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Tony DeSare Scores Christmas Film |
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Tony DeSare’s album Christmas
Home was released in 2015, but too late to get it out to the radio
stations and the reviewers, to draw much attention, so we decided to sit
down with the affable singer, pianist, arranger, composer, lyricist and
film scorer to talk about his album and his career.
“I have self-produced every album and I didn’t get
Christmas Home out early
enough to get any press. I think that I got it mastered right around
Thanksgiving and it was just too late to submit to press.
In the genre that
I am in it is only natural (to do a Christmas album), because the great
Christmas standards also have a lot in common with the great standards
of the Great American Songbook golden era, like Irving Berlin, Gershwin
and Cole Porter. The songs are right up my alley. It wasn’t a question
of if I would do one, but when it would feel right to do it. In the last
few years I have started to do a lot of holiday Pop shows with
orchestras, which I just love so much. It gets me in the spirit too,
because for two or three weeks I am usually with different orchestras. I
am doing ten shows with the Philly Pops and they have dances and they a
children’s choir with the full orchestra on stage. I have been doing it
for the last four years or so.
Part of it was it would be really great to have my own Christmas
arrangements and I could sell CDs after the show. It made sense business
wise to do it and creatively I have wanted to do something for a long
time. It is just that I knew when I did do it I would have to take it
very seriously. If I record, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,”
that is going to be my version of it. It is not like I can keep trying
to record better versions of it. Around the same time that I was
thinking about doing a Christmas album, I fell in love with a Sinatra
album that had slipped by notice, because it wasn’t released on CD at
the time when I was really getting into Frank Sinatra. I think it was
1955 or ’57 that he recorded that. It is very unique. It is just Sinatra
with the Hollywood string quartet and a couple of additional soloists.
It was a string quartet, a French horn, a harp, and a really,
really light rhythm section with just a bass and brushes. I just fell in
love with it.
I spent a lot of time with my arrangers and bounced scores back and
forth with them. I added the live video shoot during the sessions, which
added an extra layer of complexity, because we had to think about how we
all looked while we were recording and keeping the cameras rolling.
Also, it keeps you honest, as far as what you can do in fixing any
mistakes, because I wanted to do it the old school way, with all of the
musicians, all in one spot letting all of the mics bleed into each
other. There is a sound in that and a unity in that, which is part of
the charm in those old recordings and why we loved them so much. I think
that was pretty much how everything worked until getting into the
seventies.
When they started to make the seventies albums of The Beach Boys and
things like that it was part of the change with everything being
multi-track. Now it is like everything is isolated and to me you may get
perfect recordings and they sound great, but part of the charm of those
musicians was that you had really good musicians just playing together
in a room. Even when you have the little imperfections that come out in
a situation like that, I wanted them. I wanted that feeling in the
Christmas CD, because they are great songs. I wanted it to feel like a
classic 1950s Christmas album, but also the thing that I hoped for was
that it would have some feeling that is fresh and relevant. That was my
goal and then I just worked as hard as I could on it. It took up my life
for four months,” says DeSare.
Now that he has a young son, the Christmas album took on even more
meaning for Tony DeSare.
“That is why I took it so seriously when recording it, because in ten
years if it is still circulating I don’t want to think that I should
have invested more money or time in this project. My son is three now,
so he was a little more than two last year when I was playing it (Christmas
Home). He was there in his chair and I just put it on. At first I
thought there was something wrong with him, because he was glazed over
and staring when the first couple of songs were on. When “It Is
Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” stopped he wanted to hear it
again. He wanted to hear it six times in a row. Then he listened to the
whole (album). It is almost like he knew it was me or something about it
just captivated him. He didn’t make a peep. It was so crazy,” says
DeSare.
As for the songs that he decided to record for his Christmas album Tony
DeSare says, “There are a ton of Christmas songs out there, but as far
as Great American Songbook Christmas classics there are handful of great
ones and I wanted to make sure I had those on there. “Have
Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” “I’ll
Be Home for Christmas,” “It’s
Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas,” and “Christmas
Song.” I didn’t want it to be a swinging Christmas, because I could
probably save that for another project. I didn’t really want to mix in
the big band, “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” “Sleigh Ride,” “It Is The
Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” type of thing. That to me was a
different vibe. I wanted something that was warm and by the Christmas
fire and romantic. The instrumentation that I had lends itself to that.
That is why I picked the great Christmas ballads. I wanted to have a
couple of originals on there. I had only written one Christmas song
before, which is one of the end tracks. I wrote “Christmas Home,” for
the project.
