Song Exploder - Patrick Carney feat. Ralph Carney - BoJack Horseman (Main Title Theme)

Episode Date: September 19, 2018

BoJack Horseman is a Netflix original series, an animated comedy about a washed up 90s sitcom star who's trying to figure out his life and career without drowning in self-loathing and existential despair. It won the 2016 Critics Choice award for best animated series. The theme song for the show was created by Patrick Carney, who is one half of The Black Keys, and his uncle, Ralph Carney, a multi-instrumentalist who has worked artists like Tom Waits, St Vincent, The B-52s, Galaxie 500, and a lot more. But the track wasn't written for the show, originally; it was just something that Patrick and Ralph made without knowing what it was for. In this episode, the two break down how the song was created, and how it went from their long-distance collaboration to become a TV theme song.songexploder.com/bojack-horseman

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. Last week, Netflix released the fifth season of BoJack Horseman. In the opening credits of the first episode of Season 5, as the theme song plays, there's a shot of BoJack in the foreground, and in the background on a TV, there's a drawing of a man with a saxophone, and the dates 1956 to 2017.

It's a memorial tribute. The man in the drawing is Ralph Carney, who co-wrote the theme song, song along with his nephew, Patrick Carney, of the Black Keys. I spoke with both of them in 2016 for the Song Exploder episode about the making of the theme song. But in December of 2017, Ralph Carney passed away suddenly. Here's Patrick. Losing Ralph's been really hard for me. He was one of my biggest inspirations. When it came to music, he always encouraged me ever since I was a teenager. I know that he would be happy to know that people are interested in this song. And I encourage you to look deeper into Ralph's catalog,

including the songs that he made with Tom Waits on records like Rain Dogs, Meal Variations, along with some of the stuff he did with David Hild and Tin Huey and the B-52s. But it's been a rough year so far. Losing your mentor is a terrible thing and losing your uncle's terrible thing. But it is really cool that we have this song we made together that has been exposed to a lot more people

because it's the theme song to a great show than if we would have just put it out. like as a seven-inch. So every time I hear it, it makes me happy to know that millions people get to hear Ralph playing his horn. With the new season of BoJack Out Now, I wanted to revisit their episode and hear Patrick and Ralph talking together again

about how they made the theme. Here it is. Bojack Horseman is a Netflix original series, an animated comedy about a washed-up 90s sitcom star who's trying to figure out his life and career without drowning in self-loathing and existential despair. It won the 2016 Critics Choice Award for Best Animated Series. The theme song for the show was created by Patrick Carney,

who's one half of the Black Keys, and his uncle, Ralph Carney, a multi-instrumentalist who has worked with artists like Tom Waits, St. Vincent, Galaxy 500, and a lot more. But the track wasn't written for the show originally. It was just something that Patrick and Ralph made without knowing what it was for. In this episode, the two of them break down how the song was created and how it went from their long-distance collaboration to become the main title theme. I'm Patrick Carney, the drummer for the Black Keys, and I produced and co-wrote the theme song to BoJack Horseman with my uncle Ralph.

This is Ralph Carney, the uncle of Patrick Carney. I played some instruments on that Bojack theme. We've been sending stuff back and forth to each other since I was a teenager. You used to send cassettes back when you were like 16 or something. Those are hilarious. I got some good ones. I got into music because of Ralph. The first time I think I ever saw Ralph perform my dad. I don't remember if he woke us up or if he had taped it,

but it was Ralph playing with Tom Waits on Letterman and probably like 87. It was 88, but that's okay. Ralph was more of an influence than someone I learned to play music with. I came back in 2008 specifically to record some stuff with you, and I remember you're like, let's do a MicePage page right now. I think it might still be up. It's still there. I built a studio at my house in Nashville,

and basically the theme from BoJack was just the first thing I recorded in the studio. It was more of a test to make sure everything worked well. The first thing I did was I just built a click track. I bought a roll in Jupiter 4 off of my buddy in Ohio, and I plugged the Pro Tools click track into the CV input and then turned the arpejorator on. CV is controlled voltage, so it's basically it's a primitive way of controlling a synthesizer externally

with a different electronic source. The Jupiter 4 is cool keyboard, and it has like old weird presets. The whole sound of that is from glitching out the clock. It moves in that way because I have so much volume, I think, going into the CV input from a Pro Tools click track that it's just totally glitching it out. And the next thing I added to it was the drums. So the way I do drums, typically, is I record like a very simple beat, like kick snare, hi-hat.

