Pushkin. There's no stopping Burt back Iraq. He's a gifted composer who's been writing pop hits for artists like Dion Warwick, Elvis Costello, and Dusty Springfield since the fifties. He even wrote a read this iconic I Say a Little Prayer. Now, at ninety two years old, Bert's found a new muse. That's Daniel Tashin singing. In late July, Burt back Iraq and Daniel released the five song EP Blue Umbrella. They might seem like an unlikely duo. Daniel is a Nashville based singer songwriter whose connection to country music runs deep. His parents were part of Emmy Lou Harris's backing band, and he just one Album of the Year at the Grammys for co writing and producing Casey Musgrave's breakout Golden Hour. Bert, on the other hand, is a living legend and made his career writing R and B hits for the likes of ROBERTA. Flack and Tom Jones. But as you're hearing this interview with Bruce headlam Bert and Daniel are a perfect match. Daniel talks about learning to navigate Bert's tricky trademark compositions and Bert says writing for Daniel has given him new life. This is broken record line of notes for the digital age. I'm justin Mitchell. Here's Bruce Headlam in conversation with Bert Backrack and Daniel Tasher. Bert, you once said that you didn't know that a song was going to work until you were in the recording studio, until you had the musicians there. What's it like sending something. I'm going, well, I don't know what it's going to sound like because I can't be there always for me in the past when they knew people would be there or in the in the same studio, I lived by the credo of it was the moment of truth. You lived or died with that song. In the studio. It felt good going in, but things can go wrong in the concept. I had this habit. I don't know whether I ever told you, Daniel, when I got in trouble on a date, string players out there and something was amiss in the concept, the way the arrangement was going down, I'd give a break to the band ten minutes. I'd go into the bathroom, to the men's room, into a stall, just close the lid, sit there on the stall and try to hear this whole scope of where this record was going, where this song was going, and to make sure there were no pimples. If the pimples were there, the pimples drove me into the bathroom. And then you try to try to work it through and you don't have anybody leaning on you. You're not at the piano trying to figure it out in a room full of musicians. So for me, it's the moment truth. That's where you know you got something. So I want to go back to how this collaboration started. It started with a meeting at your house, Burt, and I'd like to hear both of you just tell me a bit about how that came about. Okay, Daniel's on a glow, Daniel's on a winning streak. Daniel was a very very happy guy, and he had just won the Grammy for produce Or of the Year and Casey's record, which is a brilliant record, and you pick it up from there, Daniel, Well, there's a lot of mystery for me around Bert before I met him. And you know, they say you shouldn't meet some of your heroes because sometimes you know, you can maybe not have the kind of interaction that you hope for. But in the case of me and Bert, and I do consider you to be one of my great heroes. Bert, thank you. In that situation, I found you to be very warm and welcoming. You welcome me into your music room, UM, sort of a sunken kind of living room you kind of come down into and there's there's a piano, and up on the wall, you know, are the are these Oscars and Grammys and and Gershwin Award and uh, it's very very heavy stuff for a guy like me. And UM, but you had worked on some music for a little lyric Shred that I had sent you, and UM, I couldn't help it. Man, the tears came to my eyes. It was so beautiful. I loved. I loved the way that you, UM made the words that I had written kind of come to life in this in this way that I never I never could have thought of on my own. And and it was just wonderful to be there in that room with you. And I was ensconced in a very comfortable armchair with a nice cup of tea, and you were playing to me right right next to me. UM on the beginning of Blue Umbrella and it's a memory that I'll cherish all my life. And I could say this the thing about Daniel, I don't think you know, I've had different collaborations with Elsa, for with how David, my ex wife, Carol bay or Sager. There was something about this relationship as it's grown and expanded, we genuinely really like each other. And the more time that we work, connect talk, there's no fear, you know, there's no you know, you always have a will. Will this future collaborator be something that will like my music? Will it work? See Daniels in this He's got all bases covered because he's I love the way he sings, which I didn't know until I heard it. I love his musicianship, I love his words, and the thing that I find very interesting because I think the work has been really productive and really good and proud of what we've done. Daniel be too, bir and friendship has grown. So we'll talk at different times. Well, we'll keep on writing. You know. Um, we've got a couple of more songs in the pipeline now and yeah, and the same musicians, but they'll instead of all being in the studio, everybody will be in their own house like in Nashville. Yeah, and being able to um hear each other as parts are added. It's a it's not the perfect solution, but the sound is good. That was one of my concerns, how it would sound stuff coming instead of off the board in a studio with all the gear. But it sounds really good. So that took any fears, concerns of new stuff that we write. But I love it that we've we've done this thing with Blue Umbrella and and me too. I'm proud of the songs and whatever happens with it, if pride will always be there. Yeah, I want to go back to what you said about Daniel as a singer. I mean he's mainly known as a producer. You know, not everybody can sing a Birt backrack melody. You've got a very particular flavor of melody. You play a lot with the rhythm or the beat, I guess, the time signature. And obviously you've had some incredible collaborators. Who do you know, starting