This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio. Few people illuminate the art of music and storytelling like my guest today, Rishi Kish Hereway didn't set out to become one of the biggest podcasters in the world, but that's precisely what happened when he created the Song Exploder podcast in twenty fourteen. In addition to podcast host, Hereway is a composer, record producer, and artist. His latest album, In the Last Hour of Light, will
be released April twenty fourth. Along with Song Exploder, Hereway is the creator of the podcast partners The West Wing Weekly and the award winning Home Cooking with Chef and co host Samine Nosrats. As a composer, Hereway has penned the scores for feature films and documentaries, a Netflix TV series, and a video game. His music has appeared on hit
TV shows like Gossip Girl and One Tree Hill. Here Way has a gift for tapping into the cultural zeitgeist and drawing out the creative spark from some of the world's best musicians. I asked Rishie to be my guest for a live taping at The Wife Hotel in Brooklyn for on AirFest. Growing up in an Indian household, I was curious how Hereway's childhood shaped his cultural world view and how we first connected with music.
Well, I have an older sister, Priya, and she's five years older than me, So I really inherited so much of my taste from her, and that basically meant listening to top forty radio. You know, she went to school and she found out what was cool from other friends, and so we just listened to whatever she was listening to. The first time that I got to actually make music choices of my own was when she got a Columbia
House subscription. You know, you send in a penny and they send you back eight cassettes, and she very generous origin Yeah exactly. Yeah, she generously allowed me to pick two. She gave me two of her eight selections, and so I picked Aerosmith Permanent Vacation and White Snake by White Snake.
So music is in your life and then you start to make music. You played the piano.
I played piano growing up, Yeah, just taking piano lessons, and then I started playing in the school band. And then when I got to high school, I started playing in bands.
Did you play in the school band?
Drums, keyboard? But then I was in the percussion department and everybody else it was me and six boys who played the drum kit, but there's only one drum kit to share, and everybody else played either a snare drum or a bass drum. And eventually, when everybody else went home, I would start sitting behind the drum kit myself, and then I got really excited about playing drums. And so then in high school I started playing drums in a band.
What were you good at?
I don't know that I was or am good at anything. I feel like I was like pretty good at some of the things, you know, like guitar. I played, learned to play guitar, I learned to play piano, I learned to play drums, and I was like okay at all of those.
And then when do you start making music that you're going to sell?
Well, I started writing my own songs at the end of high school and then starting into the beginning of college. Selling it was still far from my mind, but just writing it was the first step.
Before you get into the podcast world, where a lot of us in an in depth analysis and examination of other people's music, which is thrilling you play music, and when does that When do you decide that's not where you want to go, Because at some point you start making enough money you live off.
Of the music business.
Yeah, that's right, Yeah, describe that period. So I think in two thousand and seven was the first year that I felt like I could say that I made music as my living. I'd put out an album that year, and I produced an album for another band, and I actually was able to pay my bills just through music. I didn't have to have, you know, my freelance graphic design job or temping or anything like that.
You live fairly comfortably.
I mean it was comfortable for me. That was a pretty big milestone for me. That felt like it's hard to grow up in an Indian household and say I want to be a musician. And I think my parents never understood the sort of validators that I turned to. It would be hard to say like, hey, look this is going okay. You know, like I could say to my mom, it's an A point one on Pitchfork and she'd be like, I know those are all words, but I don't know what any of them mean together.
I'm glad that means something to you.
So being able to actually like make my living from music, that was the first way that I was able to sort of say to my family, Look, this is this is turning out okay.
You know.
It was a leap of faith for them to, you know, even just understand that this is what I was doing.
Between twenty twenty and twenty eleven, those nine years, you released four albums.
Two thousand and twenty eleven.
Yeah, and so pick one album and tell me what's the process of getting that made.
So I always made my music kind of like in my bedroom wherever that was, and I would write the songs and sort of record them as I was writing them and sort of try and design into whatever the song was about, adding layers, you know, one at a time, and it would take sometimes months and sometimes years before I felt like it was it was done, and then once I had enough of them for an album, then
that would be the album. It took a very long time, and I would sometimes bring other people in, but for the most part I tried to do as much of it on my own.
Hurry down on dirty Yeah, and then when it's old together the elements are together, where do you take it who do you take it to?
