Creating Utopia: An Interview With Jason Falkner

Posted in Interviews, Current Faves, Music |

Interviewed by Less Lee Moore

If I’ve ever made a mix CD for you, chances are, there’s been a Jason Falkner song on it. Whenever I’m asked to list my favorite musicians, he’s always included. But when it comes to the question of, “what does he sound like?” I am stumped. He sounds like. . . well, he sounds like Jason Falkner. When you hear his work, you just know it’s him. Then he has to go and outdo himself by writing his own songs, performing all the instruments himself, singing lead and background vocals, and producing and engineering everything.

Although his musical output has been informed by many different influences, he has managed to create a style all his own. His latest album, 2007’s I’m OK. . . You’re OK, is his best work to date, combining beautiful, catchy melodies with heartfelt (and often heartbreaking) lyrics. Jason Falkner is also very witty, which is always a bonus in my mind, and which definitely came across in my recent interview with him.

Photo © RockPaperPixels

Popshifter: So you’ve just released Volume II of Bedtime With The Beatles. There is a quote from Paul McCartney on the Amazon.com entry for the album which says, “I very much enjoyed the first Bedtime With The Beatles and wish Jason all the best with this follow-up. It certainly works—it put me to sleep.” Does reading or hearing a quote like that validate your entire career?

Jason Falkner: (laughs) Very very fair question and the answer is yes, I feel validated by that. As my friends say, “you can just fold your arms over your chest and be lowered into the earth now.” It’s pretty exciting. To my knowledge there really aren’t any posthumous Beatles projects that have been endorsed. So that puts me in a pretty cool little club, possibly of one.

I worked with Paul on his record Chaos and Creation in the Backyard and I got to hang out with him for about two weeks and listen to him tell amazing stories. There isn’t a story he tells that isn’t amazing, historically. At that point I had given him a copy of the first volume [of Bedtime With The Beatles] that I did, and he freaked out, and kinda wouldn’t stop talking about it, and it was just this amazing reaction which I didn’t anticipate.

Because we all know that there are a million Beatles things out there that don’t have anything to do with the band. He really listened to it and made all these incredibly detailed comments, told me how much he was flattered that I made it. I ensured him that indeed, all the flattery belonged to him.

My friend David Sardy who is a record producer and who has a new kid, said, “I heard this record that you did and why did I never hear of this before? It’s amazing and I can’t stop listening to it. And it mellows out my kid, but I’m totally into it.” I told him that I wished Sony had been able to do more with it in terms of marketing. He told me, “You should make another album. I’ll give you my studio for a month.”

So I went to his vintage recording studio here in Hollywood and just went nuts. I did the whole thing in about three weeks. While I was there, there was a film director there also. He was upstairs on the headphones, listening to me working, and he came down and said, “Dear lord, what is this project?” I told him and he said, “I know a guy that works with Yoko and those people should hear this record.” I was like, “Absolutely!”

Then I remembered that I actually know people at Paul’s production company so I just emailed them and asked, “Do you think Paul would be interested in giving me a quote?” He emailed me and said, “Hey, good to hear from you. Please send me a couple of MP3s.” So it was literally like, two emails back and forth.

I mean, it’s kind of a cheeky quote, too, which is very him, but I know from his reaction to the first volume that it’s not meant to be as cheeky as it sounds. So that was pretty exciting.

Popshifter: Why did you choose some these particular songs on this volume? There are some there that I wouldn’t necessarily have thought of, like “Hey Jude,” for example.

Jason Falkner: For the first one I kind of picked through the catalogue a little bit more deliberately for things that I knew I could just slow way down and take them into outer space. For that one, Sony only controlled part of the Lennon/McCartney catalogue, so I couldn’t do any George Harrison songs. I was like, “Oh, absolutely, I’m going to do ‘Here Comes The Sun’,” and Sony was like, “No, actually, you can’t do any Harrison.”

So I was able to do them on this volume. It was a little more difficult to weed through songs and do it again. But also this volume doesn’t have the same limitations I had placed on me with the first one, which was that it had to be so narcotic. This new one is a little bit more exciting, in terms that it has more up-tempo, surprise moments. I kind of abandoned the restrictions that it had to be a lullaby sound. I didn’t really follow that too closely on the first one anyway, because I just don’t really rock lullabies.

Popshifter: (laughs)

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Click to read more from Jason Falkner on. . .

Revisiting The Beatles
Ripoffs and references
That “Power Pop” thing
“It all boils down to Bowie.”
A pre-Internet world
The dumbing down of pop culture
What’s next for Jason

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