voices called? Can't you hear those voices called?
Fall?
Love to break this.
Fall, love to brig this, fall.
For love to break this. I'll be wrong, You'll be right out of my This.
Is all the most one, and I can't see through all the tears. I can't see through all the years.
I can carry the weight of our lives.
I can carry all lost lives.
I can't see through all the tears. I can't see through all the years.
I'll be wrong, you be right out of mine. It's all right. I just want a man, right.
Welcome, Patrick Watson, you're here. Talk about you or your ninth album.
I'm not counting.
You're not counting like.
It's bad luck. I'm not sure if it's eight or nine because they probably didn't count the book one. But I don't know. I'm gonna go with I don't want to know.
Okay, we don't know what album this is, but we do know what it's called, and it's called uh oh. And of course you're here with Ariel Engel, who people would know from Broken Social Scene from her own and you're still performing as Force, Force and Patrick. A lot of people would know your music in the States, particularly probably from movies.
To Build a Home was the first one that s can really make ways. I mean it was like from anything from Gray's Anatomy to like The Walking to music and The Walking Dead. This is us when he dies, it's to build a Home with.
The toaster follow really okay, Yeah, it was a song like someone dies in a series.
Yeah, and then it ruins a serious for me because I can't take it seriously. It ruined The Walking Dead for me.
I couldn't yehause hearing your own song, I couldn't.
Take seriously after that guy was so into that show. And then and then, funny enough, recently, when TikTok and Instagram happened, the similar thing happened because a lot of my music plays twelve images. And then a French song out of the middle nowhere became another kind of song that started playing everywhere. So I have a strange career, you know.
Yeah, Well in that song is you have the I think the most played French language song on Spotify.
You have like a.
Billion first one across a billion streams, which is incredible because you're you were born in California, right, I.
Was born in California. I moved to CA back when I was two, so I have very little memory. My dad was a test pilot in the desert.
You're dad was a test pilot. Yeah, you're a rock star and you're the second coolest person in your family.
He literally you know what makes it even worse, He won the Top Gun Award and he used to have it in my bedroom and it was like this, like this kind of a shell of a missile. And then we didn't really realize. And then when the movie Top Gun came out with Tom Cruise, where because it's all about that award, right, realized in our bedroom he had actually won that award. And then my other brother is
cooler than me too, My brother Jamie. He's also a pilot and he has the most hours of any other C one thirty three pilot in like from like I think ninety two to ninety eighty, did Rwanda Sirievo Iraq wore he would be that last plane in and out or those low level flying He's a very decorated pilot and uh and has been through circumstances that I could my depth cannot match his depth of experiences. So I and then my other brother's kind of coolly just based.
I think I think of the last of my family of the cool cool.
But yeah, okay, profession.
I know, I know. This was like a professional figure skater for crinel out on the Canadian team. My other sister, Heidi, is the one who built all the metro stations, the head engineer in Los Angeles and does all the water cheating plants and like leads construction sites and she's this really lovely lady who just kills it. So I've really literally the least cool.
Wow. Well, let's let's go over some of your underachievements there, and let's start with the new album Great, which is a very interesting genesis and I'd like you to talk about that.
When I titled uh oh, the original inspiration was at one point I had like totally broken my voice and we were playing a show in Atlanta, and we were playing the song here Comes the River, and I just oversang it, especially because when you sing in the South, you feel this kind of like this debt to the place. So much music that was origining from there, so when you play there, you feel this debt that you have
to pay. And I remember doing that show. It was a very small audience, and I was trying to pay that debt because there was so much inspiration from the South, and I oversang and blew my chords out. We woke up in Philadelphia the e and t's like, you've paralyzed your vocal chords.
Now, did you know it when you were singing?
Yes, I didn't know how much trouble I was in because it slowly started to get worse after the show. Then when I woke up there was no more sound, and there was no more sound for three months. That came out of the chords and the other part of the genus of the record when we talk about the title, because we're working towards the uh oh, is that like for the last seven years, you wake up, every time
you open the newspaper, you're always like, oh oh. It's just like we're in this constant uh oh, And I thought that that would be a fun way to approach a record in these times, just being like, oh, oh, what you gonna do about it?
I'm interested you when you blow out your your vocal chords. I imagine given the business you are in, people have lots of recommendations like go to this guy he did Mariah Carey, or this guy does Celine Dion or something. Did you like seek out who you could finds.
A hemorrhage, you know, like it was on a node. It was an operation. Some blood vessels broke out, so there was this complete perilous of the chords. So it's not an operation you do to fix it. The doctors didn't really know if I'd sing again. And then me being a little bit of a science chunky, I'd been done so much research. We're just like reading science journals that I knew that when athletes had really big problem
they would going to hyperbaric auction chambers. We just put you on a pressure because when a diver gets like blood poisoning, they found that all the other wounds would start to heal quicker when they put them into the hyperbaric chambers. So to be honest, like no one told me to do that. I'm super clausophobic. It's a little glass jar. I was not feeling it, but I tried it and I could start making a noise.
The next day, when you started this album, was your voice back?
