David Duchovny Talks Becoming A Singer/Songwriter

Feb 6, 2018 @ 09:30 AM

David Duchovny Talks Becoming A Singer/Songwriter

Steve Baltin , Contributor


NEW YORK, NY - JANUARY 29: Singer/songwriter/actor David Duchovny attends the Build

I first met David Duchovny a few years ago on the set of the brilliant Showtime series Californication. He was just picking up guitar at the time and I joked with him about the prospect of playing Warren Zevon, one of his favorite singer/songwriters, in a biopic.

He swore it would never happen because he wasn’t a singer/songwriter. So when Duchovny says today, “Never in my mind did I think I would write a song, never mind did I think I’d record a song. Never in my mind did I think I’d perform a song live,” he is not joking. Yet, this week he releases his second album, Every Third Thought.
Two albums into his surprise second career, the man best known for playing Fox Mulder on The X-Files is very much enjoying and growing into his role as a troubadour. I spoke with Duchovny about songwriting, why he admires guys like Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty, how he’ll never rely on his hit TV series to hold an audience’s attention and the poetry of science.

Steve Baltin: Do you see yourself becoming part of the music world or are you more just someone who does your art and doesn’t really fit into a scene?

David Duchovny: I’m kind of parachuting into different worlds best I can and then parachuting out. So I wouldn’t say I know the music world at all. Our music operation is mom and pop. It’s not one of these things that has the money and the influence of Fox television network when I’m doing X-Files or whatever movie studio I would have done or Showtime. So it’s really just me getting out there with my people, playing the music and just trying to get people to listen to it. I like it that way, it feels more authentic to me to make music that I like and hope some other people like it somewhere.

Baltin: I spoke with Lindsey Buckingham a few times and Fleetwood Mac is a juggernaut. So it’s nice for him to have that world, but also the more intimate one where he plays solo. Does it feel similar to you having the major acting world behind you but then keeping music more intimate?

Duchovny: I think that’s a proper perception of it. And the reason I got into making songs was really as another mode of self-expression. Never in my mind did I think I would write a song, never mind did I think I’d record a song. Never in my mind did I think I’d perform a song live. So there has been no dream from the beginning, no goal that’s an endpoint. It’s all been wonderfully organic and unfocused the way it’s happened. I’ve found collaborators along the way and I found the lyrical writing voice I didn’t know existed. It’s just sounds I like. I’m sure I’m influenced by songs I grew up listening to, but it’s all unconscious.

Baltin: Were there things you discovered through writing on Every Third Thought?

Duchovny: Absolutely and often what happens is the form that you’re writing in is going to put structures and strictures and handcuffs on you that you’re gonna really have to go out of like Houdini. If it’s a screenplay obviously you’re gonna speak through characters. If it’s a novel there’s a little less of that, it’s more of a floating consciousness. If it’s a poem, if you’re not writing in a certain form – sonnet, free verse – still there’s a certain expectation of form. And lyrics kind of sit between all those things. Lyrics are these weird things that depend on the magic between the music and the words, not just the words.

Baltin: What were one or two lyrics on this album where you were forced to go in a different direction and now looking back you are surprised by what emerged?

Duchovny: I’ll be influenced by scientific theory, which, to me, is like found poetry. So if you take the song “Half Life,” which takes radioactive decay, they have a term for that, “Half Life.” To me, that was very poetic. So that song grew out of, “I’m gonna talk about science, but I’m really gonna be talking about love, decay and degradation of radioactivity and of love.” So that’s where it kind of forced me lyrically to address that. That was an interesting moment for me, “Every Third Thought,” I had the rhyme going into the chorus, “Every third thought on you,” and it’s kind of a song about obsession, so it was like, “Every thought, every second thought, every third thought on you.” So I had to rhyme you with every second thought , so then I just wrote, “Every second thought just feels like a clue.” And I thought that’s kind of the way it feels when you’re obsessed. But I never would have gotten there if I didn’t have to rhyme it.

