The award-winning actor that we know so well from the “X-Files” or “Californication”, David Duchovny, is a man of many talents. When he is not Agent Fox Mulder or Hank Moody, he’s a director, novelist and a talented singer and songwriter. You would say that, with such diverse hobbies, mr. Duchovny would have his hands full. Not too busy for rock and roll, though. Eger to introduce the world to his music, crafted with elements of rock and pop, he is preparing an European tour with Bucharest as one of the destinations. We recently talked about the concert that will be held at Sala Radio in February, finding inspiration and working for higher goals.
Mr. Duchovny, you have a long and successful movie career, you won two Golden Globe awards… so everybody is used to see you on the screen. How did the connection with music begin?
I’ve always loved music and I started teaching myself to play guitar a number of years ago, then I started playing around with writing songs because I was learning songs that i loved and, you know, kind of got introduced to chord progression and rock and roll … and I was surprised to find that I had a facility for melody a little bit…better than my voice anyway, and I just started writing and that was…just for me. Then luckily I met people who helped me along, who were better musicians than me, more knowledgeable and could really specify my songwriting.
Is it difficult to ( almost ) start from scratch with this? What was the biggest challenge you faced getting involved in the music area?
Yes and no, because I started from scratch with no sense that I was ever gonna record or even share my music with more than a handful of friends. So that has been a wonderful surprise and not difficult at all. The biggest challenge I faced was that I started late, I don’t think that I will ever be a good guitar player and, you know, I find myself singing the songs that I write and I have never been a singer and I am certainly not a natural singer but I worked very hard at that. So, that’s the biggest challenge.
You write your own songs and you also write books. What’s harder, what is more time consuming: a song or a novel?
I could not answer that, certainly books are more of a planning activity, a novel is a big operation, a big intellectual operation that takes months, even years. And a song is usually an inspiration. It’s rare that I need more than half an hour to write a song if I am inspired, if I get a hook, if I get a line that I want to expand on, a word, a phrase…a song title, a lyric…than I can be inspired to go quickly and they usually come together very well. I would say books are harder. But you can kind of work your way through a book, by hard work. You can’t really “hard work’ your way through a song: it’s either coming out Ok or it doesn’t.
In February you will be visiting and playing In Bucharest, as a part of your ”Every third thought tour’. This is your first time here, right? How would you expect the public to receive your performance?
It is my first time in Bucharest, but music is universal. I am very proud of the lyrics of my songs and they are really important for the my message. Hopefully we can get over the feeling of the song even to someone who may not have so much English as the band does. It’s an universal thing, that’s one of the great things about music.
Tell us a bit about the album, how did the ideas for the songs emerged?
I just write songs as they come, I don’t plan an album…But, I think, invariably the songs that you are going to write in any time period are going to be influenced by your mood or what you’re thinking of at the time, and I think this past album was kind of a transitional period in my life, so there are some backwards looking songs and there are some forward looking songs. There are some songs about loss and there are some songs about hope. I think it’s kind of a mixed bag that way, in a good way….
Are you already with your song book full for a new album?
[Laughs] Yes, In fact… the next album, the one that we are going to record in the spring, I think is more neutral, more politically influenced, because of where we find ourselves in this country right now… Politics kind of invading our consciousness every day. It’s something that never invaded my consciousness, but it does now. So I think it will be more relevant, but hopefully it will be just as timeless. Because songs, a lot of my songs, do center around love, loss and areas of life where we are all the same. I do have thirteen, fourteen songs that I have been working with the band on and we are getting really close to dig into the pieces that I wrote for this next cycle, this next album.
Most of our readers are keen fans of your TV series and it came as a surprise that you are a singer too. Any message you would like to send to all of those who can hardly wait to see you play in Bucharest?
I don’t really have any message for the fans in Bucharest other than just …come over and prepare to have a good time. In the end we are a rock and roll band and we are coming out to have a good time too.
This article was published in Be Blue Air Magazine, issue 48. All images are subject to copyright.
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