It slowly came back. When I did Celencio, it was still not really great, and I didn't know if I wanted to sing or not. And then I was with Nova and we were sitting in this like really beautiful apartment above Mamouth in Paris we had rented, and we had like two mics and a laptop, like a real simple audio setup, and we just talked about she had recently not loss of voice, but became very unhealthy. She couldn't breathe for like three months because of touring. And
she's a very sweet and favorite talented person. And then while we talked, we had all these conversations and then I just started singing again, kind of naturally in a conversation, not in an attempt, and it was quite lovely because the singing on that song, I'm not really singing in that song, you know, it's much more talkie than I normally would have done, which was I think a really nice accident saying we started that intro in Spanish because
I loved that language musically. It's one of the most beautiful musical languages you can, you know, the world has, you know, And so I'd ask Nova originally to sing in Spanish because she can do it in such a lovely way. So the idea bind the collaborations were what can I not do? I didn't want to add to what I already do. I would look for people that
could be a different perspective, more in the tradition. I would think of a hip hop feature, meaning that you would have like two verses, and the two verses talk about two different stories even and it doesn't really matter. And I really admired that freedom they had in that strung sure. What I really wanted at the collaborations was people speaking over me and maybe not agreeing with me,
not necessarily singing harmony with me. Laf False I had invited because it was the most personal song on the record, and I've sing with her years and I don't I couldn't really sing with anybody else.
Some of the songs seem like something close to a classic duet. Some of them seem like arguments. It's interesting every interaction with the other singer is a little bit.
Unique to them.
Unique.
They're all like people that I would want to sing like first and all. And then some people ask me, like, why is it no woman? I'm like, listen, I just picked the best singers I could find, Like, that's not a gender thing. It's like also, it was really a
question of like perspectives, like Martha Wainwright. Example of Martha is that she's fire like I do not have that fire that she has behind her voice, and I wanted to experience what it was like to sing with someone and write with someone with that kind of like bold fire that I don't have access to. It's her magic power. So a lot of these decisions were based on that. I'm like, what is like to sing with Martha?
You like?
It was very selfish. So land this French singer the way she like lands her words. It's very hard to sing in French, very hard language to sing in.
And why is that?
Because it every bloody word ends with a vowel and it takes like fifty words to say the same thing it says three words in English, So you really need to be a wordsmith to succeed at it. And you really have a finesse of any your words is extremely challenging for people outside the language to like it. There's a few examples, like Gainsbourg, but games Book has this lovely He's almost like a Leno cone kind of delivery, like really dry and wordy, and it's funny the way
he finishes his words. And the thing about French too is if it's too like if I say I love you in French, like as a really kind of on my sleeves kind of way meaning it, it doesn't work. You need to say it in a way that's a bit witty and it needs to be a little bit ironic, with a little bit of like a little bit tongue
in cheek for it to have the same impact. So we're English, I could say like clouds fire love and people make some sort of connection, or French you need to be witty as Bob Dylan to get away with it or else it just doesn't work.
It doesn't land for a French audience, it.
Doesn't land for anybody like. It's not a language that works that way. It's a very intellectual language. It's it's a language that was developed in literature. English was a language developed in trade, you know, it developed in a way that you could communicate very easily in multiple scenarios. And when you have like Spanish or Italian, these are developed in poetry and songs, so that's why they roll off the tongue like magical.
We'll be back with more from Patrick Watson.
When I listen to your music, it reminds me of a lot of other Montreal artists, Leonard Cohens and one of them in the Garagols. Yeah, you want to go way back, but there are so many influences that you don't typically find in I'll call it pop music.
Ye.
People struggle to label your music. I try not to work in labels. But I look it up it's like it was a dreamy pop is it folk experimentation? And to me, I was like, well, no, that's Montreal just has a natural kind of it has all these different influences. Now did you find that?
Yeah? I mean, here's the lucky thing about Quebec or Montreal, and what's particular about it is that it's an island in North America in a sense where the French, to save their language, built these insanely high tall walls around it. Culturally speaking, so like you know, when I was a kid, there was no real labels. There was Constellation in the Godspeed guys, but that's very experimental and Godspeed it's another
great example of what you're talking about too. The first time I saw violins with guitar pedals is going to be Godspeed. They had orchestral, super cinematic rock. It changed my life when I saw them. But there was a really strong rule in our city that you don't sound like somebody else, and don't you can't be like a style.
I remember going to Toronto and the bands would have like a like a portfolio and a press photo or like this kind of idea, and we're like, we didn't have any of that because there was no business there, and I think with our music was completely isolated from that until we would reach a certain point, the breaking point, and then tour around the world and then we would
kind of see that for the first time. But it's really important for a Montreal band to be very unique, and if you're selling something, it's not a good look
in Montreal. It's not there's a certain ethics that that's unset in Montreal, you know, And I think I would say the modern bands that came from Montreal would definitely be coming from God Speedy, Black Emperor, and they were like very ethically strong about their choices about music, business and politics, and so I think you'd be very reticent to be like, oh, now I'm going to make like a pop song and try to make it on the radio.
It would be it would not it would be a bit frowned upon it in Montreal when I was younger, you know, it's not you know, I mean, it was not what we were darre doing, you know.
So you think it's it's more a political attitude.
Then I think it's a bit attitude.
To me. It's it's about ears almost years.