with Dion Warwick and many others. What does a good Burt backrack singer have to have to sing your songs? Well, you don't know what you're going to get with Daniel like because we'd worked in a room until we got it in the studio. But I never had any doubt that he's going to sing well. But when I heard him in the studio, he does his homework. He comes in prepared. I'm a big one in preparation. And then you know, it's like what works. It's all interchangeable. Half of it could work, half of it couldn't work. But we'll get through it. But our taste, we kind of understand each other and in a very a very kind of sensible, loving way. He's my friend. I love you too, Bert, I really do, man. And I think one thing a singer needs to do is to stick to the melody because it's probably a good one, you know. And I think a lot of singers tend to kind of go into maybe areas where they feel like maybe more comfortable, like doing licks or something that they know they can pull off, and that that our crowdpleasers, and that doesn't really cut it with with with your music, you know. I think you've got to um be the kind of singer that can that can stick to the to the inc There was an outro and we were working in the studio and this was another one of those unforgettable moments. But I just had this. I was tempted to kind of beer off into some more sort of um, you know, dreadful kind of ad libbing. He sort of said, you know, gently, you know, maybe let's not let's not let's not deviate here. You know, people think that, you know, someone who has some harmonic complexity to their music, like Bert, that you would think that he's interested in complexity, but he's actually quite interested in the opposite. He really loves simplicity. Um, he really loves um a simple um, catchy song, you know. Economics, Yeah, uh, what's not there is dealing a space sometimes it's very advantageous. M hmmm. And the more I've gotten to know you, I mean, I honestly, you know, I really do like that about our collaboration that I, um, the learning aspect of it for me, and um, the confirmation of things that I've instinctively felt, you know, UM, I like that. Can you can you give me an example when you said confirmation of things that felt? Well, that that really that the things that you love that you and I love and we listen to all the time, you know, if it's name anything, amazing. Whether it's beatles or whatever. You know, it's all really, at the end of the day, something that's made sort of of the spirit. It's made of the emotion. It's it's it's not it's not a it's not the result of um, a lot of sort of strategic kind of Um, well, if I sing it, you know this way here, Um, that'll have the right effect. No, that's not the way you approach it. It's a feeling that you're feeling and you're you're inside of that music. And I think, you know, Bert's music for me is very easy for me as a singer too, and habbit and to exhibit with a lot of natural feeling because I do feel those melodies and I do feel those sentiments. So there's not a lot of strategy behind it. I think that's you know, there may be strategy in arrangement and stuff like that, but when it comes to displaying or creating those moods, it's it's feeling. It's all about feeling and mood, and it's growing together as the song moves on. As the song moves on, and it takes shape and takes different turns, and it evolves from the five songs on the EP are there, Daniel is there? Can you take of a particular song or passage that may sound like a distinctive Burt backrack melody that you just love singing, or that you found easy to sing, or that you found really hard to sing. Well, they're all tough to sing because what you realize once you get behind the wheel on these things is that there's specific jumps, which I would imagine it's similar to when an orchestral musician has to play a passage that they've got to make a jump that's at a significant distance. On the chorus of Bells of Saint Augustine, for example, Um, there's a there's a jump there. It's not kind of and it's not swooping. It's a specific set of notes that that it's very fun to sing. But also if you're not in shape, you know, the muscles of the throat they've got to um, You've got to sort of stick the landing, you know, otherwise you kind of come off of a jump and you'll be flat. Really you is it? Do you remember the particular interval that it was so yeah on the chorus of bells of saying Saint Augustine, there's a there's a figure, uh uh, And I love singing that so much. Um it's a specific series of notes that it's very easy to skid off rails on that, especially on that bottom note. And um, so those are the challenges for me as a singer. You've got to like tighten tighten your control up a little bit so you can nail those notes, you know. And there's no auto tune on this project. And I told Ryan, our our wonderful engineer and mixer that, um, I really wanted to avoid any any tuning, any artificial um help and just really as a singer, I wanted to grow. I wanted to learn, you know, and get better. And a great way to get better as a singer is to sing some of Burt stuff, because there's no you can't really fake it, you know. Yeah, we'll be back after a quick break. We're back with Bruce's conversation with Bert and Daniel. So tell me about the first song you worked on from this great EP and and how it started. Yeah, I texted and Burt. I texted him basically some lyrics that I m was kind of tossing around, and um, I've never worked that way before with just sending a lyric to someone. That's a first for me. I'm usually um involved in people sitting together in a room with holding guitars and playing and stinging together and trying to come up with something silentaneously. But it was another aspect of this process that was great, different for me in a good way. And we've come a long way, Daniel, we have and Bert when you first got those lyrics, do you still do you still play every day or you try and get at the piano every day? Not every day? Hey, this has kept a life going for me, this whole process with Daniel, with the EP, with promoting it, with believing in it and writing new stuff, and