Here's a phone interview I did last month with Reggie Watts. I first saw Watts in 2008 at the comedy festival here in Vancouver. I'd never heard of him before and he blew me away. Then I interviewed him in 2009 when he was a little bigger. Now everyone knows the guy. At least the comedy world does. He's a unique talent. I haven't seen him in his new gig as bandleader on
The Late Show with James Corden but he's doing that, which is a bit of a departure, even though he was a one-man bandleader on
Comedy Bang-Bang. We talked about that and all kinds of stuff, including how easy he claims it is to write a hit song.
Reggie Watts
July 8, 2015
"The bands that practice for four hours are awesome because that's their process and that music sounds awesome but for me, I like knowing you can create really high quality things with very little effort."
– Reggie Watts
Guy MacPherson: How are you?
Reggie Watts: Uh, I'm good.
GM: Are you?
RW: I think so, yeah.
GM: Where are you?
RW: I'm in New York.
GM: Do you still have a place in
New York?
RW: I do, yeah. Same old, same old.
GM: Last time I spoke to you, you
were boarding a plane.
RW: Oh, yeah. Sounds about right. I'm going to board a plane
tonight.
GM: You were actually in the
process as we spoke.
RW: You caught me at a better time this time.
GM: Oh good. Yeah, that was 2009.
And I first saw you and wrote about you in 2008.
RW: Oh wow.
GM: How early was that in your
career? You hadn't hit yet like you did after that.
RW: I don't know. It just depends on what the criteria is but
I'd been playing music in Seattle for ten years before that. Or more than that,
I guess. Fifteen years before that. So it's hard to say. I guess it depends on
if you count it as comedy, then that's the other version of it.
GM: Do you remember your first
comedy show, when you broke away from doing straight-ahead music?
RW: Yeah, I guess it would have been in Seattle. I was doing
some sketch comedy in the mid-'90s. But I also did standup in high school as
well and travelled around Montana doing standup. I guess I've been doing
standup since I was 18.
GM: Was it just spoken word
standup, like more traditional stuff?
RW: No, it was pretty much exactly what I do today, minus the
loop pedal.
GM: Wait a second. But that's a
big part of your act. What do you mean "minus the loop pedal"? What
were you doing then?
RW: I was still doing music. Just doing weird à cappella music
stuff and accents and characters and things like that. So yeah, same thing.
GM: I remember a set you did at
the Vancouver festival. It was on a rock comedy show. Howard Kremer came out
after you and he'd never seen you before. He said, "Reggie Watts is bad
for comedy because he's funnier than comedy!"
RW: (laughs) Oh,
that's an amazing thing! That's awesome. He's great.
GM: You were turning heads in
that festival back in 2008. You certainly turned mine. It was like, 'What the
hell is this?'
RW: (laughs) That's awesome. Yeah, it was a fun
time to kind of do a little bit of a sneak attack.
GM: That's just it. Now you're
all over the place so anybody who wants to know about you can see you and
figure out what you're all about. But I walked into your first show not knowing
what to expect. I kind of envy people who see you like that for the first time
because it's just mind-blowing. Now you don't have that sneak attack thing.
RW: There are other ways to still do that, where you can
subvert what people think they know of you or what to expect. So it's just kind
of a different approach but I can still achieve a type of that result.
GM: How do you do it now?
RW: Well, I just kind of read the audience and try to do the
opposite of what they expect, whatever that is. It could be they think they
know or they're yelling out names of songs I've done and I can play off of that
or I could be really super straight and do comedy straight for a while or
whatever. There's a bunch of different things you can do to help throw people
off again.
GM: Are your shows still largely
improvised?
RW: Yeah, it's the only way I can do it, really.
GM: Except you do have certain
songs you get to, that are largely the same throughout, right? Like you used to
have the Fuck
Shit Stack.
RW: Yeah, I don't do those. I haven't done Fuck Shit Stack live
probably in four years.
GM: But I mean things like that,
where you have a prepared song to perform.
RW: No, I don't really do that. I mean, there's types of beats
and things but I don't really have songs that I think in my head, "I'm
going to do this song." It's mostly what's a cool beat? And then I just
start adding stuff on top of it.
GM: Do you have any favourite
musical comedy acts, either through history or contemporary?