Well, the first couple albums came out on like a punk rock label, even though the music wasn't punk rock. I kind of came up in a sort of we need content. I came up listening to punk, and a lot of my friends who were in bands played in punk bands, and so that was kind of my community. I would play like these basement punk shows as the weird outlier, you know, just just a sad boy with
a guitar in between these screamy bands. But because of that I got to meet some folks, including someone who had a record label who said, I like your records and I'd like to put them out, and so I did that for a first couple and then when I moved to La I signed with like an independent label based there.
Your new album is called in the Last Hour of Late and when's it coming out?
It comes out in April.
This is your piece at you all the eight tracks, ten tracks, whatever.
No, So this one is very different from how I used to make music. For this one, I sort of went the completely opposite direction, and it's recorded live with the band and sort of in a much more kind of classic way, went into a studio, played with some amazing musicians and taught them the songs in the morning, and then we'd work on the arrangement and then we'd record it, and then we'd break for lunch and then do another song in the afternoon.
The Beatles would say that, Yeah.
The Beatles would say, we would go into the studio and we'd record four songs in the morning. Then they go, he goes, then we go have a cigarette and it pints and maybe some fish and chips, that we record four songs in the afternoon. Yeah, they make an album in a day.
Yeah, Well I had seven days and it was so completely contrary to how I had worked the rest of my music making life. I said to the producer Phil Weinrob, I said, this is crazy. This is a crazy way to make music. And he said no, actually, most music in the history of recorded music was made this way. The way that you've been making it is crazy.
So in your music.
Career pre Song Exploder, I'm assuming that One Tree Hill and Gossip Girl that came before Song Exploder.
Yes, how do you get your music?
The thing about you was it seems like every door just opens to you. You know, how do you get your music in front of the one Tree Hill people. Gossip World was a huge hit. How do you get in front of them?
I mean, especially in those days, in the sort of heyday of indie music on TV, you know, kind of like two thousand and five to twenty ten or so, it was really wonderful because there were a lot of shows on TV. TV still existed, music budgets still existed, and they would actively have this mission to put cool music in shows. And so there were music supervisors who'd be actively looking for something that they liked to include.
And I got very lucky the label that I was on, they had folks who would send the music to music supervisors and yeah they were so they were were always looking for music. Yeah, yeah, and they'd be putting you know, they put out twenty four episodes of Gossip Girl and then have like five or six songs in each episode.
So the first thing I want to ask you is, per song explorer, how do you get the rights to the music? Oh, even when we do the show and we want heavy with music, we struggle. We think the artists is on our side and they're going to help us, and it's like, are the people that have the rights.
No, Yeah, the artist has no power or very little power. Occasionally, Yeah, well, I work with a wonderful woman named Kathleen Smith who has been working with me since twenty fifteen, and she goes and knocks on all the doors and asks everybody you know, would you please sign this piece of paper that says we can use this song with song Exploder. It's a little bit different, I think than other uses because it's not like the music is scoring some other content.
The music is the content. You know, we're telling the story of this song.
Gotta have it your license.
Yeah, I'm wondering you check out the right situation prior to the show. They don't come on unless you're all clear with the music.
At this point, we sort of hope in you know, feel like we've got relationships enough that like we can tape the interview and the end as we're working on the licensing at the same time, but we won't put it out till it's all cleared.
Song Exploder whose idea was that it.
Was, you know, something that kind of had percolated over a very long time, just the idea of trying to make something that felt closer to what the music making process was as I had experienced it. You know, I would listen to or read interviews with artists that I admire, and the interviews always felt like they were very big picture, Like the interviewers would ask big picture questions and the
guests would answer in big picture answers. But I felt like the creative process is so much more about the inch by inch journey. You know, every single small creative decision that gets made is really what shapes both the final product and the experience. And I thought it would be really fascinating if people could get inside that process and hear what a song sounds like from the perspective
of someone who made it. Also, I wanted to kind of circumvent the idea of a critic being the only way into how a song could be thought of and kind of re establish the idea of an author's intention.
How did you develop the skill to help them unravel the song?
Well, I think it helps to have someone ask questions from a sort of empathetic position, you know, like I tried to bring the kinds of questions that I was trying to answer to the questions that I would be
posing to them. And part of the reason why I used to cut myself out of the show entirely was because I had never interviewed anybody, and I didn't want to reveal myself to be the amateur that I was, And I thought it would sound much more professional if it just felt like a story being told from the
perspective of the artist. The reason it changed in the Netflix show is because I got that idea that, you know, the sort of non narrated thing which exists in so much radio, But I got it from watching documentary films. In the best documentary films, you just see the cameras on, you know, close up on the subject, and they're telling their story. You don't hear an interviewer. Sometimes you might hear them off camera, but it's never about the two
of them. So I wanted my show to feel legitimate, even though I was making it from my bedroom or my garage. I wanted it to seem like, oh, elevated, So let me make it like these documentaries. When we went to make the Netflix show, I was talking to the executive producer, Morgan Neville, who himself is an Oscar winning documentarium four twenty Free from Stardom.