a continuing process. We'll get two three more songs done and we'll do it remotely because that works. Yeah, we'll give the best of what we can do. I think you did some great direction on Blue Umbrella. I'll tell you something funny about recording that song. When we were recording that, we had figured it out and we were playing it, and then when we would go to the to um wonder where we go that part, and the drummer was like going to the ride symbol and every the band was sort of flourishing on that section. And Bert got on the talk back in the studio and he said, it sounds like everybody's like going to the chorus, and we all kind of looked at him, like what is he talking about? And then I started to understand about the way that you're interested in developing. I think things simmering a bit more, you know, and not kind of telegraphing. You're sort of okay, now we're in the section that everybody's supposed to like kind of feel like, Okay, now this is the point of the whole thing. But maybe instead of telegraphing what everybody should feel, it was more like, let them, let the notes and the chords do the heavy lifting, and just everybody just holds seavy. Man. That was such a lesson. That was so cool. Absolutely, I do like a kind of seamlessness if can be done that. Yeah, one goes into the other without an announcement. Trumpet's blaring. You know, now, Bert, had you worked from lyrics before? I know you used to often compose and then make up dummy lyrics and then how day that if someone else would provide lyrics? Did you ever have just a lyrics sheet? And you say, Okay, Now I got to create something from these lyrics. Yes, certainly did with Alphie because it had to depict what the movie was about, So Alphie that the words came in first, absolutely and one of the hardest sons because I wanted to make it perfect and it dominated my life. How long did it take you to write that? Three weeks? Three weeks? Yeah, I would go maybe go to theater to see a play, but I've been working on maybe the pimples in the song, and I wouldn't enjoy the play. I would wind up leaving the theater having solved nothing, solved nothing on Alfie and not enjoy the play. And everything on promises, promises. When we did the musical, all the words really that how I would have to come up. You could write a melody out of a Neil Simon script because the dialogue would go into a song and it didn't seem to fit to sit down and imagine what the song might be because you wanted to make it. Again, the seamless thing I'm talking about, go from the script the dialogue continues into song because it's just natural. Otherwise I can't conceive of it doing it another way. You know, A little bit what Danny was talking about, that that you didn't want people to feel the chorus too soon. It's a little care juristic of some of your songs. And Alphie's a good example where sometimes you're not quite sure where it's going, like it's got a lot of momentum, and then when it ends up because there's there's time changes and the harmonies complex. Well you see, yeah, see with Alphie that it just it took me to another place by having words and became an eight bar phrase, or it became a six bar phrase or a twelve barth praise just by where the lyric took me. Right, Wow, I like very much writing to Daniel's words if he sends me. I mean, I had this one phraise on Blue Umbrella, the hook the chorus. You know, are you still under the same blue umbrella? You know, the way you spaced it out, you added an extra bar, so it became are you still under the same blue umbrella? And it just a change like that, splitting the word instead of going how are you still under the same blue umbrella? And that drove the next four bars just by that space. Yeah, it continues to evolve, and you know, Bert thinks about these things a lot. You know, he spends a lot of time. Like I heard that. You know, Duke Gallington could write arrangements and orchestration in in in the midst middle of chaos with no piano. He could just take some paper out and write stuff. And Burt's the same way. He can sit down at his desk, no piano and just write orchestration. Um, just just write it, write down violent parts, write down all that stuff. It's wonderful to to to work with Bert and watch the way that the musical ideas take shape for him and be able to witness the process for Bert of how an initial seed or you know, of an idea can can expand in his mind. And what is involved as you're as you're building the structure of a song and a melody, what's involved for him? And what boxes does it have to tick? It's got to you know, he's got to see the whole length of it, the whole way all the way through. And then forgive me, Bert if I'm you know, telling your stories here for you, but right, but he's got to see the melody, the long line of the melody all the way through, and then we can start to navigate through there. But um, you know, the collaboration is so great because we say yes to each other. You know. Um, you know, he says, I don't think that the string should come in the first first chorus, and I, you know, I don't say no, man, we got to get him in there. And I just say, okay, Bert, that sounds great because I trust you, and he trusts my words and the simplicity of whatever it is that I'm trying to express with that. He trusts it. He doesn't say, hey, we don't need to be singing about that right now. So we trust each other and that's a beautiful thing. It is absolutely you know, we were talking about the feeling when you sit down in a movie theater and the lights go down and it's a Steven Spielberg film. You know that Stevens got got you. He's gonna, he's gonna take on that ride. There's a similar feeling with with your music. People you know, they know you're you're gonna You're gonna hold them um in in in the palm of your hand and carry them through that that song, with that that music tell me a little bit about whistling in the dark, about the writing of that. Yeah, well, well I was I'll just say real quickly about the lyric. I just wanted to make something. Um. I like the phrase whistling in the dark because it sounds like like somebody that's um going