BILLY MORAN & ZACKARY DARLING
Billy Moran is a musician, singer/songwriter and producer, best known as lead guitarist of beloved indie rockers Louden Swain. In 2023, Billy released his self-produced solo debut, 'Surprise Party For The Introvert'. Catch Billy at Creation Entertainment's Supernatural conventions, where Swain are the house band, and where Billy and Rich have two new music themed special events (one with Jason Manns). In August/September, Billy plays the UK and Ireland with Paul Carella, as 'Tricky MC'.
Zackary Darling is audio engineer, mixer, producer, and musician based in Los Angeles. His studio resume includes icons as diverse as Motown legends 'The Temptations', and the hugely influential all-girl rock band 'Fanny'. Zack received Grammy nominations for his work on Janiva Magness' "Love Wins Again" and Tierney Sutton Band's "The Sting Variations."
Working sound for a StageIt live show introduced Zack to 'Louden Swain', leading to work with a host of 'Supernatural'-connected artists, including albums by Jason Manns and 'The Station Breaks', and the solo debuts from cast members Briana Buckmaster and Gil McKinney.
Rain: I’m aware that when we are talking about production, mixing and engineering, we could very quickly go down a very technical path that might be a little too niche in interest for the average reader. So instead, what I’m going to ask is how defined those roles are for you both. You both are musicians in your own right. And from what I know of you, and indeed of Rich, this seems to be a setup which is very collaborative. Did you find on this record that your roles overlap?
Billy: I think it's hard not to wear multiple hats when you're all in the room. When it comes to Zack and myself and Richard, we're all good buds, and we all have opinions, and we all love each other's opinion. And so I think there's, you know, there's definitely times where Rich chimed in and gave more production notes or Zack has given more production notes, or we've all given kind of mix/engineer notes, so it all kind of works together in the same room.But I don't know clearly how to define those anymore either.
Rain: Especially when you're a member of the band and you're producing, but also, you’re a techy geek; you love all that side of the process.I can't really imagine how you turn any of that off, and how difficult it is to compartmentalise that and just think, “Well, no, right now, I'm Guitar Billy.”
Billy: Right. Well, the hardest days for me for the Richard album just for myself for that were days one and two, and we were tracking full band stuff because I was also tracking guitar at the same time, trying to keep that other mindset.
I prefer not to play in that scenario. But I was adding another guitar part that was needed, so it was like, I was, like, one-half-in-and-one-half-out kind of thing, because I had to kind of still be objectionable, you know? And kind of give notes when needed.
So it was kind of… it was definitely a little challenging in that sense, but beyond that, everything else was super, super fun, and I was excited for the rest of the process.
Photography by Brittany Niedzwiecki
Zack: Billy, you're a highly objectionable producer
(laughter)
Rain: I don't think that's quite the word, but I got what you meant. Objective.
Zack: Yeah
Rain: So Billy, were you behind Zack, sort of touching stuff you shouldn't be touching.
Zack: We're going straight there, huh?
(Everyone creases. Rain facepalms)
Zack: No, like, Billy’s totally right. When we're in that kind of environment, and I know that Billy has kind of the split task of having to think about managing Rich and his expectations and needs for what the record is gonna be, and like, also playing on the entire thing.
A lot of the material that we tracked while we were doing all the live takes is on the record, so he has to play, like, good enough to make the quality cut for the record every single take, you know, so it's hard to kind of do that at the same time as jumping back in and giving cues for the entire band and stuff like that. And so, like, you know, when I feel like there's a chance that I can step in and kind of guide things or help things out a little bit, I'm happy to do it . This is a group of musicians who know that I'm not just… I joke about my job is just ‘push the red button and shut up.’
Billy: Hardly..
Zack: But, like, it's often a little bit more mad, you know? There's more stuff involved, and so, like, if I need to kind of cue Billy in, as he's playing or just be “Oh, Zach (Ross) is leading the beat a little bit” or, Cooper is playing a line that's not lining up with the drum pattern. or something like that, for this one song, I’ll just give him that note so he can communicate with the rest of the band easier, so he doesn't have to think that hard about what everybody is doing all the time. And then Billy can focus more on zoom out, big picture – ‘Does this song feel right?’ And that comes with just the history, you know?
Billy: I don't think I would ever foresee doing something similar again without someone like Zack being in that room, you know, because I can't have just someone pushing the red button, you know? Because of that exact point. It’s like, there needs to be that involvement, and that's why I love Zack so much, is because from our day one from project, I think it was ‘The Station Breaks’, he always had a great notes that we all kind of took into consideration.