For “Christmas Home,” I wanted to write something that was in that style
of songwriting in the thirties and forties. I thought a waltz would be
nice to have on there. I came up with a melody. The lyric is really
about a young family and when you have your first Christmas in your home
with a baby. That is like when your own family Christmas starts. Up
until then even if you had been living on your own for a while, your
Christmas is still part of your parents’ home. There is tradition, but
at some point you become where Christmas is and you have your nuclear
family now for Christmas. That is what the song is about, the first time
that it happens to somebody.”
There is also a fun bonus track when you buy the album and it has Tony
DeSare impersonating eighteen different individuals, as he imagines how
they would sing “Jingle Bells.”
He says, “When I do this with orchestras I will do this solo at the
piano and it is really effective. The version on the album is a live
version with the Naples Philharmonic. It was the holiday show for their
concerts.
The fun thing about putting that (version of “Jingle
Bells”) together is all those people that I do vocal
impersonations of are all artists that I really love and I spent a lot
of time listening to, so I have their voices in my head. I love Randy
Newman and I love Elton John. Radiohead, Neil Diamond and I love Michael
McDonald. It is a lot of fun to be able to have that piece in my
repertoire when I do Christmas shows.”
This Christmas season also marks another first for Tony DeSare, “I
scored my first film and it is a Christmas movie
Love Always Santa. I scored
seventy minutes worth of music and they licensed three tracks off of my
Christmas album. I am really proud of it. I always wanted to do a film
score. I have been on stage with orchestras for several years and I have
been paying more attention to the arranging and how things come
together.”
Life began for Tony DeSare in Glen Falls, New York, the song to Don and
Louise and older brother to Trina. He grew up in the neighboring town of
Hudson’s Falls. When he was a young boy, his father would play the
guitar and sing at home and once Tony DeSare was in school he became
involved with the music program.
“Early on what my dad was playing was stuff that he loved. It ranged
from Elvis and The Beatles to James Taylor and The Eagles, David Gates
and Bread, Dan Fogelberg and Jim Croce. It was guitar oriented, melodic
(music). I guess I got that from him. I like melody and a good lyric. He
liked songs that were pretty, catchy Pop songs. I didn’t grow up early
on listening to any Jazz in the house or anything like Frank Sinatra. He
had the Trilogy album, which I loved as a kid, but really all that I
listened to on it was “New York, New York,” and “It Had to Be You.” That
was my breadth and knowledge of that genre.
When I was in fourth grade the first instruments that were offered for
kids to play were the string instruments, so I picked the violin. I just
always loved the music, so I came home and I said that I wanted to play
the violin. That is where I found my basic rhythm and (learned how) to
read music and pitch. I always was fascinated by piano, but we didn’t
have a piano in the house, but by the time I was at the end of the sixth
grade I really wanted to have piano lessons and get a piano. My parents
got me a keyboard and I had piano lessons. I just fell in love with it.
Any spare time that I had I was down playing the piano, learning stuff
that I was fascinated with and I just kept on progressing with it.
Most professional piano players that I know started when they were five
years old, but I started when I was ten. I have always been a late
bloomer I guess. It is the
same thing with my career. My career continues to slowly get bigger and
stronger. I feel that I am getting much better as I get older and I am
learning how to practice on my weaknesses.
I got into things like Scott Joplin and I loved “Rhapsody in Blue.” I
discovered that after a year of playing piano. That is what really
changed my trajectory, because I got serious about the piano at that
point and I was determined to play “Rhapsody in Blue.”
I just loved Scott Joplin’s music and when I would hear “The
Entertainer,” and “Maple Leaf Rag,” I would just want to hear it again.
When I first heard it, it was magical.
I really didn’t start singing until my voice changed. It was something
that once I started it felt natural to me. Everybody who does this
professionally has a very different path. I have had very little formal
education in any of it. I took piano lessons when I was a kid for a few
years. I have picked stuff
up along the way from all of these great talented pros that I have
gotten to know through just being in this business. I never took voice
lessons and I never really took Jazz piano lessons. I have learned by
studying people who do it really well.
I started singing in my mid-teens and by the time I was a senior in high
school my friends kind of urged me to do a show. I was pretty shy. I put
together a little Jazz combo and I did a show at my high school. I got
all of this local press attention and before I knew it I was playing
hotels and upscale kind of bars in the Lake George / Saratoga Springs
region, which is a big tourist area during the summer.