But it's also the French are like extremely inspired by very like if I'm like and then like, let's say I drive twelve hours of the North, like in the middle of nowhere, they're going to listen to like super experimental music in a small mining town, Like there's a festival called FM where like we did. We did a show with Mark Robo. We're like nine hours north than
a miners town. They loved it. You know, it's not everywhere you go where you go to a small town where they want to listen to Marcrobo and make crazy noise on his guitar or like, it's pretty particular. Most of the French Quebec musicians are extremely gifted and talented, a bit like when you go to Nashville, you know, everybody can play for reels. Yeah, well, I gotta be honest with you. When you go to like Quebec and the small town like people play for real a bit
like in that same way, you know. And I think that Montreal is this collision of Europe and North America. The wall, the cultural walls that the French put up to save their language do play a part. And why I think Leonard corn All these people are interested. I mean, look at Lena Cohn. There is no other Anglophone singer that sings about sex the way Leonard Cohen does. It's a very French thing to do that, you know what I mean. So and then the Quebecers are like, well,
Leonard Cohen speaks English, he's not French. And I'm like, but guys, there's no English singer that is that pornographic in their languages other than Leonard because he's living.
In Montreal, you know.
So these all these interesting arguments and collisions and it's a lovely place. But I do think it's it's an attitude of like there was no business there. We would just do shows and do improvised, improvised music together and there was a real spirit of like you should sound like what you sound like and no one else and then lots of orchestral instruments mixed into the field. And yeah, it was it was a very lucky place to spend time make music.
Well.
Montreal's also got a really strong classical music, yes, scene Montreal Symphonies, big, big recording orchestra, and it's also got French Canadian folk music, which isn't like a lot of other folks. It's very rhythmic French Canadian folk music.
Well, when you're going back to the tulute, get down the original stuff. To be honest, if you put a hip hop eat on it, you'd be a little bit surprised that the original they've kind of forgotten that. Like, there was this revolution in Quebec that people don't really understand, where we kicked the church out because the church was making all the French people have like twelve kids, and they were getting conservative and there was a they called the quiet Revolution and then you have is.
Like which, by the way, it's the most Canadian title ever. We revolted. We just didn't want anybody to know about it.
They're pretty our core. I mean, French don't don't screw around, like when they when when they're when they don't like something them, they like, you know, when we win a Stanley. When Canadians do well, we burn the city down. I mean the French Canadians know how to party. They're very fiery and a lot of heart and soul in that language and that culture. So there's this whole tradition that they've kept and they've poured all they have into this
small scene that just belongs to them. With all these grant money and people talk about public funding, but they were an island of French beside America for crying out loud, and they had to keep their language. So they built these walls and they find out their music in a way that I don't think any other place on Earth has subsidized, which gives them their own They have their own star system for crying out loud. They're eight million people.
Yeah, it's well, and they're very like the French in France, they're very chauvinistic about their language and their culture.
But I don't think I would exist without those walls. Still, even if I'm singing English. I think they they I don't know like the way that they like. I'll play a small town and all those concert halls are all subsidized so they can keep on giving good music to small towns. And so you play there, and you can make a living playing there, and then all the people show up to listen to crazy music. It's an example of like what subsidy into the arts can do. But
and you're going against America. America is your neighbor, and you speak French, like, can you imagine trying to keep your language, you know, six to eight million people beside that giant.
The other way to look at it is that it's easier to keep your culture than it would be for English Canadians.
Well you know, and it's I love Cana. I mean, Canada's my country, and obviously I would never speak will But they just do what the Americans do in a way that's I find pressing. I feel like they're a bad version of America. Now, like you you go to like look at their music scene and it's like, oh okay, well, it's like, here's a Canadian version of this American thing.
I'm like, guys, like, do your own thing, right, And I don't even be harsh, and that's it's not my intention, but I do think if I look at the most successful artistic Canadian projects that actually matter, it's like Kids in the Hall. It's like the Tailer Park Boys, jailerbag Boys. Most people think they're stupid, right, but when you actually watch it, it's brilliant. It's also way before the Office
with the fourth wall and the cameraman. They invented something like whenever Canada does something original and kind of crazy, that's when it works. Every time, it's like a cheap knockoff of American culture. I don't see the point, do you know what I mean? But and then all they do is move, like you know, Drake's Canadian needs he move to the US, and Justin Bieber's also Canadian. These so there's this cross like that as well, but it's it's.
Complicated Canadian should I twain?
Now? Yeah, Sarah McLaughlin, these are big, big American stars in a lot of way, you know.
Yeah, although a lot of Canadians knew selin Diana originally because she sang French Canadian folk songs before.
She was amazing. She's she's like, he's incredible. Slid She's like, she's say, she's look what you What you realize about Clidion is like when I say the characters I feel with like heart and like the heartless sleeves and passion. When Celindion bangs her chest when she sings, That's what I'm talking about. Like they have this passion. That's a remarkable passion that that has carried my inside of my career.
I carry that passion even if I'm an Anglophone. I grew up with Francophones and they're my family, and I speak French fluently, and now my biggest song in the I've ever done is in French.
Funny enough, did you did you speak English at home growing up or French?
I spoken? My parents were English, and then I had asked my mom in grade one to switch me to French school for some odd reason, and then I went there and I'm really happy I did.
Right, that's before you knew your dad was top gun.
Yeah, this is true. But my first memory of why I think I wanted to go there a valley. I went to like a dinner at my first French family and they were doing that thing of the fondue where if it drops you have to kiss the person beside you, which is very never heard that it's a French thing. And then my mom was very pretty and then I dropped it and then I had to kiss the mom on the cheek and she was I was like, yeah, this place is amazing. I've never hanging out with these people again.
Yeah, then you dropped five more.
Totally, but I mean, I don't know. Yeah, that's where my heart's at, you know, with.