I think that's very important when you're doing something on a budget, you're trying to get as efficient as possible, you need as many voices that you kind of align with in the room as you can possibly take, you know?
Rich is also great in that respect.
Rain: And working with the same personnel, you develop a shorthand; you can anticipate needs in terms of getting the best from that person, ‘’They need *this* from me, they need a little bit more of a push. Or I’m going to back the hell off right now, because, you know, I can tell that they're not in the right mood or whatever.’ So something I was kind of interested in. With the album this time around, was tone. Rich has said it’s a country rock album, but it’s more than that.The first album, I think a few tracks were very much like our dad's country, and this maybe has, like, one track to me that is that is that style.
You have that in “Low Bar”, but then you have a murder ballad; something like “The Readout” has almost a new-wave sound. How do you keep some continuity in terms of it not sounding a compilation when you've got so many disparate styles?
Billy: Yeah, the number one key is for that, because there are so many different kind of styles and genres that from the demos that, you know, when I first heard them, I was like, okay, that's interesting, it definitely doesn't feel as country as the other songs.
I think the thing that kind of helps at least guide it in that direction is on those first two days when we had drums, bass, and Zach Ross and everybody there in the room, we were tracking live band stuff and that's kind of one way to kind of keep the cohesiveness intact as far as I'm concerned, like, keeping the guitar tones the same, and everybody kind of living in that space and kind of adding those more countrified licks that weren't there in the demos that maybe could kind of pull it more back towards country. But at the same time, I don't know that we really had any really strong rules that it *had* to be country.
I know, obviously, Rich comes from that world, and he wanted it to feel as country as possible, and he always, would always give notes, like, we need to pull this here and make that a little bit more country. And, you know, try this lick here in this position.
But overall, I think it was, like, whatever the song needed it received.
And if it, you know, sometimes that wasn't going the direction of full on country, it was maybe more leaning rock. And I think that was one of the fun aspects of the project for me is because I liked not having the restraints to stay fully country, you know, or fully rock for that matter.
So I like the freedom we had with this one where we were able to kind of just lean a little bit more rock on a song, you know?
Rain: But you have to pull it back at some point so that they actually fit together.
Billy: Yeah, yeah, there's definitely like, a ceiling you have to hit, right? Because you can't go too far one direction or the other. So I feel like we kind of pushed as far as we could, and I think, you know, I think the songs are better for it.
Zack: Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. On, like, the very first day, we took a little bit of time, while the band was still loading in, where it's just me and Billy and Rich in the control room. And, like, we sat down and pulled up, like, some reference tracks, to just kind of, like, oh, here's an idea for what we should be shooting for. And, just given I had not heard a lot of the songs, before we walked into the studio, and so given the direction of this record is drunk country, I walked in with a little bit of a different expectation for how to make the sounds work, like, what microphones were up, how hard I was driving them into preamps and compression and stuff like that.
And as soon as we started pulling up reference tracks and listening to a few things, like, we spent, like, maybe 15-20 minutes with all of us just kind of sitting there and, like, you know, Rich would pull up…I don't remember what specific references he pulled up, but everything was sounding way more organic.
Rain: I'll grab them from him when we talk.
Zack: He pulled up a bunch of references that were way more pulled back than aggressive, forward, punchy. Without any other direction, I might have, made that kind of sounding record, and that would have not been as good. So I'm glad we took the time to kind of talk through things a little bit more and figure out, where things should go, because it gave me time to kind of readjust everything that I had already set up and had planned for. Like, here's what I need to do from a technical standpoint to make the session work and just pull it all into, like, a different context.
Rain: Yeah, I know that when you did the first album, Rich said to me that he kind of went in with a playlist, just saying to Jason, ‘Well, I'd like something that sounds a little like this’. And it seems to me that it’s one thing to say, “I love this track”, but it's quantifying what it is about that track that he wants to replicate. What about that track fits for ‘Dick Jr. & The Volunteers’? Does he like that guitar sound? Is it the mood? The production? What exactly is it that he's trying to pick up from that song?
Zack: And Billy and Jason are extremely different kinds of producers in the way that they approach stuff, where Jason is a lot more loose and organic and, like, you know, willing to just kind of, like, let ideas sort of lie. The third or fourth take, as soon as we understand what the song is, is usually, the one where everything is finished, whereas, with Billy, we're talking about, like, how do we *begin* songs a whole lot more and have a better textural idea where things are going to end up before we ever hit record, you know?