through something hard and and and they're kind of consoling themselves by sort of trying to create an atmosphere of lightness, you know, within themselves. And we wrote that song before you know, anybody knew anything about a pandemic or or or any of that kind of uh, hard hardship that was about to coccurse. So there's something about whistling in the dark that's like, I'm I'm feeling that song right now because I kind of have to take that song's advice and just keep your eyes on the horizon and keep your eyes on the light at the end of the tunnel, which you know it's going to come. It's just it's going to be a minute, you know. There was a hint of what was going I remember it was one of the last songs we wrote, and there was there was a sense of whistling in the dark. Yeah, I think that lonely so it was almost indicative of what was to come. Do you feel that, Daniel absolutely, and um, you know, whistling in the Dark is one of those examples of sometimes also you'll sing about something as a singer and songwriter and then you don't realize what you're singing about until later on it seems to take on, you know, more meaning or you realize, oh, I was really trying to process this thing that was happening in my life and that's a weird thing that I don't know if you can resonate with that bird, but um, I think so. I think because Uh, there's an element in that song, like the intro, which is very dissonant piano, and it's sort of like where did that come from? I wanted to ask you about it? Sounds a little like like felonious monk, almost like it's yeah, like it's falling apart a little bit right, and then the ending uh is uh also basically asking a question with the strings don't, don't, don't, don't, don't boat, don't, don't, don't don't You know where did that come from? Do you remember writing that that string part is beautiful and the description of it is asking a question is so interesting? Do you remember do you remember writing that bit what you were thinking or how it came to you. M I knew I wanted and and I got a definitely push from my partner here really, Daniel saying that thing you played on the piano dissonant, very kind of weird. I love it. So it starts that way and then it's in a very weird way to We'll be right back after this break. We're back with the rest of Bruce's conversation with Bert Bacharach and Daniel Tasher. The songs you're writing now, because most of these were started, you know, before coronavirus. What are the songs like now that you're writing, well, so different. Yeah. We were working on one of the songs, the newer songs, called twenty first Century Man, and it was a little bit of a piece of music that I had started, and I said to Bert, you know, do you want to work on something that I kind of got started on but I sort of don't know where to go with it, And he said, sure, let's check it out. So I played this little bit for him. So I like that. So there's this one part where you're going that sounds like something I've heard before, and we can do better than that. And boy did we ever. I thought that was interesting because I think I had come from sort of an environment. There's something about being a commercial songwriter in Nashville, and I've spent a lot of years here writing commercial songs very ineffectively. I might add, if you look at the statistics for the number of cuts that I've gotten versus the number of songs that I've turned in, it's pretty ridiculous. But I sort of came from this environment of like it actually is a good thing. If something sounds like something you've heard before, you know, And I feel like you kind of got me back on track, Bert, because really what I want to be is innovative in everything I do. I want to be. I don't want to be sort of giving you a hook because it sounds like, oh, I've heard that hook before. You know that that's something I can get stuck in my car. I want to I want to innovate, and I think you definitely do, and I think my tendencies are sort of leaning more in that direction. I want to make this conversation about EP and the songs you're doing now because they're so good, not about your whole career, Bert, because that would take us a month. But just that story Daniel told of you saying we can do better than that is probably something everybody needs to hear, not just songwriters, but particularly songwriters. Where does that come from? You're now in your nineties. Yep, you're putting out sensational music. Thank you, and you're the guy saying no, no, no, we can do better than that. Where does that come from in you? I think it's a it's a growth process. Neil Simon, when we were doing Promises Promises one night, made this comment. He said, you know, you can get older, get fatter, but you're not like an athlete who's finished at thirty two, said you get to be eighty. That talent that you've got should be nourished. You won't fall back. If somebody says, hey, we got this new singer, could you write some of the song for her and just make it sort of like don't make me over. I wouldn't know how to do that anymore. It's left me you can't repeat. Do you mean it's left you in that you don't remember how you wrote songs like that, or just that's not something you're interested in doing. I couldn't do it because I did it once and when it's done, don't repeat yourself. I just want to say that the songs are just wonderful and it is just a thrill to meet both of you, and I think what you're doing is exciting and I think we can do better. Is something I'm going to remember the rest of my life. Appreciate you. Thanks, Bruce. Yeah, you've been good, Bruce. Thanks to Burton Daniel for taking the time to chat with Bruce. You can hear all of our favorite Burt background composition and his new ep with Daniel Tashan on a playlist at Broken Record podcast dot com, and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast. There you can find extended cuts of a lot of our past episodes as well as new ones. Broken Record is produced with help from Jason Gambrel, Mia LaBelle Lea Rose, Eric Sandler, and Martin Gonzalez for Pushkin Industries. At Theme Musics by Kenny Beats, I'm justin Richmond Bass

