- Sometimes you're like searching for something,
you don't know you have it until later.
You know like the first song I wrote for the record
that I discarded ended up being the very thing
that tied it all together.
(funky music)
We had recorded Occasional Rain two times,
once in the summer of 2018 at a demo session in Brooklyn.
Like I had just gotten a band together as like myself,
Dave on bass, Robbie on piano,
my friend Mike Bloch on electric guitar.
And then my friend Pat Berkery on drums.
at the time we were on the road a lot
And I was just inspired to be playing music all the time.
You know, we're really connected the six of us in our crew
and it's a really tight community.
So we recorded, we did like 12 takes, it sounded good.
It felt good.
And then I forgot,
basically forgot about it for like three years.
And then at the end when I was looking for that last song
I found a demo of it that we did at studio G in Brooklyn.
And I realized that it was like right there,
you know it was like the fully realized spirit of that song.
knowing it was gonna be the final track
It helped me kind of like refine parts of it to make it fit
kind of the rest of the record.
(funky music)
The guitar in that, in that song was,
there's that second song on that Frank Ocean
Blonde record Ivy.
And it's like this really warbly vibrato guitar
that Roston played.
And so I was inspired by the sound of those, those guitars.
So I think one day I just sat down and was like, you know,
and like, and kind of played those four chords.
(guitar strumming)
And that was kind of like the genesis of the idea.
Yeah, I remember kind of having that part
and then just kind of not even thinking about it,
just walking around our apartment
and it was just coming out.
You know, couple songs it happens like that sometimes
when you're not thinking.
It just like, you're just kind of reacting to what
you're playing and it all kind of makes sense.
And I think when I started strumming the verse chords.
(guitar strumming)
You just kind of make up your melody
as you hear it, you know?
(guitar strumming)
♪ Into the mouth of control ♪
♪ Take me down where the river strays ♪
I feel like with basically all my songs,
the lyrics, they're not really ever done until the pretty,
the last minute, like I'm always punching sections
or I have like big check sections of the song where
I'm a little lost.
Like there's something I wanna say
but I still haven't been able to figure it out.
And I kind of get like trapped sometimes
with the scratch vocals where I'm like tied to like
a timing thing where I can't get out of this box you know?
There was a line that's like,
it's like I'm living down at the old par three.
The line originally was I'm living down by the old fur tree.
I don't actually know what the hell a fur tree looks like.
I just know there is one,
but I don't know what it actually looks like.
And then every night I live like three blocks
from a par three golf course,
and every night baby goes down I would take a long walk
and listen to my mixes and go down to the par three
and like sit and smoke cigarettes
and watch everyone teeing off the driving range.
And it hit me.
I was like, oh, I'm living down by the old par three.
It's way more real, you know it's way more real
than I don't even know what a fucking fur tree looks like.
So Dave didn't notice until he heard the master.
He's like, oh, you got rid of my fur tree.
I was like yeah, but you know we ended up somewhere,
somewhere more real.
♪ Now I'm finally feeling free ♪
♪ I'm living down by the old par three ♪
For me like with songs, like you have snippets of songs
or song ideas, and it could take you know years to kind of
finish the song or make it feel like it fits.
And then you're like producing the sounds of the record
and putting everything together
and sometimes you just have a section of a song
where it just naturally snaps into focus, you know?
And it's like this middle section
that I didn't really have much to do with,
it was just kind of like my idea in the studio was like
it just does the intro but it's heavier, you know?
But I didn't know how we get there.
I knew there weren't gonna be vocals on it.
The other guys kind of shaped that propulsion.
If you spend a lot of time working on it
and investigating where songs can go,
then you'll get somewhere new.
And for us it was just tighter songs
and just tighter arrangements,
you know everyone's parts were more defined this time.
Like Mike Bloch who plays basically league guitar
on like 80% of the record comes up with beautiful parts
and he's like kind of fearless.
He came up with that beautiful little lick that he plays.
It's kinda like the theme of the song.
Definitely probably my favorite guitar playing
on the whole, on the whole record for sure.
It's like a iconic piece of playing.
(laughing)
What's up Mike?
- What's up man, how are you?
- I'm good.
Yeah we were just talking about this tune and I was,
I was raving about your playing
and they were like let's get this guy on the line.
- Well, what was going on we recorded that.
It was, it was live and it was a song that was,
I think new to everyone in the room.
So we were kind of just responding really freely
to each other.
That's the kind of situation where you just have to
kind of just settle on something really quickly
like where your ear goes, where your fingers land,
and then just kind of build from there.
It became kind of a, a really nice live arrangement
just in the room, just, just having just learned the song.
So that was kind of a special thing
when everybody in the room is really tuned in
and like really listening really well
because they're learning in the moment,
then you really have fresh ideas that stick.
Once it feels like it sounds like you're playing guitar
then it sounds wrong or something.
So keep looking for new stuff
- Mike's playing at the end is where he starts doing that
raindrop guitar which was like the.
(guitar strumming)
You know, he played that.
So I didn't wanna step on that
but I just wanted to play something that would like weave
with it and kind of like finish his thought.
(upbeat music)
So having guys like Pat and Mike developing parts
for these songs,
because normally in the past that's not really how
this band would work.
It was more of like, almost like no parts.
You know, it was more like sound and like playing
and like loose kind of like inspired
by like the Velvet Underground or something.
Working with people that like to kind of have defined ideas
it really opens up the songs I think.
And, and the most, most so in this record, like,
there's just I feel like some really great arrangements
within the guitars and the drums and Dave's bass
and Robby's keyboards on a couple songs.
So usually the last couple weeks of making a record
is me like with headphones on
and my laptop telling the engineer alright just play that
five second section on loop.
It'll be on loop for like 40 minutes
and I'll be like typing and then erasing
and then like trying it out, you know until,
but usually if you work through it
something happens, you know?
And you can kind of break through that,
that kind of box you've been in.
I was just doing this for every song,
like really writing, reworking them and slowly realized
that things were becoming really economical
and concise which is something that, you know,
just as a songwriter that's kind of the goal.
I always wanted things that were a little bit more
to the point, you know, and deliberate,
and felt like you could say a lot
in four minutes and 10 seconds
instead of 11 and a half minutes.
♪ Oh if loving you is the same ♪
♪ It's always some occasional rain. ♪
- I think when I was just kind of mumbling some stuff
to get a melody going,
I think I sang the word occasional rain at some point.
And so that kind of stuck the whole time.
But even when we recorded it,
I didn't really have a clear idea
for what the song was about.
I think where it ended up was the idea of like,
you know for everything that can go wrong
and be terrible in life
and everything that can like drag you down
and push you down.
It's like if that's all there is then
only some occasional rain is like, you can just,
it's not really that big a deal.
I have a nice memory of this song of like,
like feeling confident in the song from the beginning.
It was like one of the first songs I wrote for the record.
And it's just one of those things I hope, you know
it's like when we play it live
people are excited to see that,
that song that kind of closes out the record
and sums up I think the sentiment of, of the record.
(upbeat music)