The Ben Mulroney Show - The Canadian behind the music that drives Taylor Sheridan shows

Episode Date: December 16, 2025

GUEST:   ANDREW LOCKINGTON / music composer "Landman", "Lioness", "Mayor of Kingstown" If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ��⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Insta: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠ Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at [e-mail] Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You're listening to the Ben Mulroney show. Yeah, we're going to let this breathe for a second. Welcome to the Ben Mulroney show. Keep playing that. It's the 16th of December, 2025. And if you are a fan of Landman, then you know that that is the music that opens the show. and it sets the tone in a way that I think almost every theme song attempts to do.

And this one does so with a bullseye. And that stuff does not happen by accident. And it certainly doesn't happen because of a great AI prompt. It happens because of the talent of one person in particular. And I'm so happy to have that guy in studio with us right now. Andrew Lockington, music composer. And he's the guy who sets the tone, the music tone on so many of those shows, as well as movies that you've watched.

And he happens to be from Burlington, Ontario, and he's in studio with me right now. Andrew, welcome to the show. Hey, Ben. Thanks for having me. So I don't even know where to start with you. Let's start at the beginning. Before we get to that sort of thing, let's start at the beginning for you. How did music collide with you in your life?

So I come from a family of scientists, engineers. Oh, boy. Yep, I was the Black Sheep. I think I still am, the Black Sheet. But we were all encouraged to do music, piano lessons, and I just took to it right away. I loved it. So as a family of scientists who were encouraged to do music,

was it because your parents knew that you had to activate that side of your brain? Was there science behind why you should enter into the arts? That is a good question. I will ask them that over the holidays. I think they had both studied music and loved music. So I think they wanted their kids to have that same thing. And my grandparents lent us their piano at a young age and just started playing piano. I was terrible at doing lessons.

My teachers hated me. Yeah. I realize now in hindsight, I think I had five or six teachers over the years and that might have been my fault. See, I was the opposite. I was really good at lessons. And I could read music like nobody's business. But I didn't, I never developed an ear for music. So once I stopped, I, I, I, I was the opposite.

I couldn't just pick up, I couldn't just pick up and play. I didn't ever learn how to play, never learned how to compose music. I never learned how to just hear it and play it, which I suspect you learned. So I think I was born with that. It's funny, I still think everyone has that to a certain extent. But I would always, I loved making up music, making up melodies, humming things. Like I'd read a book and I'd hum what I thought the soundtrack would be to the point that I remember my grade two teacher telling me to be quiet.

In silent reading time, I was making noise. But, and then I ended up doing that when I'd play piano. I'd piano lessons instead of learning the four lines of Mozart Sonata, I would learn the first three bars and make up the rest. Somehow the teacher knew that wasn't actually how it went. But yeah, that's kind of how I got into it and loved it. And then got into writing songs and was in bands and that was really fun. But there are thousands, hundreds of thousands of kids in bands,

with dreams of making a living, plying their craft and paying their bills doing that thing that they love, it's really hard to become that select few who get to do that for a living. How do you go from being one of many to, you know, at the top of your field? I'm incredibly lucky. The road is paved with people really talented who haven't been this fortunate. And I just ended up working with really great people and didn't think of it as a job. I probably should have. I just thought of it as having fun. And, you know, as a director I worked for once said, we're just kind of waiting for the parents to come in

and break up the party and tell you to go to bed kind of feel. So that's kind of been my life. And it's kind of the more that I just enjoy it and just sort of put my head down and not worry about the business side of it, coincidentally, the more success I've had. But there has to be an element of, how do I say this? You have to be willing to say yes to things

that others might say, know to, meaning like for you to go from being in a band and in bands, meaning you see yourself that way. This is how I'm going to make music. I'm going to be in a band to then one day being in the position that you're in scoring television shows and films. It means at some point you had a choice to make. And somebody said, you can either do this or that or, hey, I have an opportunity for you to do something you probably haven't thought of. You probably haven't thought of yourself as a composer for a TV show. You have to be willing to be the person to say yes to that where others would probably say no. So talk to me about that that that fork in the road.