This album, because you went into it not sure how much you were going to contribute, but you said you literally traveled around with your laptop, two mikes, and two mics. First of all, what were the mics.
They're cheps. They're pretty fancy. The cool thing about sheps is like you're in that room, it sounds like you're in the room. It's They're incredibly articulate and incredibly lovely sounding. And I didn't even have fancy preamps. I literally had my Apolo preamps, which are very kind of transparent preamps. So like, like take a song like the wandering. That whole like song is one take. The structure is still structured take with two mics, so you hear the guitar
and a bit of the drums. So we would do like a structural live take, so at least the bassis had some real dynamics in life that we could build on. But almost every song was like that. I'd make a really like real bass track that's live, so all the dynamics we weren't trying to like automate them in they would just be there, and then we would build on the natural autumn, natural ebb and flows.
So you would have a band in the room with you.
Well, me Miska did Celencio all by ourselves and Nova with two mics that I was just playing piano and he was playing guitar, and then we did all the whole form, and then that one I added a little bit of drums posts, and then the last one Olivia came and helped us. But the initial take to the whole song was a live take, wow, and the vocal beginning still a live take too, like the whole thing's very live.
Were any of these improvised or send me improvised? Did you always have a track that you were working with with the singers Noah Nova.
We me and Mishka wrote the chre progression like thirty minutes before she showed up the Celand two, and it was because that's what that room felt like, you know, and we were just trying to match how nice the room felt.
Then we wrote in the room, were you going into studios or no?
Never studios. It's always weird, you know. I've been mixing engineering my record since I was like younger, and the evolution of recording has been dramatically different, you know. So instead of spending on the studio, we rented this insane like nineteenth century painter studio above Momart for the same budget. But then we were in this most magical place you can see with two mics and a laptop. I often
try to record moments and not recordings. Most of the songs of mine that have you know, if I think about to build a home, ers, thats a citemo. They're not great recordings. I'm the engineer, I mean, I engineered to build a home. I was like, what, like, I maybe one or two years of experience throwing MIC's up and what you hear as a moment, so I often put more energy into the moment, and then with the modern technology, it can be kind of you know, if it doesn't sound good, you can be kind of crazy
with it and kind of make it sound cool. You know, I'm very flexible, and you just try to make things work. But the moment for me is still what I'm capturing before the sound Like I hate sitting around for a kick mic. I hate it. There were the engineers diddling around for like the for like three hours by time to get to the rum doesn't want to play it.
It's like, what's the point, right, But it's also easy to say in a place where you have a dynamic eque like EQS and the plugins have made it so I can compensate for that crappy micing very fairly easy. It is a new thing that you could have that flexibility to this.
Extent, so you can do it all in post. You're not, yeah, but.
My post would be like, you know, there's this thing called fab filter, and it's just like the difference being is a dynamic eque. They've existed for a long time, but that one is so useful that you know, if I'm missing a bit of kick and I see the pig, and I put every time that thing moves, jump that up five to bees. I can make it sound like an eight oh eight if I wanted to, But it's still a live take with the live room attached to it. So it's quite lovely, very surreal.
You know, did you ever feel when you were producing that you were changing the room in a sense, or we're always trying to preserve what you were hearing at the time.
I think what I do is both I want the things sound real and then super sereal at the same time that you can't believe it's real. You know, like if you look at Peter and the Wolf, it's completely surreal kind of mixing, but yet you still have the room tone. I think Cilenio, it's the way that drums and the guitar in I rack in that room and you hear the room. I really love the sound of that recording. I think it's one of the best mixes
I've ever made. You know, the cool thing about modern music is that when you record like a piano, you're recording a room. When you record an electronic instrument, you were moving the room and now the room you're listening into it becomes the room. So it was like vacuum effect. A great example of like that vacuum effect hitting pop music with Billy Elis's first record, It's a Vacuum, which is coming from obviously a hip hop tradition and electronics.
So when she did like folk songs inside that tradition of mixing, it was like, holy Moly, and her voice. It's in this vacuum where you just you and the narrator, all by yourselves. It is a lovely thing, you know. So I think you know the evolution of missing and proximity. I like, I like to play with all the different you know, just like the depth of feels. So some moments are incredibly electronic. Someone's a very room. I don't think I have a I just follow the story, you know.
The album to me felt very cinematic. So often the the mix between say, your voice and any of your wonderful collaborators. Sometimes you were singing together, sometimes you were singing you were arguing, as you do in your song with with Martha Waynwright. But there are times it sounded as though one person was in a different room in a house. That's what it felt like to me. It felt like it wasn't just one's in the background. It was like ones somewhere else, someone's around a corner.
Doesn't make any sense, Yeah, I mean like you look at like solantin like Clan, which is seven that French song. I wanted to record the first first on a telephone. I think it's probably when microphones are the most research ever been put into it. But there's this thing that when you hear that microphone, it feels like someone's talking to you. So the first the first part of that, the first verse, and that's recorder on telephone on a
mic stand and not an offense he mic. So guys like so imagine you have two mics and you know, the mics are in the room and picking up a bit of a Mishki's guitar, a bit of my piano, and I put a telephone recording kind of synced to my pro tools, and I use my telephone for the vocal because it's like, it's not about you know, I don't mix to make a song sound good. I mix it to make it tell story, you know what I mean?