RW: Yeah. I love Weird Al Yankovic, of course. And Victor
Borge. I really dug him. Smothers Brothers. I'm trying to think of other cats
from the past. I guess contemporary-wise, Becky & Murray (?). They're
pretty cool. They've been at it for a long time. They're these southern guys
that make these really weird songs. They're great. They do these great parody
songs and they're awesome. I'm trying to think of anybody else. But those are
some good examples. A good range.
GM: It's great when they're
really good musicians, too, rather than just a novelty thing. Legitimately good
musicians as well as being very funny.
RW: Yeah, it's nice when people have music talent, when they
actually know music. You can just tell the difference immediately. It's just
nice when they're knowledgeable in that sense and also have a natural sense of
what's funny.
GM: I see that you have three
middle names. Then I noticed your mother is French so that explained it. My
mother was French and I have a long name, too.
RW: (laughs) Yeah,
it's a Euro-thing, I guess.
GM: But you've always been
Reggie?
RW: Yeah. I mean, my parents call me Reginald, but other people call
me Reggie. I think it's just an American thing. People just shorten names.
GM: Do you speak French?
RW: I do, yeah. I was just in France for ten days a few days ago. I
just had to speak French there. It was good. My girlfriend actually speaks more
fluently than I do but I can understand it.
GM: I never picked it up. My mom
was from France but we just spoke English.
RW: Yeah, it happens often with a parent from another country. They
just end up speaking English because it's more convenient for everybody.
GM: How are you enjoying being a
late night talk show band leader?
RW: I'm having a good time. It's definitely a weird thing to
suddenly be doing. But for the most part it's pretty fun.
GM: I imagine you have to have
music prepared for this. You have to plan out the show, what you're going to do
to intro or outro. Do you play with musical guests, too?
RW: Not that often, actually. We had... what's his name? He has like
a Russian last name... He did a little bit recently and the band played with
him. Some kid wrote lyrics to a song, this elementary school kid, and he
created music for it and sang it, and the band would sing on it as well. But it
doesn't really happen that often. Most of the time the artists perform their
thing and we kind of hang out on the side. I try to avoid being a backing band
for artists as much as possible.
GM: But you're still playing with
Karen. That's still the band's name?
RW: Oh, yeah, yeah, Karen. That's right.
GM: So is it good to be in that
group dynamic again after being solo for so many years?
RW: It's so cool. I picked some great musicians. I needed some
really good improvisers. Everybody improvises so well, it's just a natural
extension of what I do. I was in bands for so long, I completely
remembered what that's like. Yeah, it's been a really easy transition.
Something that I have more experience in so when I'm playing with other
musicians, it's pretty immediate how to do that.
GM: But it had been a while.
RW: Yeah, it had been a while. But at the same time when I
started doing it, it was so immediate it was crazy.
GM: I know you were on Comedy
Bang-Bang, but you were alone there. Was there a steep learning curve to doing
a network late-night talk show in that capacity?
RW: Not too much. I'd say the learning curve is more just
production. Like when you're on stage and you've got a guy in your ear saying,
'Commercial break in 5 seconds' or something like that. Or if they're showing a
clip, 'Coming out of clip in 10, 9, 8...". That type of a thing. That's
really the only thing. Everything else was pretty easy: the band playing and
stopping when we need to. That stuff we kind of had to figure out a little bit
but it didn't take too long. It's a pretty simple process, actually.
GM: What are the hours like?
RW: On average, I would say it's like 2 to 6:30, Monday to
Thursday.
GM: So you're able to get out and
perform on weekends. Or is it preventing you from doing more road stuff?
RW: A little bit, but we get chunks of time off. We just had
three weeks off. But also we have three-day weekends so if I need to do gigs, I
can usually go fly out somewhere and do a gig for a couple of days and come
back.
GM: When you're out performing on
your own, how do you weigh blowing minds versus getting laughs?
RW: I don't really think about it in that way. I just try to
make sure the audience feels like they're being entertained. As long as they
seem to be having a good time, and that can range from silence to laughing
hysterically, that's all I'm really concerned about. It doesn't have to be
funny all the time; it can be kind of serious and introspective or just get
really huge and be blown out of proportion and be very absurd.