When you hear the beginning of the song, when the drums first come in, it's just a loop of just that very simple beat. And then the next thing I did after that was I recorded a whole drum take of fills on top of it. The thing after that was this distorted rhythm guitar kind of call-and-response thing that I recorded it in mono, and then I took the pan pot and went left to right. I love to collaborate on music. I prefer it. I hate working by myself. The fact that I had even bothered to structure something and get a rough mix together, it was all

because I knew it was going to send it to Ralph. First of all, when I got it from Patrick, I was like, man, this is, you're really coming up with some cool stuff. So the first, what I do, I put it on. And I just look around in my room. I go, hmm, there's a tenor sax right there. And then there are a couple of rhythmic things that,

like I said, oh, that's kind of a cool little riff. There's that one or ba-da-p-bop-bop. I basically would find something that seemed like a riff and then double it or triple it. And I sort of like beefed up some of the parts like they were written out horned parts, you know. And then I added bass trombone and baritone sax. So there's a lot of low horn stuff

and that kind of gives it that bite. At the very end, I'm playing baritone sax. It was really cool how Patrick had this isolated that is like a solo instrument. It kind of like the Simpsons. Lisa Simpson, Barry Sacks. The thing about the saxophone, like, in rock and roll, has such a bad rap.

But, I mean, it is, like, it can supplement a human voice, I think, so well. It is why it's such an important instrument when it comes to jazz and stuff like that. I mean, Ralph has such good instincts, and everything he plays is interesting, you know. A couple days later, I got, you know, an email with the files back from him.

And I knew, like, instantly after playing back that it was going to work. I just, I went through and kind of edited stuff and mixed it down. And like three months later, I got an email from one of the producers of BoJack. A guy named Noel Bright, and I didn't know him. He just asked. I'm Noel Bright, and I'm one of the executive producers on the show. Every part of BoJack Horseman had been sort of, well, what's our dream?

And during the casting process, it was sort of, what's our dream for Bojack? And it was like, Will Arnette. And we got Will Arnette. And then I was like, who's our dream for Todd? Aaron Paul. Now we got Aaron Paul. And we started to realize that we had something special. And we started making the show and working on the main title, it felt like, okay, what are we going to do?

This is going to be very special. It's going to be very emblematic of the show. And it felt like, well, it's worked all along from this point. Let's go for what would be our dream. And for me personally, I've always been a Black Keys fan. And because we were on Netflix, we had a lot of flexibility to do something really So reaching out to work with one of your favorite artists was kind of a no-brainer and felt like, let's take a shot. This is a show that's not a typical animated comedy.

It's a funny show, but it's thoughtful, and it has a dark side to it. When we heard the original track, we knew immediately that it worked. It just captured the tones so well. When you hear the saxophone and you hear the dreamlike quality of the piece, I think it was a very I think it was something that immediately we weren't looking for, but we knew it was right when we heard it. We showed it to a team at Netflix and said, we think that we have our main title, and we think this is going to be very special. And we think it's going to brand the show and identify right out of the bat, like, tell the fans and tell people this is what the show is. That was just really like one of those lucky breaks.

You know, it wasn't like, hey, man, these people wanted us to do this theme for a cartoon about a horse, you know. Then I'd be like, oh, right. What should I, what sax should I play that sounds like a horse? I would have thought about too much and, you know, probably would have sucked. You're thinking too hard. So that's, it's the best world when something you've done, just they like it. Yeah. The main title sequence for BoJack Horseman, where this song appears in each episode, is about 55 seconds long.

The music is edited to fit the length. But the original version that they made is actually about four and a half minutes long, with sections that are never heard on the show. So now, here's the BoJack Horseman theme by Patsy. Patrick Carney featuring Ralph Carney in its entirety. Visit SongExploder.net for more information on Patrick Carney, Ralph Carney, and Bojack Horseman. There's a link to buy the full-length version of this song, and you can see the show's main title sequence. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th.

It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full-length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikesh, Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career, And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists. And it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Rope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April. and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me.

So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzukas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In The Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.co.

Or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. This episode was produced and edited by me, along with Christian Coons. The illustration for this episode was done by Carlos Lerma. You can see that on the Song Exploder website too. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collective of fiercely independent podcasts.

You can learn about all of our shows at Radiotopia.fm. I'd love to know your thoughts on this episode. You can find Song Exploder on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Song Exploder. My name is Rishi Keshe Your Way. Thanks for listening. Radiotopia.