That's interesting. So in university, I studied film composition and conducting and orchestration, but I was doing solo albums on the side and I really had these two prongs in the fork. And when I left school, didn't graduate, credit short. Yeah, one credit. I apologize to my parents again for that. Your parents, go your poor parents. They're just shaking their heads. Yeah. But I went and I apprenticed for someone who I'd been in a band in high school and the keyword player in the band with these older guys years before me had become a film composer. Yeah. So I reached out to him here in Toronto and became his assistant and that kind of led me in that direction. He went on, his name was Michael Dana. He went on to win the Oscar in

2012. For what? Life of Pie. Right. That's wonderful. Another Burlington. Yeah. Something in the water up there. Maybe. Yeah. Okay, so now, would you say you're now comfortable and settled in this role, and this is where you want, you've parked yourself here, and now it's about, now it's about exploring that entire space and what you can do in this role? So I would say that, and then Landman comes along. Yeah. And Landman kind of combines these two prongs of the fork into one. How? Well, it's a score. Yeah. But all of the melodies almost feel like unfinished songs. Like they're little earworms.

Sure. Little tidbits. Most of it is me humming playing guitar or playing piano or that kind of thing. And the way that came about was really interesting because I'd done these two other shows with Taylor Sheridan. Landman was the third one we were doing together. And I'd come to him

with all these different ideas of score and one of them was that theme you just played. Yeah. Can I tell you? I've only spent a little bit of time of Texas. But that song, that takes me directly to what I always felt was Texas, just the way the theme song for Friday Night Lights did. Friday Night Lights to me was such a perfect theme song for that show, because it felt to me the way Texas felt. And you did it as well.

Oh, that's funny. So I wonder what that is. Yeah, I don't know what it is. I don't know what it is. I don't know whether Texas is such a fully formed character for so many people. How did you, as a guy from Burlington captured Texas? I still don't know. Did you spend time there? I did. So Taylor films a bunch of his shows there. And whenever I'm visiting with him, I'm there.

And it's funny, a few weeks ago we were there. My wife and I visiting set, we're filming Lioness right now in Fort Worth. That show, man. Yeah, great, great show. And someone stopped me, knew that I did the music for the show and said, you know, I love that the music doesn't sound like Texas. It just sounds like real people. Oh, interesting.

So it's really funny that... It's in the ear of the beholder. Maybe, maybe, but it's funny when I kind of figured it out, when Taylor and I kind of went, oh, this is the sound, it was when I stopped trying to be something and just did what... I said to him, this is what I do when I'm not being paid. So the three shows that you do,

the first one you started was... Mayor of Kingsdown, which is shot in Toronto and Hamilton, correct? It was, season one was. Yeah. And then from there you did Lioness, which is just a world-beating show. It's amazing. And now Landman.

And in each case, what, you're handed, like an early version of what we would ultimately see on TV? So that is the typical way. With Taylor, it's totally different. Taylor writes, so he looks at these like 10-hour movies. It's not, you know, when we used to watch TV as kids, we'd see, okay, you could watch this episode of CSI and it, you know, you didn't need to care where it fit. You sure. It was, and it was just self-contained. Yeah, yeah.

and end was done. And he just writes a 10-hour film, gives you the script. And before, in my case with him, before he's even shot anything, he's talking about music. And what do you think this sounds like? And what are your ideas? So you don't even have the benefit of seeing any of the dynamics, the visual dynamics at play. You have to visualize it. Yes, but it's better. For me, it's better. Because in this line of work, traditionally, exactly what you said, you're getting the cut film, cut TV show together, you're the last bit, you're the last layer. So you get to add to it?

You get to add to it. But in this case, you get to kind of discover. And then when he, you know, Taylor said when he's shooting things, sometimes he'll put the music on his phone. So you get to help shape the performances. Well, I may be...

