Lost Issue: Mason Daring Interview Part One

Mason Daring's nearly 20 years as a professional composer have yielded truly diverse credits. He is in the enviable position of being the composer of choice for one of America's premiere filmmakers, the independent writer/director John Sayles. For Sayles, he most recently scored Lone Star, whose screenplay is nominated for an Oscar this year. His other recent feature credits are the Disney release Prefontaine and the thriller Cold Around the Heart. His work for cable TV includes the Showtime production Hidden in America starring Jeff and Beau Bridges and Frances McDormand, and the Disney mini-series of Dickens' The Old Curiosity Shop along with the bloody western The Last Outlaw directed by Geoff Murphy. He also runs Daring Records, currently offering about three dozen releases. In addition to many of his own scores, Daring Records features adult contemporary music-accomplished jazz musicians playing both originals and standards, as well as sophisticated singer/songwriters.

Daring's first instrument was the trumpet, but he soon picked up guitar, inpired by Dylan and The Kingston Trio. He continued to develop as a rock 'n roll and folk guitarist and singer/songwriter while in law school. He specialized in entertainment law. Unhappy as a lawyer, he had been investigating avenues as a director and composer for industrials and commercials, when one of his clients needed music for his first feature. That client was John Sayles, the movie was The Return of the Secaucus Seven (to which The Big Chill would later bear an uncanny resemblance) and their artistic partnership was begun. Daring has scored all of Sayles' films with the exception of Baby It's You, which was mostly a song score. Their work together has produced scores as diverse as Daring's The Brother From Another Planet (in which the steel drum sets the a light, spooky tone) to the meticulously authentic, locale-inspired scores for Matewan, Passionfish and The Secret of Roan Inish, set in West Virginia, Louisiana and Ireland, respectively.

The following interviews took place over a long lunch and a phone conversation. Daring is based in Massachusetts, but is constantly traveling to the West Coast. He has received mail addressed simply "Mason Daring, Marblehead, Masachusettes." He has a warm, generous personality, truly happy and excited to talk about his work and the challenges he has accepted for himself. He especially lights up when discussing some of the projects which have really "touched people," like Sayles' Secret of Roan Inish or the charmng young adult movie Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken. He is also deeply committed to his record label. Their full-color brochure is available by writing to Daring Records, Box 793, Marblehead, MA 01945 and the releases are mostly available in stores, as they are distrubuted nationally by Rounder Records. He is currently working on Sayles' latest film, a spanish-language movie which takes place mostly in Mexico. My deepest thanks to him for the time he took to speak to me and his patience.

Lois Dilivio: Did you visit the set while Lone Star was being filmed?

Mason Daring: I did actually. I only do that with John. It's almost unheard of. On many of John's other films I functioned as music supervisor. Not so much in the sense of purchasing songs, although I have done that too because when I was a lawyer I used to advise people on that. I was an entertainment lawyer. I stopped doing that, whoa, just after Carter stopped being president. I really retired from the practice of law around '81.

LD: Is that because...?

MD: Because I didn't have to! [laughs] That's the only reason anybody's a lawyer. I began to make more money writing music, producing music. For a few years, right after I stopped being a lawyer I also directed television commercials and was a film editor. I got to a point where I just had to choose between directing and writing music. You know, I always assume that I won't do this forever. I mean, I was a truck driver for a couple of years, I liked that a lot. I worked on a ranch. That might have been my favorite job ever. And I liked directing a lot. I hated being a lawyer. The rap on being a lawyer is simple. Doctors spend all their day with sick people and lawyers spend all their day with worried people. Nobody gets up in the morning and says I feel great, I've got a great family, I've got a great job, I think I'll call my lawyer. You only see people at their very worst, in my opinion. And not only that, but you have to spend time with other lawyers, all of whom are very confrontational and want to do better than you.

LD: Were you a music major in college?

MD: Yes, finally. I changed my major several times.

LD: When you graduated did you go straight to law school?

MD: No, I taught English for one year and mainly played rock and roll, as a guitar player. I switched over to acoustic music for a year and just played music...then I went to law school. I was actually signed with Columbia. Clive Davis got fired in a big scandal one day and they basically axed everybody off the label for the next few weeks. All but their best-selling acts. My album was almost finished and I was having a streak and I was sure I was going to be a rock and roll hero but here I was, unemployed. And so I fled to law school.

LD: That album is in the vaults somewhere? In limbo?

MD: Yeah, pretty much.

LD: Who owns it?

MD: Oh, I got it back. I mean that was easy but... it wasn't very good. I mean, I listen to it now and I think, "Are you kidding me?" [laughs] It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I just fled to law school and no sooner did I get there than I started to really play music. That's when I think I started getting good.

LD: Were you playing with other law students?