And I come from the tradition of like a good example of that historically speaking would be like you know. Debus is a classical guy, you know, and he probably broke more rules than since Bach, you know, up to up, Like from back to Debus, everybody kind of expanded on block. But when Debs comes, he breaks like crazy new rules, like new voicings, new harmonic structures, new ideas of arranging, and partly because he's like, oh I wish the music,
like did what those waves are doing? Stop thinking about music and thought about the narration or whatever, like the physical effect of it, and drop like, well, what chord is it? And then he broke all these rules by accident, and then when you listen to it, it sounds like pop music. It sounds very lovely. It's breaking all the rules at the same time and you don't even know that, but it's changed. You changed music.
What kind of rules are you talking about?
Well, like, you know, like usually when you do a symphonic structure, you have like you have your theme, it develops like much like a pop song or like you know, quarterly speaking, uh like when I said that, so what those voicings enforced? He like modulates in try tones. He's breaking all these like he invented a scale the you know, the which is from the Gamalan inspiration.
So E meant to like always tell me what that scale is.
That's a whole tone scale. It's very open, right, So I mean what he's doing is like traditionally in music you have like like all the chords make you want to go back to that chord. So he's making structures that are like the home is now not important. You have no pull to the home. You're just being led to these new homes, you know. And that is a that is a dramatic distance from bach. You know.
Also, the whole tone scale. You hear that a lot in jazz.
Yeah, they use it. I mean they use all sorts of tricks. They do half whole, whole half. Jazz is lovely because I mean it's the greatest language to learn to learn, like a like a language whre you can communicate with others playing music, you know what I mean. It's the fastest language to learn and be like hey dude, let's jam. Later in my older years, I had to go back and learn a lot of classical rules to
unlearn some of the jazz rules for certain things. Where I find jazz, you look really look at a vertical, you get a chord, you're like, how am I vertical? You're going to decorate this to get to the next chord? Were classical? You like, you're looking at it like a like six bars from now, the note you played will matter as a suspension. You know, it's a much more longer play.
It's a linear.
But I'll give you an example why that's interesting. So if you take like a dashio for strings, like they're the saddest string George head Sea string pieces in the world, the cord you cry on is B major, which is like pretty bright. It's like the brightest chord in music you can do, like even worse than C major. And that's where you cry. But that's because when you play this score, you're kind you're hearing E flat minor. And that's because he's setting up a long structure so that
when you play this, you're really hearing this. And that's where the long playing classical music can do something in jazz can't, and jazz can do something in classical can't. There are two different languages, you.
Know, now, explain what you mean in jazz how you're decorating the chord up top?
Well, you know, I mean, I'm not like I'm a jazz expert. I studied roots kids. So like, usually like let's say you're like, let's say you're here here, like you're in C minor, right, and you're gonna go you want to go to you want to get to there. So what you would do traditionally is like a two five to one, so i'mn't see minor. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna do this chord. So it makes you really want to hear that, which sets up the next chord
and why that's important in jazz. So if I'm in one here, I'm going like I could to get to the F minor, I could do like, so it gives you these like acrobatic ways of sow and around notes to make these really lovely improvisations. But it's very vertical. I see, there's a much more vertical.
Structure, and they're not chord tones there.
There are chord tones, but they're helping you get to the F minor. But they're all little short battles, where classical is like over the longer battles for a different kind of results.
Right, and so, but in jazz it's using an eleventh or thirteenth.
Well, it's it's you're using it just to like to find the most interesting way to get there, Like you know what I mean, You're like, hey, I'm here and I gotta go there. What is the funnest par also way I can get there? And then then that's why these subsidue chords are these two five ones are there. So if you're playing, if you're just going like it's kind of boring. But if I'm like, yeah, this is a nice long way to get there, it's quite lovely, you know. So that's that's what's lovely about you.
And the tension is always like what if he doesn't get home? And Jay, what if it doesn't come back?
It's amazing. It's an incredible language, like it's it's magical, and it's a great language to learn. I think first, because I think it's a good communication basis for playing with other people, and you know what I mean, And I think that that's a really good thing to have.
I think both are really good. But you know, I tell you one thing recently, during COVID, I went back to a block because a lot of the classical music that I do really like really depends on this very subtle voice leading, you know, and not to be too nerdy or nothing. But you know, voice leading just means like when you have like chords, your top note and
your bottom note high, he gets the next chord. They made these rules that if you follow them, the music just feels like it moves better, where like instead of just jumping to like you would have to be like like closer. And when you follow those rules, it's just music sounds like it has more depth. And if I take like modern neoclassical music that is really lovely, it sounds a bit more pop And then I listen to
the same amount of notes, but it's ava part. Ava part makes me feel like in my church in a way that's the other ones don't. It's mainly because he has a deep knowledge of voice leading. Another great example is rich You Sakamoto. Reach Your Sakamoto solo piano work is outstanding because his voice leading is outstanding. It's very difficult to do well. To do well, it's the most difficult thing to do. You know. A good example of someone who I think has great voice leading and does
contemporary classical is Carolyn Shaw. She does She's one of my favorite arrangers in the modern day. She does her voice leading and the string courotests are magical listen to.
Part of pop music though, is making those big jumps right now.
The Beatles voice leading is outstanding there. George Martin does the reason why you remember all the songs that right? Yeah, because like they're they're constantly conscious of they have a third in the base or the fifth and the bass.
And I think the Beatles are the greatest example because as you get older and you see that and you actually read the charts and you see what's at the bottom and the voice leading going on, you realize that Paul McCarney and George Martin really knew what they were doing. Nickame the voice leading, and it's it's actually a great example of like how important it is.