Ideally. Ideally. Yeah. I may not influence it as much as I wish I did, but it's very cool. All right, Andrew Lockington, don't go anywhere. This is one of the most fascinating conversations I think I've ever had about music and about film and television.

So stick around. We've got much more coming up with you after the break. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney show. And we are continuing incredible conversation with Andrew Lockington. He's a music composer. He's from Burlington, Ontario. and he has so many credits to his illustrious career. He has informed the characters and the tone and the voice and the narrative of landman and lioness and mayor of Kingstown.

And a number of movies as well, haven't you? Give us a list of some of the films that you've worked on. Gosh, you know, I have done three films with Dwayne Johnson, Journey to the Mysterious Island, Rampage and San Andreas. I've seen two of those. I've seen Rampage and San Andreas. Okay. So, and those are hard.

Well, okay, Rampage was based on a video game. It was. So was there any element of that that you brought into the music? For sure, actually, the little 8-bit music processes that you get on those early consoles. We put a bunch of the music through those processes. Yeah, that was fun. It's great to see Dwayne doing so well now with Smash Bros. machine.

Oh my gosh, yeah, yeah. He's, I mean, he's, they're saying that he might be up for an Oscar. Yeah, that would be great. Yeah. What's a difference between scoring film and scoring TV? And now that I ask the question, I realize, it's probably less a difference about that, more about the person you're working with, because you just, you just said that that Sheridan's process is completely different than others in TV.

Yeah, it is. There's a lot more in common than there used to be, especially because, you know, you're taking themes and on a film, you can take a theme and over. evolve it over two hours, and now you can do the same thing over 10, you know, over season. Budgets are much more similar now. We record all of Taylor's, all the orchestral elements are Abbey Road, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, which is similar to what you do in a film. So you'll go, you'll go to England and you'll go record it to Abbey Road. We will, yeah. Oh, it's amazing.

What's a schedule like for you? You know, give me an example of a Taylor Sheridan's show. How long does it shoot for and how much of your life is dedicated to that one project? So I'm always working on multiple things at a time. And with him, a lot of the writing happens, you know, before or during production. Okay. And then once they've shot at the old kind of process applies where they send me the show, you have a week or 10 days to kind of put everything together. Yeah.

And because of the way we work, I'm not starting from scratch. Right. So they have a thing called temp music where they'll put into. temporary music until you've done your thing. And in our case, it's the stuff I've written. Okay. So it's already, we're already halfway there. Now, what happens? What happens if you're, I mean, do you work on stuff on the side? Just you got, you got an earworm of your own that you have, and you just put it in an audio file on your computer. You don't know if you're going to use it. And then, lo and behold, you work on something else, say, ah, this actually works perfectly

for that new thing. So everything you've said is accurate, except for this actually works perfectly. I have this giant folder of, oh, this is going to be great. one day and never go back. And I don't know why that is. I have yet to figure that out. But yeah, it's funny how that works out. Well, you know, what was it, what they say? Thomas Edison said, you know, every time he tried and failed at inventing the incandescent, a light bulb, he said, I didn't come up with 99 ways to fail.

I came up with 99 times. I came up with 99 ways not to do it the right way. Yeah, yeah. I think I just butchered it, but that's the point. Like you do, you got to do all that stuff in order to do it right that one time. I think that's true. I mean, even going through the process of writing these themes you'll never use are part of kind of honing your skill.

We like to say, as composers, you end up with, like, if you, do you play guitar? Do you play any instruments? So as a kid, I'm a lefty, right? And I took guitar lessons and my teacher never asked me if I was a lefty, and I didn't know the difference. And so I was learning writing and I was terrible. So, yeah, I'd love, maybe I'll try again one day. So, so many guitar players learn three chords.

You start with three chords. You can play so many songs with those three chords. And as a composer, you're trying, you know that skill on different instruments and in writing, but you're trying really hard to not resort to those things because you end up with everything sounding the same. What's your all-time favorite film score? Oh my gosh.