MD: No, other people I met in Boston, one of whom I play with 'til this day, Jeannie Stahl, who's a great singer. We ended up doing two albums together. She's still a good friend. Music was clearly something I wasn't going to be able to give up. Little by little I started recording and producing other people's albums. I started writing for industrials and commercials. I met John [Sayles] because I was his lawyer for Return of the Secaucus Seven.

LD: Did he have anybody to do the music for that? Or didn't he even think about it?

MD: No, he didn't even think about it. He had a fellow on camera who was doing songs.

LD: That JT guy...

MD: Right, Adam LeFevre. It took a long time to post it because he had to earn the money to do it. About a year later he called me up and asked me if I would do the score. $700 music budget, I'm pretty sure. And it was a wonderful film. I had a lot of fun doing it. I also started working for public television. I did the theme for Frontline, which is still on. Then I did the theme for Nova. It snowballed.

LD: You still get paid for those?

MD: You get a little ASCAP money. You don't get much for public television. It doesn't pay like the theme for The Tonight Show would pay. You get a little bit.

LD: How did you get to do Frontline?

MD: I got to know one of the heads of it. He asked me to try to find somebody else to do it actually.

LD: Did he know you were a composer?

MD: Yeah, but I'd never done anything that orchestral. I assembled tapes from other people and they weren't very good. He said, "What about you?" and I did a demo.

LD: Was the demo acoustic instruments?

MD: No, it was a whiny little synthesizer in those days! [laughs] Now you get to do a pretty good demo in a limited amount of time. But they thought it sounded nice. A friend of mine, the co-writer with me who is really a great orchestrator, was Martin Brody. It turned out to be a great experience. That exact same recording is on the air today. So then, I did more movies for John. In 1980 or so I did Key Exchange for Fox. Barnett Kellman, the director, wanted to preview every cue. Well, that's not surprising. Actually, in a feature, that's a good idea. Nowadays, they don't give you the time they used to give you. You used to have a couple of months. You could preview every cue. Now, they change their mind and change their mind -- you have three weeks to do a major feature. You just don't have the time.

LD: Did Key Exchange give you the money to start to build a studio?

MD: It gave me the money to buy two pieces of gear. I got an eight-track board and an eight-track deck. Two microphones. I had no idea what I was doing.

LD: In Steven Smith's Film Composers Guide (First Edition) you're credited with scoring a film called Osa. Can you tell me something about this film?

MD: Oh my god, Jesus Christ! Who do I pay to get that out of there? That's a f-cking amazing movie. That's a great story. Osa's a great story.

LD: It was pretty fun, actually.

MD: You saw the movie? How did you see it? I've never seen it!

LD: I rented it. It's rentable.

MD: Oh my god, I mean that movie, it wasn't released -- it escaped.

LD: Some of the acting is quite bad.

MD: Oh, it's a hilarious movie. You saw that movie? I've never seen it. It was some kind of Russian co-production thing. They forgot about the music, or fired somebody...they called me and they said, "You have one week." One week, but here's money. I mean, it wasn't that much money, but in one week, how much can you spend? So you get to keep most of it. That was the birth of my first recording studio. I had the gear and I had to record this in one week. I rented an absolutely empty room in Marblehead [Massachusetts] and took my equipment over there. I called up a couple of great players from New York and flew them up, Penny White and Jeff Southwhit.

LD: What did you play on it?

MD: Guitar and keyboards. I prepped for three days, they flew up and they each gave me one day, and then I recorded for the next two days.

LD: Were you working with the final cut?

MD: Yes. Such as it was.

LD: What did you deliver to them? Stereo 1/4 inch?

MD: That's right. 1/4 inch. Probably without timecode. I mean, this was a long time ago. A funny story about Osa: the last night, I'm trying to get this ready to go back to New York to mix, and there was this infestation of crickets in my building. I'm trying to record an acoustic guitar track by myself and there's a goddamn cricket up there by the ceiling and I get up there with the Raid and a flashlight and I'm trying to, you know, basically de-louse the universe, and it's not working.This cricket keeps going and finally, hell, I don't have the time. I just miked it as closely as I could, and recorded the guitar track, and mixed this thing down. Well, this scene was a bunch of guys walking behind a tanker in the desert, and they're walking along through the desert, nothing is happening as with the rest of the film, and uh, but what could I do? I mean, it wasn't a real studio, it was just a room I rented. So I went down to the mix and they're mixing this scene as I walk in and they are going nuts trying to find the track with the cricket. And they have got a hundred sound effects...for whatever reason, they had spent a lot of money on sound effects, and they're awfully confused by this time. None of them had ever made a movie before -- I'm sure hasn't made one since -- and they're trying to find where the crickets are. And I just had to turn around and walk out. I couldn't... I just didn't have the courage to say, "Oh yeah, they're on the music track." And so they apparently gave up and just mixed this scene and there is a cricket in the desert.

LD: How did you get the job?

To be continued in the next Lost Issue...

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