We played that at the Hampton Film festal law summer time.
Yeah, amazing movie, amazing. So I was telling him, you know, this is my reason for why I shouldn't be in the show. We should keep the same kind of format for the Netflix show. And he argued that it wasn't special. Now we're basically going into the documentary format and the thing that I was pulling for a podcast that had felt special is not going to be special once you return it to the original source. And he said, what
would be much more interesting and intimate? Because I was saying I kept saying the word intimacy, it was felt more intimate to just have the first person narrative from the guest. He said, well, I think what would be more intimate is to see the two of you having a conversation.
I agree, you're so unattractive, that's the problem. I mean, you should be on camera.
And he said, well, look, let's shoot something. We'll put one camera on the subject and if you decide that's all. You know, you just want to do that, fine, but let me also put a camera on you and let's try it. You know, would you be game.
For That'd you like it?
It was stressful? And then in the edit, you know, I kept on trying to cut out any kind of reaction shots or anything like that. I was like, no, it's it's distracting. It's but a lot of the time what the directors or the editors were trying to bring in were moments of real human interaction as opposed to something too antiseptic and clean. But for me, I felt like, oh clean was that's that's what I want. I wanted
to feel like my goal of the podcast. I wanted to feel like it was just this beautifully made sculpture where you couldn't see any seams and if you see me laughing, or you see us like have this moment of dialogue where you hear my question, doesn't that break up the dream? I want the show to feel like a dream and I don't want someone to wake up
in the middle. And they said, no, those moments are real human interaction and that's actually something really wonderful to see, and they all basically agreed, and at a certain point I said, Okay, if you all think this and I'm the only one on the other side, then like maybe I just need to let it go. But it was it was tough.
We had people on our show over the years who if you let it breathe if I can get in there, because in the beginning I was very very hands on trying to push them towards where I wanted them to go. And when you come on and you just let it happen and people are in the mood to talk to you. We've had number a number of shows, but I like in Name three, one was Tom Yorke. Tom Yorke came on. I'm like, what the hell am I going to say
to this Guy's gonna be interesting to him. He doesn't give a shit about me, He'd probably don't even know me.
And I'm sitting there talking to Tom York And it was great.
It was heaven because he was he was in the mood to talk. We did Nck Fleetwood, he was in the mood to talk. We did Letterman. Letterman came and even his own staff like had their hand over their mouth. They couldn't believe what he was saying because he was talking about how he was like, you know, he goes how I was miserable. Well, I did was work, I did have any kids, did have a family. Everything was work.
But he was really very very self disclosing, you know, in that way where the conversation works of people just flows now where we were talking about something like this like Somebody is historic, you know, popular song.
Do you think that makes it easier for you?
It certainly makes it easier for me because they know what the parameters of the story is going to be. And I think it also allows me to probe in other parts because if they're talking about something that where they're very comfortable, they're talking about their artistry. You know, we're listening to stems and they're talking about the very direct answer to a question of how did you make this? I can then start to veer into well why did
you make this? And if I had started that way and I didn't have the stems and I didn't have the song to talk about and just said, you know, out of the blue, hey why did you write this lyric? They might clam up, or they might you know, have a different kind of reaction. But I think the familiarity of the material and the small parameter of just let's talk about this one song, let's get deep in that
one song, it helps them open up. And you know, musicians can be tougher interviews because they they speak through their music exactly.
Yeah, And they're not really that articulate.
In terms of interviews about the music. They're really just play it. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to do it, ye know. And I've come across that from time to time.
Can I say one thing, by the way, But so the Letterman interview, if it's the one that I'm thinking of. You did a Letterman interview in December of twenty thirteen.
My god, that's uncanny.
It was important to me in a few different ways. One because I had not interviewed people I was trying to absorb. At this point, I had, you know, I had the concept for the show. I'd made one episode as a sort of pilot, and then I was like, okay, I'm going to do this. I was trying to learn as much as I could about interviewing from just taking it in from other sources. And here's the thing is one of the shows that I turned to. And the other thing was I had never spoken into a mic before,
and i'd sung, but I hadn't recorded myself. And I was like, well, how do I do this? And so I launched the show in January of twenty fourteen. As I was getting ready for that that episode that you did, the last episode I think of twenty thirteen around that it was a Letterman interview. I listened to that and tried to, you know, learn what I could about interviewing. But also I tried to learn how to set my microphone to sound like your voice. I was like, how
do I emulate something like that? And so I was fiddling with my EQ settings on my microphone.