I love the score to Road to Perdition, Tom Newman. San Mendez's film. Yeah, I remember the first. film. I did the junket for that film. I loved that movie. That was a beautiful movie. I wish I could remember the score though. I've got to say, I've only seen it once. I only saw the movie once. Yeah. And I loved it. It's a beautiful film. It was not what I was expecting from Tom Hanks. Yeah. Why do you love that? So I love that they incorporated the theme into the filming. Yeah. So Paul Newman sits down at the piano and plays this little melody and it's actually part of

the score you hear. Yeah. I love that. And I love just the emotional quality of it. father-son story, and I don't know, there's something about that music that, you know, I'll tell you a funny story about Taylor. When I was writing, first working with him, I was writing music for mayor of Kingstown, and I had written a couple of themes, and I got word that a friend of mine from university had passed away. Yeah. I sat down at the piano and wrote something, just one hand on the piano.

Then I sent him these five themes. That was one of them. And I'd say the scientific brain would say that was the fourth or fifth back. And he called me immediately and said, Love what you sent. What's with that fourth one? That's amazing. What is that?

And I've come to realize that something, music is kind of a carrier wave, if it's done right, carrier wave for something I'm feeling to something you pick up on the other side of it. And I don't think ones and zeros can figure out how that translates. And I think the scores I love are those moments.

And you know, I sort of made a joke about it off the top that, you know, this is the type of music that even the world's greatest AI prompt can't give us. But there must be, I mean, you must be trying to incorporate new technology all the time, whether it's AI or not. Like, there must be, you have to stay ahead of that curve in the business that you're in. I think so. You know, I struggle with it. There was a Black Friday sale for this AI music composition thing.

Yeah. And I thought about it. Yeah. And then I thought, I want to be able to say I didn't download it yet. No, but if you, if you had did some sort of, some sort of melody on one instrument, you could ask AI to fill it out as an orchestra, right? So it's still your music, right? And just ask AI to help you out with all the extra bells and whistles. Yeah. So it's kind of the word processor to the typewriter. I'm sure that day is coming. Yeah. Luckily, especially with Landman, I mean, Taylor said early on, let's make the music sound like that bonfire party.

Yeah. The 10% of people that are awake at 2 in the morning and someone pulls out a guitar and is humming and having a conversation, let's make it sound like that. And I think that's the furthest away from AI right now. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, he does,

he feels like a throwback to me. He feels like somebody who's doing it his own way and, you know, damn the critics, although most critics love his work. It's the award show people that for some reason don't seem to want to get on board with what he's doing. I mean, he's single,

not single-handedly, but he's in a large part responsible for so many eyeballs on television today. And I don't think he's getting the credit he deserves from the awards people. He, yeah, I don't think he would care too much about that. He is, though, literally a genius. Like, he will sit down. He writes these shows himself. There's no writer's room. No.

He is sitting there and, you know, he'll say to me, oh, this weekend I have to write a couple episodes. And they're great. Yeah. you read them and you feel like you watch the show. He's an amazing talent, and he has all these other things going on in his life. But if I text him and say, here's a music idea, I hear back. It's right away. And do you think that if, you know, the next Taylor Sheridan show, do you think you get the call?

Or, like, are you in the inner circle now? I sure hope so. I do three. He does a bunch of other stuff, but I would definitely take the call. And last question for you, at what point did your parents, were your parents comfortable that you did not become a scientist? You said, you know what? We were concerned about your life choices, son, but not so much anymore. You know, to their credit, I don't think they ever were. I think, you know, as good parents, they wanted me to be fine, but my, they both said to me, my mom and dad,

you know, make sure you do it your love and figure it out from there. And I'm proud to say, I think I've done that. You're listening to the You're listening to the Ben Mulroney Show. And that was the theme music for the incredible show. show, A Lioness, starring Zoe Saldana, which I believe, have they wrapped season three? They haven't. We're a few episodes in the shooting season three. A few episodes in. I'm joined in long-form conversation with Andrew Lockington, who is the genius