How do you because if you know that you know these languages, yeah, you know classical theory, where is your music fit in? Where how much jazz is in what you're doing? How much classical? How much pop?
I don't know where that line starts it begins. I know that if I'm doing research and I want to introduce elements into my music, I'll do like like, for example, there's like the way I make so the way that my vocal sits I was very inspired by people like Little Sims and Kendrick Lamar. But I obviously I don't do hip hop, but that would mean that I would have done, like secretly, like you know, twenty five demos of that style of music to learn when they need
to learn. So only two to four percent would show up in my naturally inside me for real, and you wouldn't hear me like immolating them. You would just hear that they had an intrinsic internal, structurally different. So when I do it, you don't hear it. I constantly once a month take a classical piece apart. I had a great piano piano teacher. He just said, like, improvise a
lot like talking. So if anything I remember for my jazz lessons, it's like have a conversation, have like commas, have a sentence, leave space for the person to respond. It's an organization of like how you communicate. So where the jazz line ends and begins is that tradition of communication. So when the drummer says something, I listen to what he said, and I answer him and respond to him as a communication. And when you watch us on stage, the one talent we have as a bands were great listeners.
You know, great musicians, great listeners. I'm constantly responding to my bass player, Mishka, constantly responding to my drummer. So that part of the tradition of jazz is very, very evident in our live shows. But that doesn't mean me swing or play sevenths on everything. It just means that we found a way to be influenced without trying to immolate something.
After a break, we'll be back with Patrick Watson.
This is gonna sound like an odd question. Let's hear it just playing a pop song at that point, because you've done stuff that's closer to straight ahead pop. Yeah, of course, does it feel a little too simple?
No, I look at music like food. Sometimes you need broccoli, sometimes you need dessert. Sometimes you need like cheeseburger, sometimes you need French fries. It's what you need in that moment. So sometimes you need a pop song and just piano and voice, no fancy colors. If you put a seventh or an eleventh, it totally kills it. It totally kills
tension of just a simple chord. And sometimes you need those colors, and sometimes you need you push yourself with a depth that you need the the eleventh and sevens to kind of say what you need to say, and they're not nothing's right or wrong. It's just what do you want to eat today?
You know.
I think it's really important to have like pop music, super pop. I think like people like Tyler Swift are incredibly important music, and sometimes you need that. It's really important, and I think it's amazing that people do that, you know, And I'm really happy to exist and then equally happy that when I listened to like Reagi Sakamotose Weird Noise electronic records, sometimes I need, you know, sometimes people need that. And when people listen to heavy metal, it's because they
need that to feel something. They need that piercing volume to get to where they need to get to. It's not a style of music or a taste. It's like, dude, you just listen to what you need to get through the day. It's not a competition, you know, Like you.
Know, one of the songs, Choir and the Wires, I did think that was your most Leonard Cohen sounding.
Oh, I know, it's so funny. I realized that after, I mean, I had worked a lot with I'd worked on a Leonard record, on top of I produced a song for Make It Darker called the Hills and he as constantly floats in my life from Montreal and I and I had been the last eight years reading a lot more than I used to, so my lyrics dramatically got better in the last eight years because of that.
And it's uh and I don't It didn't cross my mind until much later, and so I'm like, I'm like, oh my god, that sounds so much like.
How was it to work on that song with him?
Well, I was far away and it was interesting. My mom was like a huge Leonard Cohen fan, like she loved Leonard, Like, you know, she would have left my dad. Probably would be a good idea even but at that point the date Leonard and I grew up from a sonic more of a sonic place when I was a kid, right, So, Leonard Cohen I didn't really understand when I was younger. And here's a coincidence. The first time I heard my
voice was right before I produced that song. And when I did that song, I wanted to do that song for my mom more than for Leonard to do this thing for her, to make her, you know, And she had passed away already. Yeah, so I'd heard my voice and then I had his vocals isolated. I don't know how much how much fun it is to have, like to have Leonard's voice all by itself is a very special moment. And then when you listen to that, you're like, the only thing I can do is kind of ruin this.
And then underneath I had his like midi saxophones on the Casio arrangement that was originally intended for the song, which was the reason why I could never connect with him.
But then before he loved he loved that like cheap cassio.
So yeah, well then I understood why. And you know it's in hindsight, you know, I have mixed feelings about how I think about it. But so he was like, I don't want to ruin my words. If I put like good music. It makes me think of the Saint Augustine quote. You know what that is? So right in the church when they invented polyphony, this monk lost their mind because like everybody's coming to church because the polyphony is stronger than what we're talking about and we need
to ban it. And inside the Council of Trent, when the Protestants and the councils were separating the church. There was two composers on that panel that saved Polyphany because one of the arguments was that singing two notes at once make it makes Jesus seem small, like it was. People were only going for that, and Leonard Cohen's argument for the casio was the same argument. He's like, if I make the music any more powerful, you're just not
going to hear my words. And so when I arrange your hills, I decided not to pay attention to that as to run the experiment of like to try to let the music be as powerful as words, just for the experiment at all. I don't know if I would do it the same way now in my in my in my wiser years, but I did try for fun, and it probably drove him crazy, because I know when Adam brought it to him, he's like, I was a very strong lots of.
Where's the cassi.