GM: I know you love getting
laughs. And you're such a great singer. If you had to sing seriously,
non-ironically or non-humorously, would you feel self-conscious to do a
heartfelt song?
RW: No, not at all. I love singing, whether it's seriously or a
parody or an absurd example of something. I like all of it. It's really up to
my mood. Sometimes I feel like doing something seriously; sometimes a song can
be mostly serious with some funny stuff. There's all sorts of mixtures and
ratios.
GM: You were in the LA alt-scene
and now you have perhaps more of a mainstream presence, at least on network TV.
Is that helping gain new followers?
RW: I think so. My Twitter follower numbers haven't really gone
up too crazily or anything, but I think there's definitely more visibility and
people can share more things now, but not like a massive, noticeable
difference, I would say. Which is actually great because I don't want to get
too big, in a way that makes it difficult to walk down the street or something
like that. Right now I think I'm at a comfortable level and the people that do
approach me are really super sweet. Just cool people, really. Very respectful.
That's the perfect level, I think.
GM: I imagine you also don't want
to get too big that you can't do what you want to do.
RW: Exactly.
GM: And use whatever language you
want to use even though people aren't used to seeing that on TV.
RW: Yeah, you just want to be able to do what you wanna do. You're
aware of context. I'm not going to swear all the time or do weird shit just
because I'm on a large channel or whatever; it's mainly just context-based
behaviour, I guess. And the show's good because they really let me do whatever
I wanna do. It all works out.
GM: And they get you involved on
the show, too.
RW: Yeah, there are definitely sketches that we've done in the past
and some other things that are upcoming. It's a real mix of not knowing – and
purposely not knowing, like I don't really read scripts or anything like that;
I just kinda show up and hope the show is easy to understand – so that and an
awareness of things that they're looking to do in the future.
GM: Is the show doing well, do
you know?
RW: I think it is. It's nominated for a Critics Choice Award, which
I guess is very rare for a first year show. We've submitted stuff for Emmys. We
submitted the theme song for Best Theme Song or something like that. And
critically I think it's been received pretty well, I suppose. I don't read a lot
of reviews about it, but in general it seems to be doing pretty good.
GM: So you're playing the
Pemberton festival. Do you know much about it?
RW: No, not really. I guess it can be compared to things like
Bonaroo or Sasquatch or Coachella. Something like that, but in a different
geography, different vibe, I'm assuming. I don't even know how long it's been
going.
GM: It would seem that you'd be
in your element in that kind of environment.
RW: Yeah, for sure, like mountains and trees. That's my favourite kind
of terrain. Something more up north that's got more forests and more familiar
terrain that I'm used to growing up with is exciting to me. Sasquatch is cool
but it's not really a foresty kind of a thing; it's the Gorge so it's a
cliff-plateau kind of vibe. And Coachella's more desert. Bonaroo's definitely
got trees and stuff but it's really hot and dusty. It's just different when you
can be in a place that's got a little bit more wetness and greener. That's kind
of exciting to me.
GM: Hopefully there will be some
wetness and there won't be forest fires like there have been.
RW: No, I know it's always the worry.
GM: But I was thinking more that
it's a big, outdoor music festival that has comedy. The crowds, I'm assuming,
would be mostly there for the various bands that are performing and here you
come out and do your thing. I could imagine even though there's no roof, you
blowing the roof off the place.
RW: Yeah, I hope so! That's the great thing about what I do is
I can decide how much music is going to be in the act or how much talking is
going to be in the act. It's a music festival. It's kinda great because I can
mostly do music and people can dance and respond to what's going on and that's
really fun. So I can adapt to the situation. But yeah, for sure, if it's a
music festival, I'm stoked to check out music, get inspired by that and use
that inspiration on stage for my set.
GM: Do you envision a time when
you return to straight-ahead music?
RW: Yeah. I'm working on a record deal right now. I'm going to
record some form of an album or a series of EPs in the next half a year. We'll
see what happens with that. It's open right now but it's definitely going to
occur. That's something I've been wanting to do for a long time. It'll be
great. Whatever it is, it could be a mixture of serious music or it could all
be serious music or it could be some serious, some jokey stuff. I don't know.
But I'm definitely going to put out some music this year for sure.
GM: I know you have catholic
tastes in music. It's wide-ranging, from the Carpenters to jazz to hip-hop. Is
there a particular style that you would play or would you be all over the map?