When you say that, it's interesting because it's to get out of your own way to some guests come, they're not in the mood to talk. You know, we do the video now. I never wanted to do the video. One of the first shows we did was Kathleen Turner early on years ago, and Kathleen Turner comes in.
I called her on the phone and she.
Goes, oh baby.
She goes, so I have to is it on camera? Is it on?
Are you doing the video with this thing? And I go she goes, thank god, I can just come in a ponytail, in my sweats and like every woman to be perfectly honest. It's mostly the actresses and public figures who are women are like, thank I don't have to get ready and fill right, I have to do my hair, on my makeup, with my clothes and so forth.
Do you find that when you're doing an interview now on camera that the responses you get are different, Like people can port themselves different than knowing that they're on camming.
That people who were professional public figures, they got it down. We've been in front of cameras in all of our lives. Now talk about West Wing? How did that happen?
Yeah, So from twenty sixteen to twenty twenty, mainly I made a podcast called The West Wing Weekly with my friend Joshua Molina, who is an actor who was on the West Wing, and we did about a hunt, you know, one episode for every episode of the show, plus some bonus episodes. I stole Zach McNeice. Zach came and mixed
our show. I posted a thing saying I'm looking for someone to help me with the show, and he wrote back and I saw here's a thing was on his CV, and I said, well, I already have the settings as close to what I think you've done, so here you go. So I met josh It goes way back. Actually, when I had was graduating college, I thought I wanted to move to la because I wanted to make music for films. I wanted to score films. But I had no idea
how one that. I had no idea how you I grew up in Massachusetts, moving to LA seemed inconceivable, let alone, how do you find a job in Hollywood? And I was at Yell and I thought, I was like, this isn't even the kind of college where, like, you know, people come out of here that where there's no old boys network, you know, where someone can say like, hey, I want to get a job at Goldman Sachs. Oh, you know, I know the Shrafts.
Anymore, you can hang out at the counter, right.
And then I had mentioned I had started watching again through my sister's taste. I started watching Sports Night, Aaron Sorkin's first TV show, and my friend said, well, you know Josh Molina he went here, he went to Yell. And I said, really, I know that I love that character. I love that actor, you know.
And you didn't know him.
I didn't know him.
No.
And then months later I was living in Massachusetts. I was working at you know, at a day job and dreaming of this dream to get to LA. And one night I looked up Josh's name on you know, this is before Google. I looked it up on whatever alta Vista or something ask Jeeves, and I found he had a website. He had his own personal website with his headshot and his resume and an email address. So I clicked on it and I just sent him an email saying, you know, dear Josh, we don't know each other. I've
just recently graduated. I'm trying to figure out how how does one get to make music for films. I don't know if you have any advice for someone like me, but like, thanks, I fan hope to hear from you. I was considering trying to move to LA or moved to New York. New York was much easier, and I had a lot of friends who were moving on why easier geographically and easier, Yeah, and I knew people there, and it just it felt daunting but much less daunting. And I thought, well, I do know that there are
films that get made in New York. Maybe I can skate by if I do that. Josh wrote back and said he's like, look, I I'm not in that side of things. I play cards with some composers, but my senses in general is generally, if you want to do stuff in films, you got to be here in LA And I said, okay, thank you very much. I moved to New York because I was just I was too scared of her form.
Yeah, you're gonna flush that Yale degree down the toilet somehow.
Yeah. And then I tried New York for a while. It was hard in other ways and it just didn't didn't end up working out for me and that. But then I did move to LA about a year later. And when I got there, I wrote to Josh and said, hey, thank you so much for the advice. Here I am. His email no longer worked, and I was like, well that was that. And I slowly, you know, I found a job as an assistant to a composer. I was making my own records. I started, you know, just trying
to do music however I could. And then in twenty twelve, I finally had my first feature film that I had scored, went to Sun Dance, which was what it was called Save the Date, directed by my friend Michael Mohan and starring Alison Brie and Allison Brie. Alison Brie and.
You wrote music for you. You did the score for the whole film.
Yeah, I wrote the score and I wrote a song for.
He asked you to come or you've pitched yourself to well.