He's like, he's like, I'm sure drove him a bit crazy, But I mean I was running an experiment, you know, That's what music for me. I don't get too crazy about it. You just run an experiment. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
I've always thought one of the great missed opportunities. You know, there are all these Leonard Cohen tribute albums country music should do a letter Gone. Yeah, And he lived in Nashville for a while. He was very conscious of how the lyrics were pushing it for at the same time. And you know, one of the best covers of Leonyard Cohen is Trisha Year would cover well coming Back to You, which is fabulous.
I think the country would be. Yeah, that's a great idea. I mean I tried to even like put, I tried to shift the pocket to be in somewhat of modern R and B, slightly mor and B on the hills. That's what I was kind of trying to do, to see if I could make it feel like it kind of hit like on that modern edge of the where the snare sits and the kicks and it was running an experiment. I'll tell you a funny one that I
did that with. You know, you know last thoughts on Woitty Guthrie by Bob Dylan, You ever listen to that? I mean, I was not a Bob Dylan fan until I heard that once again because of music, and then when I heard last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie. It blew
my mind and I ran it. When I was like studying how to mix hip hop as a as an educational thing and just to learn what I could learn, I did like this strange hip hop version of Lassaus on Woody Guthrie, just to run the course and in a kind of a double time, you know, like when gets stopped and you really fast.
It worked like effortlessly, I was going to say, with in choir in the wires. So it does have this uh slight Leonard Cone vibe, if I can say that. But then it's got that. I mean, that's got this beautiful brass. You you take the brass figure that's that's behind theco lyrics, and then and then you you bring it out, so it's actual interlude in the.
Piece that that trumpet player is one of the best trump players in Mexico. He's one of plays in all the Pixar films. He's a maria he's one of the best mariachi players in Mexico, and which I always forear his name, and I gotta strut to memorize it. And that choir had showed up by accident because I was running an audition because I didn't know if the false would be able to join us on the next tour. So I was going to audition a couple of singers to see if anybody want to come sing, and they
all showed up at the same time. So it was incredibly uncomfortable. So I just told Miska. I was like, dude, you go in the other room with Aliva write something like this. I'm gonna work on lyrics with them. And we wrote that on the spot. So we started off with all the Spanish words, and we had conversations about I always felt when I was in Mexico City, when you look at the wires and all the infra structure that's in the sky, you just see so much life.
It looks like this. You just see every millions of life just hanging in this like the weight of all the wires around the city. So I had presented that impression to them and then I let them answer that's impression in their own way, and then we wrote. We recorded that thing in like two hours, written recorded, and then then we brought the Then we brought in the next day the horn players just like and then they
blew our minds on that, you know. So it was one of my favorite moments of this record because like you're translating different languages and there's like trump playing. I just like the whole chaos of it.
You know, mm hm, tell me about the wandering the wandering.
We This is one of the houses we rented, so we decided to be really funny to rent like a really obnoxious mansion in the hills of Hollywood as just
like the Paris Department. Because we had a show. We had two days off, like let's rent once again, use our studio budget, rent like something has a pool, like totally ridiculous kind of So we were sitting there just hanging out and Olive started to play that guitar part, who's the drummers, I mean the top player, and I was like, that's a really and then we just started
it just started coming together. So we wrote the music part I had the melody, not the words, Like within like six hours we had written and kind of recorded that. The basis of that the chord structure with Mishka and Oliva and the lyrics were like I was, we were sitting in this absurdity of this silly mansion in the hills of Hollywood. And I've been touring since I was
sixteen years old. You know, it's a it's a long time to tour, and you're always just like this ghost, and you're always this wandering kind of observer in all these places. And here we are sitting in this ridiculous place again as as the observer. And even my earliest memories as a kid, I just I just remembered always feeling like a ghost in a lovely way, wandering through strangers and just being the observer and capturing this thing.
And so I felt like when that song kind of came to fruit, I thought that would be really fun. So I just tell stories of being the want, the great, you know, the wandering. And then what was fun is that they had a Brazilian undertone, and I thought of my who's a Portuguese singer, not Brazilian, but singers in Portuguese immediately, and she comes from like generations of fado singers, so you know, those are some of the best singers of all time. So she I think she's like a
modern iteration of generations of fado, you know. And so I thought about her immediately because to kind of celebrate the bazilion and the Portuguese kind of undertones of the song, and that naturally it had. It's just since I was a kid, it just felt like a ghost. And the two people that one the two people is not two people. Is that when you travel a part of you separated. You become two different things, a traveling version of you in the home version of you, and that traveling version
of you becomes your companion. You travel with that, you know, like you're high fiving because you're always in crazy places together. And I think that song is about being your best travel companion as all the different people you need to be to walk through all these different landscapes of people.
Will be in the Deep South in places that people have really different radically politically different ideas, will be in Asia with different radical and you know, I find that as a musician you have this multi pass this passport you're welcome through everybody's door, and with that it doesn't mean that you need to agree or validate, but you are kind of the observer and of these different things.
So when I sing, I'm singing about all these people that have pushed and pulled my imagination me as myself. It's not very interesting. But I've had the fortunate life to meet very very interesting people, like throughout my history of traveling in remarkable ways that money can't buy, and not because the famous. Like I remember this soldier if I was in Vietnam with these painters, invited me there. I go up to this gentleman's house. It's a middle
of the ized twelve. He's like you a musician, He's like yes. On his wall he had this like a blanket over the wall, and we pulled the blanket. There was like thousands of vinyls on the wall, and each one of those vinyls he had taken from an American soldier during the war.
Oh vinyl, every.