behind the music for so many of these shows and so many movies that we know and love. He's from Burlington, Ontario, so we're very happy to have him in studio. Yeah, it's just, it's, it's got to be, do you know when you've got it even before Sheridan tells you, you got it? Do you know it? You know, sometimes you're pretty sure. Yeah. Other times you're sure it's wrong and, you know, the theme for, well, theme for mayor of Kingston, first thing I wrote. Yeah. And I sent it to him and said, what do you think of this? And he said, that's the thing. Yeah, first thing. Yeah, first thing. You know, it's, this is a good start. Yeah. I like working with this guy But I'm sure you were also smart enough to know It's not always going to be this movie

I have a friend who was the winner of Canadian Idol Oh cool She was that third season She won Canadian Idol And the audition that she went on To join the show That was the very first thing she'd ever auditioned for And then she went on to win that show

And then years later she's down in L.A And she went on her very first professional audition for acting And she got it And that was for the show The Rookie And so I told her, I was like, listen, it's not, it's not supposed to be this easy. And I hope you know that and the rest of the actors were giving her grief for it. But yeah, it's lovely when you can get it on the first try. But I have to assume that you've also had some really frustrating bang your head against the wall moments.

Oh, 100%. Yeah. That's part, you know, this job, like any job, has moments you just are so grateful. Yeah. And moments you think I would do anything else. Well, there's got to be at this stage in your career where you've got real accomplishments that others will gravitate to. Your phone must ring sometimes. And there are other times where, you know, you take a job, I don't know, you're probably in a really privileged position in your career at this stage.

You know, you never, I've never felt that. You never kind of get to a point where you go, wow, I've made it. This is great. You're only as good as the last thing you did. No, but what I mean is, are you able at this? part in a phase in your career to turn something down yeah but usually it's just because i i have so much going on at this point yeah but it's never it's never because you just you're you're told about i mean is there material you don't want to work with is there a type of movie you don't

want to do because i've you know we see these hyper realistic shows like landman and then you know the wildly fantastical uh movies like rampage uh so there's so what determines whether you say yes or not at this point, I think it's deciding if I can actually make a contribution to it. And if I'll be able to use my best skills to make it better. Yeah. And personality. Personality is so much. Yeah. Like writing music and what I do is less than half of this job.

The great thing with Taylor is it's a huge percentage of the job. Yeah. Because he's so easy to work with. And I'm not dealing with, you know, a massive group, a committee of people making decisions. It's him. Yeah. which is great. So it's just one-on-one kind of putting our heads together and coming up with an idea. Yeah. But the politics, like I'm sure that's any job, politics is so much work. Yeah.

So I'll often think, you know, is it going to be worth it? Is the creative reward going to be worth all the headache of trying to get everybody on the same page? What instrument do you work off of primarily as the first sound? So originally it was a, piano. And then you sit at a keyboard and you can play all the instruments in the orchestra through your synth and your samplers. And then I kind of realized the best melodies are the ones you can hum. And they have, they almost feel like a sentence. Yeah. With commas and then a breath at the end with the period. So, so I started writing by humming into my voice memos, which now has far too many things. But I realized if I can start there and then make it instrumental

that when the audience is listening, they'll be the most comfortable with that. You know, you've won some awards, and I've got to wonder, what do awards do? It feels to me like you're not an awards person. You don't hang your hat on awards. You hang your hat on the work, and you hang your hat on the experiences.

But I have to believe that awards help get, the awards help make it easier to get work. Yeah, I guess so. You know, I'll be like everyone else and say, you know, it means nothing until you win it, and then it's great. Yeah. But, no, I mean, awards, the people I see winning awards have earned them, and there's so many people doing great work out there.