Pushkin. There's no stopping Burt back Iraq. He's a gifted composer who's been writing pop hits for artists like Dion Warwick, Elvis Costello, and Dusty Springfield since the fifties. He even wrote a read this iconic I Say a Little Prayer. Now, at ninety two years old, Bert's found a new muse. That's Daniel Tashin singing. In late July, Burt back Iraq and Daniel released the five song EP Blue Umbrella. They might seem like an unlikely duo. Daniel is a Nashville based singer songwriter whose connection to country music runs deep. His parents were part of Emmy Lou Harris's backing band, and he just one Album of the Year at the Grammys for co writing and producing Casey Musgrave's breakout Golden Hour. Bert, on the other hand, is a living legend and made his career writing R and B hits for the likes of ROBERTA. Flack and Tom Jones. But as you're hearing this interview with Bruce headlam Bert and Daniel are a perfect match. Daniel talks about learning to navigate Bert's tricky trademark compositions and Bert says writing for Daniel has given him new life. This is broken record line of notes for the digital age. I'm justin Mitchell. Here's Bruce Headlam in conversation with Bert Backrack and Daniel Tasher. Bert, you once said that you didn't know that a song was going to work until you were in the recording studio, until you had the musicians there. What's it like sending something. I'm going, well, I don't know what it's going to sound like because I can't be there always for me in the past when they knew people would be there or in the in the same studio, I lived by the credo of it was the moment of truth. You lived or died with that song. In the studio. It felt good going in, but things can go wrong in the concept. I had this habit. I don't know whether I ever told you, Daniel, when I got in trouble on a date, string players out there and something was amiss in the concept, the way the arrangement was going down, I'd give a break to the band ten minutes. I'd go into the bathroom, to the men's room, into a stall, just close the lid, sit there on the stall and try to hear this whole scope of where this record was going, where this song was going, and to make sure there were no pimples. If the pimples were there, the pimples drove me into the bathroom. And then you try to try to work it through and you don't have anybody leaning on you. You're not at the piano trying to figure it out in a room full of musicians. So for me, it's the moment truth. That's where you know you got something. So I want to go back to how this collaboration started. It started with a meeting at your house, Burt, and I'd like to hear both of you just tell me a bit about how that came about. Okay, Daniel's on a glow, Daniel's on a winning streak. Daniel was a very very happy guy, and he had just won the Grammy for produce Or of the Year and Casey's record, which is a brilliant record, and you pick it up from there, Daniel, Well, there's a lot of mystery for me around Bert before I met him. And you know, they say you shouldn't meet some of your heroes because sometimes you know, you can maybe not have the kind of interaction that you hope for. But in the case of me and Bert, and I do consider you to be one of my great heroes. Bert, thank you. In that situation, I found you to be very warm and welcoming. You welcome me into your music room, UM, sort of a sunken kind of living room you kind of come down into and there's there's a piano, and up on the wall, you know, are the are these Oscars and Grammys and and Gershwin Award and uh, it's very very heavy stuff for a guy like me. And UM, but you had worked on some music for a little lyric Shred that I had sent you, and UM, I couldn't help it. Man, the tears came to my eyes. It was so beautiful. I loved. I loved the way that you, UM made the words that I had written kind of come to life in this in this way that I never I never could have thought of on my own. And and it was just wonderful to be there in that room with you. And I was ensconced in a very comfortable armchair with a nice cup of tea, and you were playing to me right right next to me. UM on the beginning of Blue Umbrella and it's a memory that I'll cherish all my life. And I could say this the thing about Daniel, I don't think you know, I've had different collaborations with Elsa, for with how David, my ex wife, Carol bay or Sager. There was something about this relationship as it's grown and expanded, we genuinely really like each other. And the more time that we work, connect talk, there's no fear, you know, there's no you know, you always have a will. Will this future collaborator be something that will like my music? Will it work? See Daniels in this He's got all bases covered because he's I love the way he sings, which I didn't know until I heard it. I love his musicianship, I love his words, and the thing that I find very interesting because I think the work has been really productive and really good and proud of what we've done. Daniel be too, bir and friendship has grown. So we'll talk at different times. Well, we'll keep on writing. You know. Um, we've got a couple of more songs in the pipeline now and yeah, and the same musicians, but they'll instead of all being in the studio, everybody will be in their own house like in Nashville. Yeah, and being able to um hear each other as parts are added. It's a it's not the perfect solution, but the sound is good. That was one of my concerns, how it would sound stuff coming instead of off the board in a studio with all the gear. But it sounds really good. So that took any fears, concerns of new stuff that we write. But I love it that we've we've done this thing with Blue Umbrella and and me too. I'm proud of the songs and whatever happens with it, if pride will always be there. Yeah, I want to go back to what you said about Daniel as a singer. I mean he's mainly known as a producer. You know, not everybody can sing a Birt backrack melody. You've got a very particular flavor of melody. You play a lot with the rhythm or the beat, I guess, the time signature. And obviously you've had some incredible collaborators. Who do you know, starting