He had originally written a song of mine that I had written into the script. One of the characters played by Jeffrey Aaron was a songwriter and he and he had written in the script a song of mine that already existed, and then he was like, well, maybe is that he sent it to me and he said, is that weird that he's he's like writing a song, but it's your song? And I said, yeah, maybe a little bit. And he said, well, would you write a new song
for it? And I said yeah. So originally it was just that write a song for the movie, but then
they asked me to score it as well. So I went to Sundance and it was so exciting and I met all these people, and then afterwards I was on Twitter, back when Twitter was a nice place to be, and I was just looking at like sort of Sundance chatter and looking at movies that I'd seen, because one of the great things about going was you know, you get a pass and you can see just like everything, and I saw I think like fourteen movies you know, and
I was just looking at seeing what people were talking about. And in the conversation, josh Molina had replied to somebody who you know I'd been looking at, and josh Molina replied to him, and I was like, josh Molina, hey, and I forgot that, like social media was a thing that, you know, was a way that you could try and
reach people. And I clicked on his name and then he had a link to his Facebook page and I clicked on that, and then I sent him a message and I said, hey, you might not remember this, but over a decade ago, you gave me this advice, come to LA if you want to score films. Well, it took me a long time to do it, but I didn't and I just scored my first film. And could I take you out to lunch to say thank you? And he wrote back the next day and said, as an out of work actor, I make it a point
never to say no to a free lunch. And so we met up and we just hit it off and had a great time, and we later ended up making a pilot for a game show, an idea that I had tried to do as a live thing, and then he participated.
What was the game show? I read about this.
So I had done this charity event called Celebrity Celebrity. Do you know the game Celebrity. Imagine two teams and there's a bold of names in the middle and people have put in names of famous people and you might pull it out and without saying the name of the person. It was first this charity game, I said, let's raise money. Let's what if it was celebrity celebrity celebrities instead of just being the names of the bowl actually playing. Wouldn't that be fun? And it was really fun.
You did it?
I did it.
Were some of your celebrity guests.
So Josh was the captain of one team and on his team was Sarah Silverman, Michael Ian Black, Rob Delaney. There was another team with Martin Starr, Aubrey Plaza, Aleah.
Shashit good real comic talents.
Yeah, it was great.
What happened?
It was wonderful. And the curtain came down and I said, Josh, thanks so much. I was like, I think there might be something here and he said, I think so too. And Josh, besides being on the Western Heat executive produced Celebrity Poker Showdown, he'd co created that show, and so I said, do you want to try and see if this is something that could we could do for TV with me? And he said yes, and so we pitched it and we sold it. We got a we did
a pilot. We had Mike Leean Black hosting it, and we had the cast of The West Wing versus the cast of Scandal, two shows that Josh had been on, and it was really fun. And then the network that we sold it to got sold to another network and somewhere in the shuffle between executives and things like that, we got lost, and we were just waiting. And so
this was in twenty fourteen. We shot the pilot. Meanwhile I started making song Exploder, and a year later, we're still waiting to hear what's going to happen with the game show with the Game Show, and eventually I said to Josh, I said, hey, do you want to just try making a podcast with me? Because I'm really enjoying this format and it feels closer to the sort of the punk rock thing that I came up with, which is like we can just do it ourselves. We don't
have to ask permission, we don't need gatekeepers. Let us do it. Yeah, we can just do it.
And this was a west wink and.
This was about and I said, look, I've been very polite. I have not peppered you with all of my questions about the West Wing right, but we could do you know this kind of There were some shows that existed where people would go episode by episode, but none of them at that time had someone from the show as one of the hosts. It would take some of the song exploder DNA of having someone who is intimately involved with the creation of the thing telling the story.
The thing with West Wing, I always view Sorkin. I worked with him very guarded, very guarded guy, brilliant, but very close to the vest. And I thought to myself, what was it like working with him?
And he did? I think I was told three episodes of your show, correct.
I think even maybe more than that.
More than that.
Was it tough to lure him in or not?
No?
It was actually really he was always so game and incredibly generous with his time. And you know, one time we did a live taping in San Francisco. It was for the finale of season three, and we were like, would you please come? We had this possibility of doing this and it's such a significant episode. And we said, you know, could you come, We will fly you out, you know, we'll fly you first class, Like what can
we do to get you? And he said, how about this, I'll fly myself out and whatever you were going to spend on the plane ticket, let's pick a charity and you can give it to that or something like. He just took care of of his own stuff. He's like, he has don't need to spend money on me. And it was so kind. And then, you know, I think for him, we're just talking about everything that we loved about the show and asking him questions. So I think for him it was nice. I hope it was nice.