Baltin: Were you writing this album at all while filming The X-Files?

Duchovny: No, and oddly, looking from the outside in, you would think I’d be kind of interested in science if I was doing The X-Files. But it’s really not. What informs the performance on The X-Files is what’s underneath all that stuff, for the actor. The actor doesn’t have to be interested in what the character is in, he just has to portray that in whatever way he can.

Baltin: I was thinking the opposite and wondering if playing Mulder seeped into your songwriting?

Duchovny: I guess I’ve always had an interest, because I’m too stupid to really understand science I’ve always come it as the poet. And I’ve always tried to immediately understand it emotionally. Having no interest because I have no aptitude mathematically to understand science the way it’s supposed to be understood I can only understand it emotionally and poetically.

Baltin: What is the one Fleetwood Mac song you wish you could have written and why?

Duchovny: I wrote the song “Mo” for this album. I was like, “I hear a bassline and I hear tom tom, this is my Fleetwood Mac song, let’s make this sound like a Fleetwood Mac song.” And I think it kind of does. “Dreams” and “Landslide,” I would say “Dreams” and I would say, “Landslide.” No deep cuts there for Fleetwood Mac. I love Lindsey Buckingham’s live acoustic version of “Big Love,” he sounds like he’s playing three guitars at once. He’s only playing one guitar. That’s more like a virtuoso guitar performance to me. I love the old Fleetwood Mac production, so clean, simple and great.

Baltin: Are you getting more comfortable as a live performer?

Duchovny: I’m getting way more comfortable about it. It’s a bit of a back and forth cause when I first started going out there we’re playing rock and roll. We’re playing some ballads, but we’re playing rock and roll and you find yourself just adapting these rock and roll cliché moves you’ve hated your entire life (laughs). You’re out there and it’s like you’re the emcee of this big party and I guess I played for 2,500 people, that’d be the biggest. That’s a lot of people and I want them to have a good time. I gotta keep the energy coming and I’ve never done anything like that before. I’ve really got respect for guys that can keep that going for like two hours, Springsteen, four hours. Holding them there, holding them interested. And it’s hard to hold them interested when they don’t know the music. They don’t know my music, so it’s really tough for me to get out there and be the emcee for that long and keep them there and not go to cheap X-Files jokes or cheap Californication jokes. Cause I’ll just want to shoot myself if I do that.

Baltin: Are there artists or writers you admire then for their storytelling and you see them in your work similar to how you hear Fleetwood Mac in “Mo”?

Duchovny: Definitely [Tom] Waits, Dylan has been able to experiment with points of view so much that he’s actually called himself different characters throughout his career, “Jokerman.” Bowie, you had “Thin White Duke,” “Aladdin Sane.” So you can see performers taking that point of view to an extreme and actually becoming an overview voice to filter this point of view through. Springsteen is definitely somebody that shifts in persona. Dylan is the master. Petty is not someone who shifted so much, but I think Petty was true to himself in that he was one of those guys, all of these guys don’t write songs about still being 25 and wanting to get laid. They actually matured their songwriting along with themselves and that’s totally cool. That’s rare where an artist continues to grow that way, so that persona shifts. Motley Crue is not doing that. Aimee Mann is a wonderful lyricist; Joni Mitchell, amazing.

Baltin: What is the one Warren Zevon song you wish you could’ve written?

Duchovny: “Desperados Under The Eaves,” I think it’s self-explanatory. That’s a novel, a movie, a symphony, it’s four minutes of genius.

Baltin: What do you take from this album when you hear the whole thing?

Duchovny: I try to listen to it as if I’ve never heard it before. And then I think, “What am I hearing? What am I getting out of it? Am I feeling the presence of someone relating to me and speaking musically clearly to me?” That’s what I’m going for. When you listen to your favorite albums you feel like you’re being spoken to personally. If I can ever write a song like that, if I can ever write a song like “Desperados Under The Eaves,” to me, that would be the ultimate.


Forbes

thanks