Note: This article was originally written in December 2021 for the Daily Grindhouse Patreon. However, it was only available behind that paywall for a spell. I really loved this interview and feel it is now worth bringing into the light and re-publishing. I hope you enjoy it.
The concept of imprisonment takes on a wealth of layers in Taylor Sheridan’s new Paramount Plus television venture, MAYOR OF KINGSTOWN. Well known for his beautifully complicated characters in projects like YELLOWSTONE, WIND RIVER, and HELL OR HIGH WATER, with MAYOR OF KINGSTOWN, Sheridan proves yet again why he is one of the most in-demand and esteemed triple threats working today. With a stacked cast that includes Jeremy Renner, Dianne Wiest, Hugh Dillon, Kyle Chandler, and Tobi Bamtefa, Sheridan draws audiences into the complex and sprawling reach of one particular community’s prison system.
To help navigate this delicately balanced emotional landscape, Sheridan called upon Canadian film composer Andrew Lockington. Although perhaps best known for his adrenaline-pumping action scores in films like RAMPAGE and SAN ANDREAS, Lockington took a much more intimate and curated approach to MAYOR OF KINGSTOWN. Literally immersing himself into the world at the heart of the show’s narrative, Lockington recorded large portions of the show’s musical palette at Kingston Penitentiary in Kingston, Ontario. What results is a unique and highly nuanced musical experience that embeds itself into the emotional core of the show.
In an effort to learn a bit more about this truly stunning sonic creation, I recently sat down (virtually) to interview composer Andrew Lockington. We chatted about his process, Sheridan’s devoted approach to music, the power of silence, and the fascinating adventure he embarked on to coax music from the most unlikely of places.
RR: There are a lot of incredible people involved with this show, so it’s easy to see why you’d be attracted to this project. However, I am curious: how did you actually first get involved with MAYOR OF KINGSTOWN?
Andrew Lockington: It was through the music supervisor on the show, a woman by the name of Andrea von Foerster. She did YELLOWSTONE and has done a bunch of other work with Taylor, his feature work as well. She introduced us years ago and said we had a lot of mutual interests. I've obviously loved his scripts and stories and shows, and some of my music had somehow made it his way.
So Taylor and I started talking about this maybe two years ago. Maybe at the beginning of the pandemic, he knew he was going to be doing this. He asked what my thoughts were and what I thought of the scripts. And so much of our work together and our collaboration actually happened before they filmed. So we were writing themes, talking about some of the subtexts, and some of the elements in the story were where characters don't necessarily share screen time, but they have something in common.
Because those are places where music can help tie things together and make you realize the commonalities between people who will never consider each other at all in the series. You know, different gang members or the police or the McLusky’s. So, it was really trying to come at it from that point. And, for me, it was a unique way of working to get diving into theme writing and writing cues so early. But it worked out really well for the show.
RR: Oh wow. That seems like a very rare position for a composer to be in, especially in the world of television. Was that freeing in a lot of ways since you weren’t tied to a visual component yet?
AL: It's terrifying and freeing at the same time because you're sort of taking a shot in the dark and writing music for what you imagine the show will be like. And, I knew from people that I talked to that have worked with Taylor that when you read the script, you feel like you've seen the show.
It's very much what you see in your mind is very much what's on-screen. And, that is what I found as well. He's really good with his writing, really helping you visualize it and see it. And the pacing and everything really feels very much like, “Oh, I've seen this episode.” Even though you haven't. So yes, it was very freeing.
Probably the coolest thing about it was that there was no temp music. Like, I wrote these sketches and these themes, and actually, the very first thing I wrote for the show ended up being the main title theme. It was just, “Okay, this is kind of what I think it is.” And coincidentally, that seemed to be what they latched onto that. These sketches I had then went to the editors. And, as they started getting dailies and getting stuff, they started using my music and my sketches that I'd done with Taylor to score it. So we never really dove into any other temp music. It was always this really pure original take on the show without temping it with, you know, THE DARK KNIGHT or THE SOPRANOS or something else. You often hear how that can sometimes influence the direction you go so, in that sense, it was incredibly freeing and terrifying at the same time. Because you can totally miss and be way out in left field.
RR: The fact that the editors had your music available while they were working had to have had a huge impact on how the show was pieced together. Honestly, your music feels very intimately tied to the narrative, and this info really helps unpack that a bit.
AL: Another by-product of this is that when I did go to set, Taylor, the cinematographer, all they'd heard were sketches. So, I was able to actually be on set and have conversations. And, Taylor in particular, when he was directing, he'd direct a scene where Dianne would deliver some scene, and he'd turn around and say, “Okay, what do you think? What are you thinking for music? I’m kind of hearing…” And we’d have a conversation while Jeremy or Dianne were literally on set getting ready to go and do another take.
