Interview with Bear McCreary
Conducted March 17, 2004

While researching information for this site, I came across another fine composer, Bear McCreary. We met up on St. Patrick’s Day to find out more about his works, his involvement with Steve Bartek, and his metal riff that almost killed Oingo Boingo members... This is a transcription of our conversation already in progress (I hit “record” eventually), in mid-topic about his collaboration with Richard Gibbs on the recent “Battlestar Galactica” television mini-series...

The “Battlestar Galactica” miniseries should be a pretty good run for you guys…
I think it will. It’s the kind of thing you want to get involved in even if they only do one season because... Reruns for the rest of your life!

It’s not unlike the Star Trek phenomenon...
Yeah, it still has that name brand value, and in between episodes of Babylon 5 and Farscape... It’ll be on at three in the morning in twenty years. So it’s cool... I think if they keep their production values up, it could do very well.

So did they give you free reign on the score?
No, they knew exactly what they wanted, which was difficult at first. Most people give you guidelines, but these were...

More like rules?
Yeah. They said “Well, we want drums...” So we’re thinking they want an orchestra score emphasizing some drum stuff... They heard it and... “What’s the orchestra doing there? We want drums.”
“Okay, we’ll try it again, a little less orch...”
“No, we want drums.”
“What, you just want drums the whole time?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah... that’s it.”
And we were like, “Oh my God,” you know? [laughs] But when you get your head into that, then it worked in this totally different way. Richard says a “minimalist” kind of score. It was cool. Instead of trying to hit all these things, you hit nothing, and you provide this kind of pulse through the whole cue, and it felt more honest. That’s what they were going for, it just took us a while to get into their head space, because it’s such a weird concept... We had to get rid of the traditional science fiction scoring. No brass fanfares, no big string lines...

The score is credited to you and Richard?
Yes, it’s music by Richard Gibbs and additional music by me. A couple of my really good cues made it on there, so it’s cool.

For score work, what would you say is your strong point?
Well, my main thing is composition. I’ve had to do all sorts of weird stuff for movies and shorts... Like this movie I did with Steve, it was a 1930s French jazz band... After I got the job, I thought “Now how am I going to do that?” I do a lot of work with the other (Oingo) Boingo guys, so I get them together whenever I need a kick ass rhythm section. Which is cool...

Well, they’re simply the best there is.
Yeah. It’s funny, I’ve been writing all kinds of music for a long time... I always spend a lot of time communicating what I want... The first [person] I worked with was John Hernandez, and I didn’t have to explain things anymore. And when I started working with John [Avila], I started to realize I was writing just for them this whole time. When I tried to think of a bass line, I would always think of how John would play it. So when I got him in, and I’m getting ready to explain what I’m trying to do, it was “No, that’s it! Perfect. Roll!” Steve is especially quick with that kind of thing. He’s a killer sight reader. He orchestrates by hand, so that’s really useful for me, being able to work with a guitarist who is used to reading and writing really complicated things. That’s what makes him an interesting guitarist; he uses the same concepts in his orchestrating. He’s used to figuring out what’s there and ways to fill it out. I’ve always felt that his guitar parts are really like orchestra parts.

Give most guitarists a score part or song, and they’re usually just going to plow through it without real regard to the work...
Yes, he always finds ways to make it fit; it’s not like he’s charging through, and I’ve always thought that was really cool. He’s always my first choice for anything like that.

Your work shows you have your own little edge musically... Like Steve’s own work, it’s a bit different and not people usually expect in score works...
Yes, and that is something that I’m trying my best to preserve. There may come a point where, even for financial reasons, you have to do a movie and they want a Thomas Newman score. That’s something I’m sure Steve has dealt with many times. “Give us a Danny Elfman score,” you know what I mean? You’re a film composer. You are working on a collaborative thing. Just like the set designer wants something to look a certain way, but the [higher ups] want it another way... You gotta do that. So the challenge is in preserving your [individual] voice. Steve has managed, so I’m hoping to do the same!