There's nobody, there's no posers in this industry. Everyone is very talented, and the awards are appreciated, and the people they go to are well-warranted. Well, there must be, there must be people in your field that you have looked up to who have come to you and said, I love your work. Yeah, that's really cool. Yeah. That happened to me this year. There's a composer named Mike. Post, who wrote the theme. One of the first things you talk about piano lessons when I was a kid, I learned to play Greatest American Hero. Believe it or not, George isn't at home, please leave a message at the beep. It's a great song. I loved that song. And I learned to play it on the piano and Mike Shields. It's a beautiful, it's a really, it's a beautiful song. Beautiful. Mike Post,

who was the composer that came up to me at a dinner in L.A. and said he was a huge fan of the stuff I'd been doing. Now, did you handle it? Were you cool or were you not cool? Oh, I was cool for about five seconds and then just, you know, I had that happen once with the great Gordownie. I worked with him. We did, actually, I worked on a Canadian film.

We did a cover of Hallelujah with an orchestra that he sang. What? Oh, it was amazing. Okay. We talk about this all the time. One of the reasons hallelujah is such a beautiful and perfect song is because it opens itself, it lends itself to infinite manner of interpretation. It can be as different as you want to be,

and it can be equally beautiful, right? And so what did you want to do with that that hadn't been done before? Well, credit to him. I did an orchestral version of it. I mocked up my terrible voice, and he came into the studio. It was very nervous.

It was at CBC. You were nervous or he was nervous? I did the whole, hey, man, how's it going? And then the whole I'm not worthy Wayne's World thing and totally blew it. But he was nervous. And I think he was very proud to be able to sing it. Yeah.

And it was for a very emotional scene in the film. What was it? What was the film? St. Ralph. Okay. Yeah, about a kid running in the Boston Marathon. Sure. Okay.

And it was actually really cool what happened because he sang it three times. And finally I said, look, why don't you watch the scene and sing? Because normally they're not watching the picture. They're just listening to the music. So he watched the scene as he was looking at this TV. And it's funny, the sound engineer was saying, oh, we're going to get a bad reflection of sound. We were like, it doesn't matter.

Who cares? Let's just capture it. So Gord was singing it and he started to cry. It's very emotional, the scene. Yeah. And it was almost like someone giving a eulogy and pushing through and managing to get through without breaking down. We were bawling.

Yeah, really. We were all ball, him too. We were all very emotional. It was, and, you know, my whole life is these magical moments that we talked about. There aren't ones and zeros. You can't explain why the music moves you in that way. And that was a big one. I'm going to listen to that in the car on my way, on my way home. I can't wait to hear that. That's what a moment. What a moment. And to be able to say that you wrote for and produced Gord Downey. Well, it was great, too, because it was a Leonard Cohen

song, another great thing. It's the most Canadian thing you could possibly do. Exactly. Exactly. It was a real pinchment. That's when you hang up your hat and you walk away. Another George Costanza moment when you, you wave and you walk out the room. Exactly. And you end on a high note. Oh, that's a fantastic story. And so you've done so many things.

What is left for you to do beyond keep doing the things you love? But in terms of pushing the limits of your creativity and trying new things, where can you go that you haven't gone yet? You know, flirted with the idea of doing a stage musical, like a Broadway musical for years with a director I worked with many years ago. So we're playing around with that now, and that's probably a bucket list thing. Yeah. Who knows? Sure. The things that seem to work out the best are the ones where you don't know what the audience is and who it'll be. You just kind of throw it out there and see what happens.

But otherwise, I love what I'm doing. I'm not aspiring to do anything different. It's just sort of evolving in a direction. That's the best kind of place to be in, right? Where it grows naturally and you're not forcing anything. And I feel like I'm working with my friends. Like the people I work with on the music side, people I want to spend time with. And on the film side and TV side, the people I'm working for, I really like.

I'm really blessed. Andrew Lockington, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for sharing of your stories, of your talent. Wish you the very best. Merry Christmas. I'm looking forward to seeing what you do next. Thanks, Ben. Pleasure to be here.

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