So for me to catch him in that time where he’s actually thinking about music, as they’re delivering their lines, we could have that communication. I would then go back to my studio at night and start writing. So by the time editorial got the scene, I’d already written something that I thought was kind of right. And it was really cool that it was all kind of happening in real time. Because, as you know, the composers so often get footage six months later and have to go, “Oh, okay. How am I going to piece this together?” So, that was incredibly rewarding.
RR: That’s really wonderful to hear how involved Taylor is with the music as a director. You never really know, especially in the television realm.
AL: Yeah! And, it makes sense because, with all of his projects, I've always loved the music. I've always thought it's really well done, and it's really interwoven. It doesn't feel like icing or sprinkles on the cupcake. It feels like it's mixed into the batter. So, I got to experience that firsthand, which was great.
RR: You mentioned the show’s main title theme, and I’d love to chat a little bit more about it. In the television realm, a good main theme really sets the stage and has the potential to be really iconic. So, how did you approach the main theme for MAYOR OF KINGSTOWN? And, what was your thinking regarding some of the interesting instrumentation choices you ultimately settled on?
AL: So, there was a famous director and screenwriter named Frank Pierson, and years ago I was attached to a project of his. It was actually the last project he wrote before he sadly passed away. But, he had done COOL HAND LUKE, which I think he won the Oscar for. [Pierson was nominated for Best Screenplay in 1968 for COOL HAND LUKE, but won the Oscar in 1967 for DOG DAY AFTERNOON] And I remember watching COOL HAND LUKE and, that changed my perspective on prison films and the idea of prisoners, having compassion and understanding. Kind of disregarding what puts them there and just thinking of the humanity of being in the situation they’re in.
I remember there’s a scene in that film where they’re all in their striped overalls, and they’re working on the side of the road. And, I think I was thinking of that with the humming idea. Just kind of imagining this chain gang idea and all of the historical elements of prison. And this prison where this was being filmed would be deemed to be inhumane at this point. Where they shot, it’s pretty rough. We did get in there and did some recording inside the prison before they were shooting. Even just being in there for a few days, you’d go out for lunch and go out in the sunshine and just go, “Oh my God.” Like, you really have this sense just in two days of being in there how oppressive the environment is. Not just visually. But even sonically. Like this real feeling that everything has this tremendous reverb on it. Everything has this echo and it’s almost offensive at a certain point where you can’t escape it.
So that, I guess, was all kind of going through my head when I wrote that. And that theme, very close to what the theme ended up being, was an early sketch. And then I took that really simple four-note motif and I started weaving it into some of the other sketches. They started getting used in the temp and it just really felt like the genesis for that idea. The one great thing about writing a theme when you’re a composer is how you can weave that into the story. You can also write a cue in the teaser before the theme kicks in that really feel like it’s ramping into it. That way it doesn’t feel like its own chapter and its own segment. It can really feel like it’s woven into the show.
RR: The prison itself plays a large role in the score, which is absolutely fascinating. Tell us a little bit about how you developed the literal sound of the prison and how you coaxed some of these wonderful sounds out of it.
AL: The catalyst for this idea was the fact that, in reading the script, Jeremy's character has been incarcerated. He's now out of prison, but he still feels all of the barriers to escaping. I think the town and his life are still the prison. The walls are still there. The barbed wire is still there. The guards are still there. He can't leave it.
And in researching the prison where they filmed, I uncovered that it had been the site of the biggest and deadliest riot in Canada's history. It was in the 70s and, one of the first things the prisoners did was, they broke into the guard station which was heavily fortified, to get the bell that they rang every time it was yard time, dinner time, or nighttime. That bell was so symbolic to them being controlled and losing their freedom. When you get in the space, it’s such an offensive reverb. It’s almost like a bathtub. It’s really long and whatever sounds you make seem to turn into this whole other consistent sound. So if you whistle, the echo that comes back sounds purple. And if you clap your hands, the echo that comes back sounds purple. Everything gets flavored with this reverb.
So, I took that and thought it would be really interesting to find a way in the score to subliminally make you feel like you’re still inside. And it was all really through Mike’s eyes. When we’re in the prison, the cues don’t often have that reverb on them because the surrounding has it. So you’re not really symbolically saying anything by staying true to that. That’s how we got in there. But, one of the big things in music, and I think also in filmmaking, is learning when to pivot.