Steve has been able to turn down a couple “give us your best Danny Elfman” jobs, which I think is great. But who knows? Someday something is bound to roll around with a nice price tag, and... Well, that’s part of the job...
It’s exactly part of the job, and a tough balance to find... When I was at USC, there tended to be an academic sense of looking down on film music; like it’s always copying something... For every time that you try to argue that with somebody “No, it really has its worth,” they can give you ten examples of movies where it doesn’t. And they’re right. So it’s difficult sometimes to preserve your creativity, but worth it, I think. Steve has made really good decisions. I don’t know, but it is possible he’s turned down movies that ended up being successful with somebody else knocking off Danny Elfman, but I really think it’s good that Steve doesn’t do that. I would only help perpetrate the myth that he “is” Danny Elfman. I think he’s gotten some really interesting projects as a result of that.

So how did you initially hook up with Steve (and the other Boingo guys)?
I initially got in contact with him through Doug Lacy. When I got an accordion and moved to L.A., Doug and I got together and started playing all sorts of stuff, and became really good friends. When I graduated USC, there was a possibility that Steve was going to need a new assistant, so Doug gave him my name. I emailed back and forth with Steve for a week or two, and we set a time we were going to meet... A couple of days before, I go to this concert up in Malibu, and I see across the way John Hernandez... So I have to go talk to Johnny. I introduce myself after the show, and I’m [thinking] it would be totally lame if I brought up Steve Bartek; I didn’t want to look like a dork-ass “I’m meeting Steve next week!” [laughs] So I’m playing it cool, and he says “You know, I was going to invite Steve to this thing, but he’s out of town...” And I thought, “Okay, you know Steve’s out of town, so you might as well...” So I say “Yeah, he mentioned that to me... I’m actually meeting him next week.” And Johnny says “Oh, well I’ll give him a call and tell him you’re a really good guy!” So I go the next week to meet Steve, and he did get a call from John Hernandez; I don’t to this day know why! [laughs] Steve said “Yeah, Johnny said he met you and said you’re a really good guy... I guess you guys are friends, right?” And I was like (unsure) “Yes!” And I had only met him for like five minutes!

Later that summer, Steve invited me down to see Danny work on “Red Dragon.” Johnny came by the stage one day, so I talked to him again and said “Thanks for putting in a good word for me, and... Hey! Want to join my band?” So John started playing with me... It never took off, but I learned so much about the collaborative process from John. John is like... he’s wonderfully blunt. One of the first things he said to me was “Well, all you’re going to get from me is my honesty,” which I really appreciate. So I really learned a lot from him. I started going to other shows where he was playing with John Avila, and I met [Avila] then.

In December, I did a movie that was about a Jewish wedding that was scored entirely with a Klezmer band. I played accordion and Doug played accordion, and John Hernandez plays drums and John Avila came in on bass. Then in the spring, we were doing some demo recordings, and at that point I invited Steve in... Since then, I work with those guys a lot, actually. But that’s kinda how I met them... Sort of in all these weird ways that came together...

Certainly, back in high school, I never thought I’d be here jamming with these guys... It’s great, because they are the best musicians I know, and they’re great collaborators. To have access to them, even just compositionally, has made such a big difference for me. To be able to write stuff for John Avila to play, because other people can’t... [laughs] They get it fast, and they add their own voices to it, which is a great experience. Since then, Steve and Doug have both played on “Free Radicals.”

We did another demo in December; a 60s flower child, groovy, Herman’s Hermits kind of thing... really funny. So I called up all the guys and said “Hey, can we record this thing that’s kind of like Herman’s Hermits/Strawberry Alarm Clock?” I talk to Steve and he says “Uh huh, okay, alright... cool.” So we’re at Avila’s recording bass and drums, and I mention “Yeah, we’re really getting that kind of Strawberry Alarm Clock vibe...” and John Hernandez says, “Well, you know... Bartek was in the Strawberry Alarm Clock.”
“What? He was?” He didn’t say anything to me!” [laughs]
And Johnny says “Well, you know... that’s Steve.”
So the next night I went in to record Steve, and I was like “When were you going to tell me you were in the Strawberry Alarm Clock?”
“I didn’t mention that?”
“No...” [laughs] That cracked me up.