And also, like, Rich coming in with really strong demos for all the songs was very helpful, too. You know, he had a vision, and a lot of us kind of corralling all the songs into sounding like one record was a lot of starting from his demos and figuring out how to give them this character. So that's more where, like, the wrangling was happening. Like, how do we un-demoify these and make it this way.
Rain: It’s not hard to imagine, just from those tracks how they could have gone in completely different directions. The record could have ended up sounding like a bunch of great songs that just didn't really fit together, because the mood and the tone and the influences they seem to be wearing are so very different.
To me, you've got a couple of things that are probably that kind of remit that Richard originally talked about, which was that kind of drunk country, but the whole album very much isn't that. There are definitely tracks that could have veered the Dick Jr. sound off in completely different directions.
Billy: The one track that was obviously as close to the demo as I think we got it was “Your Whiskey on My Lips”. I mean, we pretty much just, you know, kind of blew that one up a little bit. But it was pretty much as true to the demo as you can get. And then, you know, “Where I Go” is another one that was very true to the demo. It was like, there wasn't a whole lot we needed to do with that one. You know, his demo was very much, very concise, and we just knew that we wanted to just protect that as much as possible.
And by doing that, it's not adding a whole bunch of other stuff that's going to distract from the story, you know? Yeah, that one, it's one of my favourites on the album, is one of my favourite demos. You know, I'm like, oh, wow. That's the song that got me really excited for this.
Rain: I think the level of song-writing in general was probably not what we were really expecting. The way Rich talks about himself… he’s always “I'm not a songwriter. I'm not a musician.” And then.. obviously the first thing fans heard was “When the Devil Drives, when he recorded that for me, for the anniversary of the first album.
And it was just like, ‘Hang on, this is this guy that tells me that he's not a songwriter, he's not a musician. This is fully formed. This is probably better than anything off the first album.’ And if I'm honest, it had the sound I was expecting from “The Dance and How to Do It”. I love that first album. A lot of it is my dad's kind of music. It's the music I grew up on. But it wasn't what I expected. I had a very specific remit of what I thought the album should sound like, I guess.
Billy: Yeah, it's funny that you say that, because very early on, before I heard the demos, when Rich and I were talking about the second album, we're actually talking about collaborating with some more songs and writing. But one of the things I said to him, if you could somehow capture the stream of conscious that you have when you're on stage opening a convention, when he just goes off and he just rants and he rants, I'm like, that's what I want to hear.
I mean, if you can somehow formulate that into, like, lyrics and a story, I'd be the happiest guy on the planet, because I love that, you know? And I think he went back and he really did write those funny stories that only could come out of Rich's brain, you know?
I mean, and I think there's so much of that on this album that I was just like, yes finally.
Rain: Yes! It's that mix where you've kind of got…on the first album, you've got the humour from, like, the cover of “Raspberry Beret.” It's humour, but it’s injecting Rich’s humour into a song that already existed. This album's got a lot more of his wit. It’s his voice in the songwriting. There’s that wit, but also heart.
Billy: Yeah, his wit, and then when he breaks into those really sensitive moments, you know, when he's up on stage and he's just giving a real sensitive, heartfelt speech, I mean, that's “Where I Go”, you know, that's it. There's so much of Rich in this album; I feel like it's like it’s very special.
Rain: I guess it's the album that I was hoping for the first time, but then people have to be ready for it. I love the first album, but I also knew it was scratching the surface of what he could do.
Billy: I think the first album was super important for the simple fact that he didn't know, quite frankly, what he was capable of until after that album was done. And then that gave him that confidence level to continue to pursue it, you know? And I think if it weren't for that first album, we certainly wouldn't have the second album. There's stepping blocks, you know, and I feel like, you know, I love that first album. I think, you know, there's so many standout tracks on that album. But it was also that learning, like, that was basically his college course in songwriting, you know, and recording and stuff. And here we are, you know? He’s in the professional world now.
Rain: The first album sounds so fully formed. I mean, it sounds really expensive. It doesn't sound like something you'd expect, as, I guess, a vanity project. I mean, when most people talk about an actor making a record, you kind of think, ‘Right, okay, I know exactly what this is going to be.’ You know, it's going to be a couple of cheesy covers. But you could actually hear that this was someone that really cared about music, and that had a bunch of people knew what they were doing behind it.
Billy: Yeah. And you really saw those beginning moments, you know, of that wit starting to come out, you know, and him taking on different approaches, like, with ‘Copperhead Road’.
Rain: So, what I thought is, we could go through each track that way, with you guys sharing memories and insight from the development and recording of each track.
Billy: Love it.