Musician and podcaster Rishi Cash here way. If you enjoy conversations with creative innovators whose talents extend beyond music, check out my episode with Julian Lennon.
One of the really important things that happened to me in my relationship with photography and the images was that I would have people write to me, people that couldn't financially afford to travel the world or go anywhere, couldn't or were disabled and couldn't travel the world or go anywhere. And what they had all said to me is that you bring these stories to us, you bring the truth, You bring life to us of cultures that we would never necessarily know anything about.
To hear more of my conversation with Julian Lennon, go to Here's the Thing dot org. After the break, Hereway shares the guest he was most excited to have on song Exploder and one whom he would like to interview in the future. I'm Alec Baldwin and this is Here's the Thing. Rishie Kish Hereway created song Exploder in twenty fourteen. Since then, it has received critical acclaim, won many awards, and was recently named by Time as one of the
one hundred best podcasts of all time. This year, here Way will be presented with the twenty twenty six iHeartMedia Innovator Award for his visionary approach to storytelling. Guests on song Exploder have ranged from you Yo Yoma to Madonna, from Billie Eilish to Metallica. Having interviewed so many music legends, I was curious if there was one particular artist that he was most excited to interview.
When I first started the show, you know, I had a few ideas of like the kind of artist that would be a dream to have on you know, the kind of people where their artistry is exceptional and also mysterious to me. And one of those that small list was Buyork. And so she did the show twenty sixteen. So I had been doing it for two years and that was just incredible. I couldn't believe that she got to do it, and she was in London at the time, so I had to wake up at five in the morning,
did the interview over the phone. She had somebody, you know, like remote sinking her recording, and that was I couldn't believe it. My wife afterwards, you know, when she woke up, she's like, why did you get up so early? I said, I had to interview Byorke and she's like, you what.
She also loves Beork and I hadn't even told her that I was doing it because I so sure that it was going to fall apart at any point and I didn't want to jinx it or anything like that, so I didn't even let anybody know that it was happening until after I had done it.
So New York was one that you got excited about.
Yeah, yeah, who's.
Someone you want Tom York if you can call him up for me.
I'll call Tom York. If you call Humfrey Bogart.
Deal, would you want Tom York?
Yeah?
Absolutely. I mean Radiohead is another one that was on that list.
Who's someone who their musicianship impressed you. You really were amazed by their musician ship.
Oh so I just did an episode that you know, this is just recency bias, but I just put out an episode with the Mexican artist Silvana Astrada, and there's a moment where I, you know, isolate just her vocals, and her vocal take is just stunning. I just listened to it over and over again, the way that she
can sing. She did this thing where she's holding out such a long note and doing all the kind of you know, Seraph's calligraphic kind of moves with her voice as she goes through the note, and then somehow at the end she ramps up and like crescendo's to the end of the note instead of it just sort of like dying out. And it's like a level of musicality and musical instinct but also physical control, like there's an athleticism to be able to do that. Everything about that.
It just blew me away, and I feel like I get to encounter something like that pretty regularly in the show.
Let's take some questions.
Hi, I'm glad you brought up classical music. I used to writ about class music and I love classical music. I know that you did some stuff with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, like the Symphony Exploder, and I know you've done stuff with Steve Reisch. What are the particular challenges of doing classical this format with classical music and do you have plans to do any of that in the future.
Well, I think Steve Reisch was a wonderful opportunity because not only do I love his music, he's alive and so because the show is primarily about the idea of telling the story from the creator's perspective. With most classical music, that's not possible. With the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, you know, the music director and conductor sort of stood in place for Stravinsky talking about his interpretation of Stravinsky. It was a really special experience and it was a different.
Kind of excercisies on Netflix.
This was a live event that I did with the Toronto Symphony orchestra.
Where is that available?
It wasn't filmed. It was just an event that happened, But I think it was interesting. But it felt like it's a different idea than what song splitter.
Is anybody else here? Do we see anybody right over there? What's your favorite acting performance of all time? Oh? For me, favorite movie performance?
Can I say one that sticks in my head forever? One line reading is in stateon Maine after the car accident, the car flips over. You get out of there and you say.
So that happened. Yeah?
No, But I mean movies are very ephemeral. They don't really stick to you. You do movies and the movie comes on TV and you're sitting there watching it, like you're in your kitchen. It's two o'clock in the morning. A movie comes on, you're in and literally the scene comes on and you go, I remember that day, That's when I had that accident in the Ventura Freeway. Remember what happened in your life, in and around. But the scenes themselves are not as indelible as when you do in the theater.