I went to Ithaca College and I started premed and eventually I switched
to business. I would have switched to music, but I would have had to
stay there longer. I got a
business degree and while I was at college I (gained) a following from
the students there, which was really encouraging.
I moved to New
York without any connections and it took about six months but I got a
steady five nights a week job at the Marriott Marquis hotel in Time
Square. I certainly was lucky. I just happened to have the skill set
that they needed. It is so true about luck that when you have the
opportunity, you also have to be prepared for it. I was lucky to get
that shot, but they had been auditioning people for quite a while
already and they needed somebody that had a keyboard and that could play
left hand bass, play piano and sing and have a large enough repertoire
to do four hours a night.
After doing the
Marriott Marquis for about a year and one-half I got an opportunity to
do an Off Broadway show of Frank Sinatra’s music called
Our Sinatra.
DeSare talks about that experience, “It wasn’t really acting, and it was
a musical revue. Nobody was doing an impression of Sinatra. It came from
a cabaret show at the Algonquin. There were three singers on stage. I
played piano and I sang in it. It was different, because I was
understudying somebody who was portraying his angle.
I learned so much doing that. I
learned a lot from how things were put together and what worked well
every night. The thing about this show is the repetition and when I did
take over the show eight (times) a week I really got to observe. I had
the whole thing memorized and I could watch the audience throughout and
find out what things were effective and which things weren’t. It was one
of the big break throughs in my career getting that show.”
Tony DeSare describes the Great American Songbook as the Pop music of
that era, “It is hard to picture, because we have gotten used to this
being a catalogue of almost being America’s Classical music. There was a
time when Beethoven was the Aerosmith of his time. It is important to
remember Frank Sinatra was the first Justin Bieber, as far as the
cultural spot that Justin Bieber has been occupying. Frank Sinatra was
the first one of that mold. He was the first one to have tons of
screaming girls and he was singing these great songs. At the time nobody
was saying these are amazing songs.
Early on the biggest market for the music business was sheet music, so
the key was to come up with songs that were easy enough to play, but
sophisticated enough that people wanted to learn how to play them and
they would sing them around the piano. That is how the whole popular
song business got a foothold. They started to create stars and stars
were the ones who could get songs heard, but it was a song driven
market. They were Pop songs and they were three to four minutes, little
stories about romance and life. To me it uses the vocabulary of Jazz.
People ask me if I consider myself to be a Jazz artist and (I say) only
to the extent that I use the vocabulary for these classic Pop songs. I
love a good melody and I love a good lyric. There have been plenty of
songs written in the last 110 years. The focus has moved further off of
good melody and lyric and so has the number of Pop songs that will
survive translation to another genre, another arrangement and another
tempo. So much of what is written today is as creative as it can be, but
it is not focused on the song, it is focused on the sound of the bass
drum or the beat.”
That said Tony DeSare’s musical palette is quite vast. “I think it is
what in the last few years has allowed me to carve my niche in what I am
doing. I have loved so many eras of music and I have been trying to
familiarize myself with being able to do (them). Now when I do a live
show I really cover 100 years of Pop music. I will do something from
1915, something from the twenties and thirties. I will do a Bob Dylan
from the sixties, I will do Elton John and Billy Joel or even Bee Gees
or Bruce Springsteen from the seventies, Prince from the eighties and I
have original songs. My operating theory about all of that is to present
all of these quality songs and to offer a different interpretation and
not like a cover band, but focusing on the song. I know that it works,
because I have seen it work time after time with audiences. All of those
generations can work together in a show, because they are strong songs.”
Tony DeSare has enjoyed successful tours throughout Europe, as well as
Tokyo and Australia and he is appreciative of how the audiences in those
countries have responded to his performances and he wants to return.
Tony DeSare’s Christmas Home
is his fifth album, all self-produced and one gets the sense that
despite his success the best is yet to come.
He says, “This (music) is something I loved when I was a kid. I am not
curing cancer or anything, but it is something that I really wanted to
get good at and I am constantly frustrated that I am not better at it. I
love sharing it. Maybe I would have been more successful if I had cared
more about being famous and making a lot of money.
I just really wanted to make music and to share it with people.
I have never fantasized about
being famous or anything like that. Maybe if I did my music might
(reach) a wider audience. I am not complaining. I love what I have been
able to manifest from playing music.”
Please visit the
Tony DeSare website.
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I
really wanted to do something like that and I felt like I could pull it
off, so I started planning. I asked Michael Ludwig who is the concert
master of The Philly Pops and he is a world renowned soloist. I knew
that he would be great as a first violin soloist. I started to put it
together.