with Dion Warwick and many others. What does a good Burt backrack singer have to have to sing your songs? Well, you don't know what you're going to get with Daniel like because we'd worked in a room until we got it in the studio. But I never had any doubt that he's going to sing well. But when I heard him in the studio, he does his homework. He comes in prepared. I'm a big one in preparation. And then you know, it's like what works. It's all interchangeable. Half of it could work, half of it couldn't work. But we'll get through it. But our taste, we kind of understand each other and in a very a very kind of sensible, loving way. He's my friend. I love you too, Bert, I really do, man. And I think one thing a singer needs to do is to stick to the melody because it's probably a good one, you know. And I think a lot of singers tend to kind of go into maybe areas where they feel like maybe more comfortable, like doing licks or something that they know they can pull off, and that that our crowdpleasers, and that doesn't really cut it with with with your music, you know. I think you've got to um be the kind of singer that can that can stick to the to the inc There was an outro and we were working in the studio and this was another one of those unforgettable moments. But I just had this. I was tempted to kind of beer off into some more sort of um, you know, dreadful kind of ad libbing. He sort of said, you know, gently, you know, maybe let's not let's not let's not deviate here. You know, people think that, you know, someone who has some harmonic complexity to their music, like Bert, that you would think that he's interested in complexity, but he's actually quite interested in the opposite. He really loves simplicity. Um, he really loves um a simple um, catchy song, you know. Economics, Yeah, uh, what's not there is dealing a space sometimes it's very advantageous. M hmmm. And the more I've gotten to know you, I mean, I honestly, you know, I really do like that about our collaboration that I, um, the learning aspect of it for me, and um, the confirmation of things that I've instinctively felt, you know, UM, I like that. Can you can you give me an example when you said confirmation of things that felt? Well, that that really that the things that you love that you and I love and we listen to all the time, you know, if it's name anything, amazing. Whether it's beatles or whatever. You know, it's all really, at the end of the day, something that's made sort of of the spirit. It's made of the emotion. It's it's it's not it's not a it's not the result of um, a lot of sort of strategic kind of Um, well, if I sing it, you know this way here, Um, that'll have the right effect. No, that's not the way you approach it. It's a feeling that you're feeling and you're you're inside of that music. And I think, you know, Bert's music for me is very easy for me as a singer too, and habbit and to exhibit with a lot of natural feeling because I do feel those melodies and I do feel those sentiments. So there's not a lot of strategy behind it. I think that's you know, there may be strategy in arrangement and stuff like that, but when it comes to displaying or creating those moods, it's it's feeling. It's all about feeling and mood, and it's growing together as the song moves on. As the song moves on, and it takes shape and takes different turns, and it evolves from the five songs on the EP are there, Daniel is there? Can you take of a particular song or passage that may sound like a distinctive Burt backrack melody that you just love singing, or that you found easy to sing, or that you found really hard to sing. Well, they're all tough to sing because what you realize once you get behind the wheel on these things is that there's specific jumps, which I would imagine it's similar to when an orchestral musician has to play a passage that they've got to make a jump that's at a significant distance. On the chorus of Bells of Saint Augustine, for example, Um, there's a there's a jump there. It's not kind of and it's not swooping. It's a specific set of notes that that it's very fun to sing. But also if you're not in shape, you know, the muscles of the throat they've got to um, You've got to sort of stick the landing, you know, otherwise you kind of come off of a jump and you'll be flat. Really you is it? Do you remember the particular interval that it was so yeah on the chorus of bells of saying Saint Augustine, there's a there's a figure, uh uh, And I love singing that so much. Um it's a specific series of notes that it's very easy to skid off rails on that, especially on that bottom note. And um, so those are the challenges for me as a singer. You've got to like tighten tighten your control up a little bit so you can nail those notes, you know. And there's no auto tune on this project. And I told Ryan, our our wonderful engineer and mixer that, um, I really wanted to avoid any any tuning, any artificial um help and just really as a singer, I wanted to grow. I wanted to learn, you know, and get better. And a great way to get better as a singer is to sing some of Burt stuff, because there's no you can't really fake it, you know. Yeah, we'll be back after a quick break. We're back with Bruce's conversation with Bert and Daniel. So tell me about the first song you worked on from this great EP and and how it started. Yeah, I texted and Burt. I texted him basically some lyrics that I m was kind of tossing around, and um, I've never worked that way before with just sending a lyric to someone. That's a first for me. I'm usually um involved in people sitting together in a room with holding guitars and playing and stinging together and trying to come up with something silentaneously. But it was another aspect of this process that was great, different for me in a good way. And we've come a long way, Daniel, we have and Bert when you first got those lyrics, do you still do you still play every day or you try and get at the piano every day? Not every day? Hey, this has kept a life going for me, this whole process with Daniel, with the EP, with promoting it, with believing in it and writing new stuff, and