And in the theater, when you.
Do a play, especially if it's a good play and you work at it, you wind up going to the same show years later with your friends, and you ruined the play for them. But you lean over and go, I didn't do.
It that way.
We have the one right here in the foreground. You stand up, Please.
Question for your guest.
So I, my daughter was then nine years old, do a lipa episode like love Again? Was the song you did and the symphony, But we were surprised that was the song that was chosen. How was the song chosen? Sometimes they weren't the most notable song for the performer. How did you agree to choose the.
Song for that show, for that episode specifically.
Or any of them, but that episode?
Yeah, yeah, I mean normally for any episode, it's sort of a it's a conversation between myself and the artists, usually facilitated by a publicist. You know where I'm asking for which is the song that has the story that's the most emotionally significant to them, because I think it would be easy for a story about the process of a song to simply be like technical And for me, it's a chance to have a little miniature biography, tiny little portrait of an artist, and we're looking through the
song to find that. So not all songs provide that some songs are really revealing of someone's process but also who they are and you know, how their brain works, and so by trying to narrow it to something that feels like they have a lot to say and it really meant something to them, then usually it's a more
compelling episode. Oftentimes, you know, the label will say, hey, we want you to do the latest single, and you know, and so sometimes you know, I can counter with that, and sometimes it's the same song.
Tell me about the cooking show, talk about that.
Yeah, So I made a show called Home Cooking with my friend Samin Nosrat, who is an incredible acclaimed cook book author and chef. She wrote Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, you know, which was a huge bestseller, and then there was a Netflix show based on that that was also a huge hit. Samin got called like the modern Julia Child. That's, you know, she's really like humanizes and introduces people to
cooking in a very gentle and loving way. We became friends by chance, you know, in twenty seventeen, and then when the pandemic hit, suddenly everybody was in lockdown and pandemic and everybody's relationship to eating changed because now there were no restaurants available for that, you know, first week of Lockdown, I was like, I don't know how long this is going to go, but people are feeling like me,
and you know, there's so much uncertainty. And I had been asking to me about a podcast previously, but then I said, hey, is this the moment where you know we can make a podcast where you can help people answer their questions. You know, we would come back from the grocery stores with such strange carts, you know, like whatever was left on the shelf. It's like, well, I'm trying a bean. I've never heard of you, but that I have six cans of it? What do I do
with it? Could you help answer these kinds of questions? And so she said yes, and so in March of twenty twenty, we we were like, we'll just do this like special series. What out four episodes and then you know, this will blow over, and but we'll have provided some fun and something, you know, while people are feeling lonely
and scared, here's something nice. And then of course the things continued, and so then we made more episodes, and then things continued, and then we made more episodes and so and then we just and then we took a break, and then we just made another season this year.
Anybody else, We have a couple more questions here.
Hi, I have a question about celebrity for both of you. The game now celebrities, I guess Rishiakisha, I'm curious. You know you're talking to all of these extremely huge stars. Do you find yourself feeling like a fan or has that like changed over time because you talked to so many people? But how do you see them as people? And then question for Alec like do you feel like there's sort of an obstacle because you're so famous in connecting with people, like if you're out the world?
Is that?
I'm curious about your experience of celebrity as well.
I'm sorry we're out of time. You go ahead to be ahead.
Well, I think that my I'm so concerned with making sure that the show feels like a professional experience for everyone and that like I can get a good show in the limited time that I have with someone, that that overcomes any possibility of you know, fanboying or something like that. Because sort of related to the previous question about making someone feel comfortable, I think if you come in with too much starstruck energy. It puts people in the opposite place, or at least not the right place
where I want them, which is to feel relaxed. And like you said, you know, just like have their guard down.
You've got to convince them you're not to get them. Yes, well, this is all about My show is all about appreciation.
Yeah, And I think if you can show genuine curiosity at a deeper level than just like, oh I love this thing, you know, then I think that also helps people relax. So getting into that mind frame for me is easy because I'm just trying to make the best show possible. If it goes really well and the interview is over, then I can sort of say, you know, if they're happy, then I can say, by the way, I've loved everything you've made, and you know, here's a story about how I first got into your work or
something like that. But only if it goes well, and only at the end, do we.
Have one more question before we go, because I have another last one for you.
Hi.