RW: Probably all over the map to a certain degree. I mean, not
all over the map to be all over the map just for the sake of it. I think it'll
definitely be very beat driven. I don't know, it could be somewhere in the
realm of anywhere from indie rock to electronic stuff and also some straight-up
pop tunes. Just dumb pop stuff. I like pop music but I like to create pop music
very, very quickly where I'm going to hook you very quickly just to show how
easy it is to make that kind of music.
GM: Is it that easy?
RW: Yeah, I mean it's pretty easy to create hits. People
approach it like a science, some of those songwriting teams. But it's pretty
easy. It's just listening to what's current, picking up on trends, infusing
that into what you're doing, and then writing some lyrics that evoke some kind
of dramatic feeling or quirky absurdity that makes no sense, and then put a
really hooky melody on it and tighten it up and make it sound good. It's pretty
easy. So one of the things I'm interested in is writing some "hit
songs" quote-unquote. My interest is to show that it's not that difficult
to make art.
GM: As a way to expose it or as a
way to celebrate it?
RW: Celebrate it but also to expose, to demystify it a little
bit, to de-preciousize it. When people are like, 'That new Rihanna song is so
incredible,' it's like, yeah, it's a great song, it's really hooky. But I think
sometimes people think, wow, it takes a team of incredibly talented people to
put something together like that. If you listen to a Tame Impala album, that's
someone doing something artful. They're amazing. They're making really
incredible, artistic music but when you listen to a Rihanna track, you just
have to hit the right tropes. You know what tropes to hit and have a production
style that sounds current. That's kind of all it takes. And if you get someone
that looks good, you create a music video. So my thing is I just want to kind
of expose just how easy it is to do that kind of stuff as opposed to writing a
song like something the Talking Heads would have come up with. There's a huge
difference, a vast difference and it's nice to educate people between the two.
GM: And if the byproduct is that
it becomes a runaway hit and makes you millions, it's a win-win situation.
RW: Yeah, for sure. Because it's just an experiment but if it
blows up it'd be great because then people would be like, 'How long did it take
to write?' And I'll be like, 'It took about ten minutes to write the essence of
the song and maybe about a day to record it.' Even on the Late, Late Show, all the music
that we're doing is mostly improvised. We're creating it right before the show
and sometimes playing it for the first time. Or even sometimes during the break
just before we're about to go out of commercial, I'll just start humming
something into the microphone and the band will learn it real quickly and we
just play it live. I want people to know that it's super easy to create all the
in and out music that you hear on late shows. The bands that practice for four
hours are awesome because that's their process and that music sounds awesome
but for me, I like knowing you can create really high quality things with very
little effort.
GM: My dad was a jazz musician
and when he would record a CD, it was a day. It was done in one day.
RW: Yeah, exactly.
GM: You think of jazz – or I do,
anyway – as a higher art form than pop music, but the pop music records take
months. I'm always thinking, 'What are they doing?'
RW: (laughs) Yeah, I know. It's usually way too
many cooks in the kitchen. It's just a lot of people hemming and hawing about,
like, 'Should it be "the" or "and"?' or 'She's got me
feeling so good but her fire... I don't know, there's something about fire.
Fire seems old.' It's just this weird discussion debate form about whether this
sounds hip or not. They take a long time doing it because they want to make it
a perfect, perfect pop attack as opposed to Nirvana writing Teen Spirit relatively
quickly and recording it in a pretty low-fi way and it becoming this gigantic
hit, where it was just natural. A lot of pop music is manufactured and
designed. And the more designed, the more produced, the more people are
involved and the longer and more complicated the process is. A lot of it has to
do with people just justifying their existence and participation in the
process. Because it doesn't take seven people to write a song. It takes one to
three, maximum. If it's a group, it could just take the group to write the
song. But in modern pop music you'll have, like, three lyricists and four
producers and a remix artist or whatever. They're just unnecessary positions to
creating a good song.
GM: It's like Hollywood movies
with all the executives giving notes and it costs so much, whereas an
independent film is so much more interesting and takes two weeks.
RW: Oh, totally. Because the passion's there and there's a
clear vision. There's less complexity obstructing the creative process. If
there's more money involved, there's more people involved.