a continuing process. We'll get two three more songs done and we'll do it remotely because that works. Yeah, we'll give the best of what we can do. I think you did some great direction on Blue Umbrella. I'll tell you something funny about recording that song. When we were recording that, we had figured it out and we were playing it, and then when we would go to the to um wonder where we go that part, and the drummer was like going to the ride symbol and every the band was sort of flourishing on that section. And Bert got on the talk back in the studio and he said, it sounds like everybody's like going to the chorus, and we all kind of looked at him, like what is he talking about? And then I started to understand about the way that you're interested in developing. I think things simmering a bit more, you know, and not kind of telegraphing. You're sort of okay, now we're in the section that everybody's supposed to like kind of feel like, Okay, now this is the point of the whole thing. But maybe instead of telegraphing what everybody should feel, it was more like, let them, let the notes and the chords do the heavy lifting, and just everybody just holds seavy. Man. That was such a lesson. That was so cool. Absolutely, I do like a kind of seamlessness if can be done that. Yeah, one goes into the other without an announcement. Trumpet's blaring. You know, now, Bert, had you worked from lyrics before? I know you used to often compose and then make up dummy lyrics and then how day that if someone else would provide lyrics? Did you ever have just a lyrics sheet? And you say, Okay, Now I got to create something from these lyrics. Yes, certainly did with Alphie because it had to depict what the movie was about, So Alphie that the words came in first, absolutely and one of the hardest sons because I wanted to make it perfect and it dominated my life. How long did it take you to write that? Three weeks? Three weeks? Yeah, I would go maybe go to theater to see a play, but I've been working on maybe the pimples in the song, and I wouldn't enjoy the play. I would wind up leaving the theater having solved nothing, solved nothing on Alfie and not enjoy the play. And everything on promises, promises. When we did the musical, all the words really that how I would have to come up. You could write a melody out of a Neil Simon script because the dialogue would go into a song and it didn't seem to fit to sit down and imagine what the song might be because you wanted to make it. Again, the seamless thing I'm talking about, go from the script the dialogue continues into song because it's just natural. Otherwise I can't conceive of it doing it another way. You know, A little bit what Danny was talking about, that that you didn't want people to feel the chorus too soon. It's a little care juristic of some of your songs. And Alphie's a good example where sometimes you're not quite sure where it's going, like it's got a lot of momentum, and then when it ends up because there's there's time changes and the harmonies complex. Well you see, yeah, see with Alphie that it just it took me to another place by having words and became an eight bar phrase, or it became a six bar phrase or a twelve barth praise just by where the lyric took me. Right, Wow, I like very much writing to Daniel's words if he sends me. I mean, I had this one phraise on Blue Umbrella, the hook the chorus. You know, are you still under the same blue umbrella? You know, the way you spaced it out, you added an extra bar, so it became are you still under the same blue umbrella? And it just a change like that, splitting the word instead of going how are you still under the same blue umbrella? And that drove the next four bars just by that space. Yeah, it continues to evolve, and you know, Bert thinks about these things a lot. You know, he spends a lot of time. Like I heard that. You know, Duke Gallington could write arrangements and orchestration in in in the midst middle of chaos with no piano. He could just take some paper out and write stuff. And Burt's the same way. He can sit down at his desk, no piano and just write orchestration. Um, just just write it, write down violent parts, write down all that stuff. It's wonderful to to to work with Bert and watch the way that the musical ideas take shape for him and be able to witness the process for Bert of how an initial seed or you know, of an idea can can expand in his mind. And what is involved as you're as you're building the structure of a song and a melody, what's involved for him? And what boxes does it have to tick? It's got to you know, he's got to see the whole length of it, the whole way all the way through. And then forgive me, Bert if I'm you know, telling your stories here for you, but right, but he's got to see the melody, the long line of the melody all the way through, and then we can start to navigate through there. But um, you know, the collaboration is so great because we say yes to each other. You know. Um, you know, he says, I don't think that the string should come in the first first chorus, and I, you know, I don't say no, man, we got to get him in there. And I just say, okay, Bert, that sounds great because I trust you, and he trusts my words and the simplicity of whatever it is that I'm trying to express with that. He trusts it. He doesn't say, hey, we don't need to be singing about that right now. So we trust each other and that's a beautiful thing. It is absolutely you know, we were talking about the feeling when you sit down in a movie theater and the lights go down and it's a Steven Spielberg film. You know that Stevens got got you. He's gonna, he's gonna take on that ride. There's a similar feeling with with your music. People you know, they know you're you're gonna You're gonna hold them um in in in the palm of your hand and carry them through that that song, with that that music tell me a little bit about whistling in the dark, about the writing of that. Yeah, well, well I was I'll just say real quickly about the lyric. I just wanted to make something. Um. I like the phrase whistling in the dark because it sounds like like somebody that's um going