I'm a big fan of Perfume Genius and I loved your episode with them, but I wanted to ask, is there an episode that you felt like really helped an artist kind of level up their audience, or if it's an older song, sort of like helped introduce it to a new audience or generation.
I wouldn't presume to try and answer for an artist in terms of, you know, what an episode of the podcast has done for them. I will say one thing that was really nice was I did an episode with Dan Wilson from the band Semi Sonic about Closing Time, and you know, it's such a famous song, but I think most people didn't know the real backstory behind it.
And after that episode came out, he was very kind about it, and he said that he got more messages from people listening to that episode and reacting to it him personally than any other thing that he had done. And you know, I think people were really moved by his story. It's not my story, it's his story. You know.
I can't really claim any credit for it, but I think that was something that was really nice where it's not like that song needed any help in terms of its popularity, but to be able to give Dana platform to say, like, this is what the song is really about. That was special.
Musician and podcaster Wishy Cash hereway, if you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, here Way shares how he came to score the CNN documentary Our Nixon. I'm Alec Baldwin and this is Here's the Thing. In addition to creating award winning podcasts and recording multiple albums, Bashi Cash Hereway as also a composer for film and TV.
He scored his first film, Save the Date, in twenty twelve. A year later, an opportunity came to score the CNN documentary Our Nixon. I wanted to know how here Way went from the indie music and film scene to scoring a CNN documentary.
It's directed by a wonderful director named Penny Lane. It's a real name, and it's all archival material except for the score. She gathered the home movies of the Nixon cabinet members. These eight millimeters home movies that they had made while working for Nixon had been confiscated by the FBI, and they sat undeveloped for decades, and then they got declassified and in the world of like archivist nerds. These were kind of like a holy Grail, and then they
came out and then they developed them. And her idea was that these guys are the biggest villains in American political history at the time, this is twenty thirteen. These guys were the biggest villains in American political history. But nobody's a villain in their own home movies. So what does that look like and what happens if you try and tell the story as seen through their eyes? And I had seen a short film of hers called The Voyagers,
which is beautiful. Also highly recommended The Voyagers about Carl Sagan and the Voyager Mission, and it's beautiful short film. I was just a fan. Subscribed to her newsletter. One day she mentioned that she was working on this Nixon documentary, and I said, hey, I love what you do. I love that era of American politics. I just think it is a movie, you know.
Like, I'm a fan of too many Oliver Stone movies. I mean I like them, they're okay, But his film on Nixon, Montoni Happens, that's an amazing film.
Yeah.
That just shattered me.
Yeah, I mean, well, all the president's men, you know, it's just I think that's probably part of the reason why I love the story too. So I just said, you're working on this documentary, do you have a composer? Do you need a composer? Can I audition? How can I work on this with you? And she wrote back and said, no, we don't have a composer. But you know, she didn't know we'd never met, so I had to audition. I like wrote some music based on the idea of what I thought the film was going to be.
You're the poster boy for doesn't hurt to ask? Yeah, that's your life. Doesn't hurt to ask? I wanted to ask you two silly questions. I can't help myself.
I'm sorry. What's your favorite food?
Cookies? Chocolate chip cookies?
Okay? Really, well, Connor, what brand of cookie?
Well? Here in New York there's the Jacques Torres Chalcosh cookie, which is kind of I feel like, so fancy cookies. Yes, yeah, yeah, no girls no, girls Scout cookie. No, I want the New York Yankees of cookie where it's like they've spent so much money on all the ingredients, Yeah, to make it the best thing. That's yeah, that's what about food?
Like a meal?
A meal? I mean it's a cliche, but you know my my mom was a great cook and I would give anything to have her cooking again.
Let's have a round up a pause from my guest, my thanks to Rishi Cash, Hairway and the on air fest. I'll leave you with the latest single, roller Coaster, from his new album in the Last Hour of Light. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing that's brought to you by iHeart Radio.
Out on Cattarina. There's a hundred buffalo pending by the ocean. The only now.
Did they do my great names?
They breathe in the salting? Can you miss the places you're meant to be? If you earnther?
The Does it go?
And?
And what if this goes on?
And? And caught myself staring into nothing much at all, past the fair ground, the graveyard, the empty shopping mall. I drove till the road and they didn't, Uh Cody Beach about the distance between me and everything that's out of each Does it go?
And? And what if this goes on?
And and? On a road the cold stir a ride upper gains seal that sky.
What if this goes on and and.
What if this goes on, and dope, and.
What if this goes on and and so what if this goes on and.
And what if this goes on and
And don