In the same day, we did a song that was just for me. Steve has a killer solo in the middle of it; it was great. It’s this heavy metal thing. It was ridiculous. I was afraid I was going to kill off the members of Oingo Boingo with this heavy metal riff. It’s just a really fast lick, way at the bottom of a five string bass, which Avila doesn’t play that often... So by the end of the session, John Avila was just like (clutching his hand) “Aaahh...” [laughs] His hand his killing him... [laughs] It was bad. Admittedly, it wasn’t the most guitar-friendly lick. A keyboard player writing guitar music; you learn some things! [laughs] So the next day when I got to record at Steve’s place, he’d already gotten a call from John Hernandez saying “Watch out man, this heavy metal track is a killer...” And so we went through the whole thing, and even Steve’s hand started to hurt. And I’m sitting here going “Oh my god, I’m killing them...” I can see the obituary now... All the Boingo fans will come after me with knives! [laughs] But thankfully he lived, and we did the guitars in two days, and his solo is really good...

Individually they’re all great at what they do, and extremely underrated... They’re always flying under the radar, but they’re doing it very well... It’s great they’re still working together...
Yes. The most flattering thing I’ve ever been told was at a show Steve did with his new band he’s getting together... He got them all together and played this festival that my girlfriend puts together every couple of months called the Alternajazz Festival. They get instrumental, jazzy, strange bands... Bands that are jazz, but with something else kind of weird. Which, of course, Steve is all that and more... [laughs] So he played this festival, and I remember we were talking, and he says “Well, you know... I just knew it was time to play again. No one had ever asked me to play...”
And I looked at him like “Nobody?”
And he was like “Alright, you were asking me to play... But nobody else.”
And then he says something to the effect of “In fact, if you hadn’t gotten us together again, we might not be playing right now.” It had been a while since the three of them actually got together to play, so it was kinda cool...

You’ve done a good thing!
Yes, I’ve done a good thing! [laughs] And they really are on stage again, which is cool. I hope they keep that up. Hopefully the more high profile gigs I get, the more I will work with those guys. Not only because they’re the best, but also because they’ve done a lot for me at such an early stage; for which I’m so grateful. The more I work with them, the more I get a feel for what they do... The first couple of sessions I did with Steve, we did in a big hurry. It wasn’t until a demo we did in December, especially the song of mine which is called “Shades of Gray,” that I got to take the time to mess around with some of the textures Steve would do. And that was really cool, just seeing the way he’d layer things, hearing what he does and seeing him do it... It affects the way I write. The same with working with John [Hernandez] and John Avila, so it’s a really symbiotic relationship.

So, going back, did you end up getting the assistant job you were originally looking for from Steve?
No, I didn’t, actually! I ended up working for Steve a little bit... I did some work on a commercial that Danny did, doing some MIDI transcription, and a little work for Steve... But then I ended up hiring Steve more often than he was hiring me! [laughs] About the same time, I was hired by Richard, completely coincidental I might add, not through any of those guys... Which was, again, very strange, you know?

Sounds to me like you’ve ended up in an even better position than you were shooting for...
Oh yes, absolutely. You know... I’d rather be in the position to hire Steve Bartek myself!

So, as far as work with Steve, you have “Free Radicals,”...
I’ve done “Free Radicals,” some demos with Steve on a couple of projects, and I’ve done a song with him that a friend of mine is shooting a video for, just for fun... I’ve helped get Steve’s new band project on the Alternajazz Festival, and helped promote that... We’ve got some new stuff coming up pretty soon, some new demos for an upcoming project of my own... We’ll see, I have the feeling that all those [Boingo] guys will be involved in that.

Unless it has that metal riff, ha.
Yeah, I’m not writing that anymore! [laughs]

Some parting thoughts?
Steve has a really good thing going on. Of all the composers I’ve worked for, there’s something about the way he’s situated, it seems just like the way you want to be. He just does his thing, and he lives well, and he’s not freaked out all the time. I know he’s busy all the time, but I’ve seen and worked with guys that are like... the way they live, it can’t be worth the money. I mean, why be a composer or work in this industry if you’re going to be miserable twenty four hours a day? Steve is one of those guys who is successful, but doesn’t let the work drive him crazy. I admire Steve’s attitude.

Many thanks to Bear McCreary for his time and great photos. Be sure to check out more about Bear’s works and other topics discussed here in the links below...

BearMcCreary.com
“Free Radicals” Official Site
Alternajazz Festival information at Raya Yarbrough