through something hard and and and they're kind of consoling themselves by sort of trying to create an atmosphere of lightness, you know, within themselves. And we wrote that song before you know, anybody knew anything about a pandemic or or or any of that kind of uh, hard hardship that was about to coccurse. So there's something about whistling in the dark that's like, I'm I'm feeling that song right now because I kind of have to take that song's advice and just keep your eyes on the horizon and keep your eyes on the light at the end of the tunnel, which you know it's going to come. It's just it's going to be a minute, you know. There was a hint of what was going I remember it was one of the last songs we wrote, and there was there was a sense of whistling in the dark. Yeah, I think that lonely so it was almost indicative of what was to come. Do you feel that, Daniel absolutely, and um, you know, whistling in the Dark is one of those examples of sometimes also you'll sing about something as a singer and songwriter and then you don't realize what you're singing about until later on it seems to take on, you know, more meaning or you realize, oh, I was really trying to process this thing that was happening in my life and that's a weird thing that I don't know if you can resonate with that bird, but um, I think so. I think because Uh, there's an element in that song, like the intro, which is very dissonant piano, and it's sort of like where did that come from? I wanted to ask you about it? Sounds a little like like felonious monk, almost like it's yeah, like it's falling apart a little bit right, and then the ending uh is uh also basically asking a question with the strings don't, don't, don't, don't, don't boat, don't, don't, don't don't You know where did that come from? Do you remember writing that that string part is beautiful and the description of it is asking a question is so interesting? Do you remember do you remember writing that bit what you were thinking or how it came to you. M I knew I wanted and and I got a definitely push from my partner here really, Daniel saying that thing you played on the piano dissonant, very kind of weird. I love it. So it starts that way and then it's in a very weird way to We'll be right back after this break. We're back with the rest of Bruce's conversation with Bert Bacharach and Daniel Tasher. The songs you're writing now, because most of these were started, you know, before coronavirus. What are the songs like now that you're writing, well, so different. Yeah. We were working on one of the songs, the newer songs, called twenty first Century Man, and it was a little bit of a piece of music that I had started, and I said to Bert, you know, do you want to work on something that I kind of got started on but I sort of don't know where to go with it, And he said, sure, let's check it out. So I played this little bit for him. So I like that. So there's this one part where you're going that sounds like something I've heard before, and we can do better than that. And boy did we ever. I thought that was interesting because I think I had come from sort of an environment. There's something about being a commercial songwriter in Nashville, and I've spent a lot of years here writing commercial songs very ineffectively. I might add, if you look at the statistics for the number of cuts that I've gotten versus the number of songs that I've turned in, it's pretty ridiculous. But I sort of came from this environment of like it actually is a good thing. If something sounds like something you've heard before, you know, And I feel like you kind of got me back on track, Bert, because really what I want to be is innovative in everything I do. I want to be. I don't want to be sort of giving you a hook because it sounds like, oh, I've heard that hook before. You know that that's something I can get stuck in my car. I want to I want to innovate, and I think you definitely do, and I think my tendencies are sort of leaning more in that direction. I want to make this conversation about EP and the songs you're doing now because they're so good, not about your whole career, Bert, because that would take us a month. But just that story Daniel told of you saying we can do better than that is probably something everybody needs to hear, not just songwriters, but particularly songwriters. Where does that come from? You're now in your nineties. Yep, you're putting out sensational music. Thank you, and you're the guy saying no, no, no, we can do better than that. Where does that come from in you? I think it's a it's a growth process. Neil Simon, when we were doing Promises Promises one night, made this comment. He said, you know, you can get older, get fatter, but you're not like an athlete who's finished at thirty two, said you get to be eighty. That talent that you've got should be nourished. You won't fall back. If somebody says, hey, we got this new singer, could you write some of the song for her and just make it sort of like don't make me over. I wouldn't know how to do that anymore. It's left me you can't repeat. Do you mean it's left you in that you don't remember how you wrote songs like that, or just that's not something you're interested in doing. I couldn't do it because I did it once and when it's done, don't repeat yourself. I just want to say that the songs are just wonderful and it is just a thrill to meet both of you, and I think what you're doing is exciting and I think we can do better. Is something I'm going to remember the rest of my life. Appreciate you. Thanks, Bruce. Yeah, you've been good, Bruce. Thanks to Burton Daniel for taking the time to chat with Bruce. You can hear all of our favorite Burt background composition and his new ep with Daniel Tashan on a playlist at Broken Record podcast dot com, and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast. There you can find extended cuts of a lot of our past episodes as well as new ones. Broken Record is produced with help from Jason Gambrel, Mia LaBelle Lea Rose, Eric Sandler, and Martin Gonzalez for Pushkin Industries. At Theme Musics by Kenny Beats, I'm justin Richmond Bass