Vinyls so CCR. It's like he was just from the Vietnam War. So what he would do is rate the bases or they would play. Yeah. So this guy in his wall was a collection of records that he had stolen from other soldiers that they had killed in the in the meantime our basis they had raided.
An incredible story. Yeah, and what was the stolen music of the Vietnam War.
Why that was really interesting is that I was there a week after September eleventh and why that was interesting is that a lot of old ladies would come up to me saying, that's so sad, because they just assume I'm American. It's so sad what happened, and knowing anything about that war, I just didn't believe them at first. And so when I was with that gentleman with this wall, I felt comfortable enough to be like, Hey, I want to know for real, do you really feel that empathy
or is that like just for money? Like what is? I just want to know, you know, And he's like every time, like, if I carry any anger whatsoever about that, it means the war is still happening, and that war is finished, and I don't want to ever go back there. So it's when the lady feels empathy and she feels sad, it's because she has no interest in carrying that war another day. And what he was these things, they legitimately felt bad, and as you know, it's a very complicated place.
So it was a very inspiring moment that like, you know, it's that's nothing to do with me. I'm a Canadian small town boy, but I am a receiver of these incredible scenarios like this that become when I open my mouth and sing. I carry the weight of these interactions in people, you know, I carry the responsibility of carrying the depth of these interactions.
Now, is there a particular song that addresses that incident?
I mean yes, in a way that I never saw the world the same. I can tell you that much Big Bird and Small Cage was some same trip and that we was a real story, like we went to the musician's house. There was six generation musicians and they literally had a collection of birds in the back, like a hundred songbirds, and literally there was this like really tiny cage in the back of the room that had the biggest bird all stuck in it. And he's like,
why would you do that? It's like, if you put a big bird in small cage, he sings all the time. And I'm like, yes, he's going around. Sorry, he's crying for help, you know, obviously see. But it was I thought that was like a really lovely idea for music, and yeah, so I put that in my pocket. And then funny enough, I was traveling in New Orleans after that in the collision of those two places. Maybe really like that really allowed me to give birth to that song.
I don't I don't usually write right away. I let it like sit in my pocket for five six years when it's an idea like that big, and let it collide with life a bit before I write.
The heaviest emotional song on this album I think would be House on Fire, Yes, or at least that's it's hit the highest sort of pitch. Tell me about that song.
How's the fire? It's complex because I co wrote it with Martha, and initially I had that chorus and a lot of the ideas of the song before a months I showed up and I was hiring her because she has like fire and she like fights and I don't have that. And then my biggest mistake in the album was having too much of an idea to bring to her, which in fact was a bit rude in my way,
especially because the nature of the song was complex. The nature of the song, the original intent was, you know, sometimes you have two truths, you know, if you've been through divorce or different different parts or different complicated moments in your life. And then at one point to those two truths matter if it means the whole house is going to burn down, you know. And I thought and during like COVID and all these like really important conversations
that we've been have in the last six years. It keeps on making me think a bit of my childhood home, where you have these like these colliding truths and at one point do you want the whole house to burn for one to be right? And at what point is it better to let two truths exist and not burn the whole house down?
Which was that a feature of your upbringing?
Yeah, to some extent, I mean I watched them burn down the house and in certain ways for certain truths to exist, and I don't know if they were they were a fight that was worth losing that battle, you know. But then that's a very obnoxious subject to bring to a woman's perspective because often those two truths had like is the way they've been silenced, and like it's in fact worse than you. But I was not referring to those situations. But she was coming from a totally different perspective.
So she's like, no, I'm not singing that idea like that because I don't have that same experience as you. So then we try to find a way for the two realities that co exists in the song where we can still sing together and she could still have her perspective as clear as day, and I have my experience. So in the end, it kind of worked out great for the song being what it was, you know, but it was a learning experience. I mean I felt a bit silly after that. I would have tried to bring
that to Martha. I did it because that melody. I was like, no one will sing that melody like Martha.
There's amazing performance.
Yeah, It's just like that's what That's the only person could sing the song for me, you know, in the way it was written.
But you know, she does come from a family that literally works out their problems in songs. So I think she's actually the ideal person, isn't she Because she's the person who can sing this song and then her brother sings this, you know famously. You can tell the whole You could tell the whole family's relationship just jumping from one song to another.
Well that's an amazing Well they're amazing. They're all amazing. Rufus isn't a very talented I mean I was young in Montreal looking up to these people like I would look up to Martha, you know, I'd see her on stage and dream that I'd be on stage fly curs, you know. So to sing with her is quite a lovely experience for me, you know what I mean, and very humbling experience clearly. And Rufus I mean, I played
piano and sing. I thought I'd never have a career because he because he did it first, and I was like, well, I'm on, there's no point of media in this anymore.
Yeah, he's done it.
Yeah I gotta quit, you know.
So, Yeah, thank god he went to write operas.
Thank God to save me.
Yeah.
Well, I think I went much more towards experimental music at that same drift, probably probably because of Rufus quick, probably because I was like, what's the point He's got that gig already. I better do something different.
It's just been delightful.
Yeah, it's super fun conversation.
An episode description, you'll find a link to a playlist featuring our favorite songs from Patrick Watson, including this new album. Be sure to check out YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast to see all of our interviews, and be sure to follow us on Instagram at the Broken Record pot. Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose with marketing and help from Eric Sandler and Jordana McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Holliday. Broken Record is a production of
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