So I went into the prison with these percussionists, these great drummers and musicians I’ve worked with many times before. I had arranged all of this stuff for us to play and, halfway through the first session, I just kind of picked up a mallet and hit the side of this grate that was in the prison wing we were in. And the whole place echoed and it rattled the catwalk and the stairs. We all realized, “Wow. What if we sort of play the prison as an instrument?” Taylor and I had talked about that idea, but I never really thought it would work in practice. The reason we talked about it was, in every prison story, if they want to make a knife, they make it out of a fork or a piece of old rusted bar or a piece of the grate. So if the music could somehow also be that. That it’s not something smuggled in but in fact, the actual prison itself is the instrument. It was almost too good to be true. It worked out amazingly well.
One of the most exciting things that happened was…picture the dome in St. Paul’s Cathedral. From the outside of this prison that’s almost 200 years old, it has this beautiful dome. As I was looking at it I was thinking, “Wow. This is amazing. It’s going to sound incredible. I’ll get the instruments in there and we’ll be in this room that’s six or seven stories tall.” But, we get inside and, because of the riot in the 70s, they insulated the entire ceiling to get rid of it. I was just like, “Noooo!” I couldn’t believe it. As we were sitting there, Ben Grossman (one of the percussionists), took some mallets and started hitting the cage that surrounded the inside where all the stairways would go. It was just this wire kind of cage going all the way around. And, he started drumming it almost like you play a suspended cymbal. And, the entire thing started to resonate and shake. That’s a sound that’s throughout the score and is in the opening titles.
Even taking cello bows and bowing things, getting it to make this pitch and this sound, it was really cool. It was one of those things that Taylor and I talked about like, “This will be amazing.” And then it actually was. So often you do these things and…For example, I was working on a different project and I bought a hydrophone. I was up at a lake and I thought it’d be so cool to get the sounds underwater. I sold the idea to this director and he loved it. But sure enough, I get there and I realized after 10 minutes, there’s nothing there. There’s nothing going on and there’s no rumble. It wasn’t until my golden retriever jumped in the lake that I was like, “Wow, that’s amazing.” So, you often have to pivot. Because some of these ideas that you think conceptually will be great end up being total strikeouts, but it’s only in trying that you get to have the happy accidents like we had with MAYOR OF KINGSTOWN.
RR: You have a fascinating career that includes some very large, very action-heavy films like SAN ANDREAS, RAMPAGE, and JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH. And yet, something that’s so beautiful about MAYOR OF KINGSTOWN is the subtle way you score the quieter moments. How do you approach those simple yet important moments? Do you take a more emotional or logical approach to the music?
AL: With the best results, I sort of compare it to when you’re driving somewhere that you always go and you leave in the morning, and you pull out of the driveway, and then suddenly you’re there. But you don’t know how you got there. Your mind was wandering, but you managed to navigate through traffic and through the streets. Suddenly you’re just there and you don’t remember the left turns or the right turns. So I feel for me, my favorite cues, the really emotional things that I’ve written are like that. You sort of have this emotional feeling that you’re either actually feeling, or somehow put yourself into, and you forget all of the theory, all of the logic, all of the medium, and you just press things and see what happens. And, that’s really how this happened.
There’s one track, “The Bear Theme”, that was like this. That was a moment where Taylor called me. I wasn’t on set, but he was driving home from said, and he said, “I’ve just shot this scene and it’s really emotional. I need a theme that’s really simple.” And so I wrote something and he said, “I like it, but less notes. Less notes.” And it reminded me a little bit of (I’m going to namedrop here) when I did a film a few years ago [PIRATE’S PASSAGE] with Donald Sutherland, and we became friends in the process.
I had this conversation with him where I said, “You know, as a composer, it’s really terrifying to score an actor as good as you because I know you’re walking a tightrope between giving people a little glimpse into what’s behind the curtain, but you don’t want to show too much. And, as a composer, I can completely ruin it by saying, “Oh, you want to see what’s behind there? This is it!” This is how happy he is or how sad. Or, I can do the opposite and mask what you’re trying to shoot. So we had a long conversation about that. And, I remember him saying that in acting, so often it’s moments between the dialogue where the real acting happens.
And I guess when Taylor gave me that, “Go back and try to make it simpler,” I sort of thought about the moment between notes. Maybe it’s actually the space that is the emotional part. And maybe the notes are more of the canvas that space is being drawn on. This score has a lot of minimalist elements where it’s trying to say as much as it can and in as few notes as possible.
The other side of that is so much of the score is meant to be this ticking clock. You know, like things are happening and time is running out. It’s almost like finger painting or trying to paint the screen black so that when we peel it away, you have these white streaks where it’s timeless and it feels like everything is standing still for a moment. We can contemplate what is emotionally going on, where we sit. We can feel loss. We can feel love. We can feel these things, and then it ramps up again. So, trying to make that the minority of the score instead of the majority.
RR: The emotional power that space can hold is so interesting. And, especially with music, it seems like some directors struggle with that and instead feel like they have to have a wall-to-wall score. How do you navigate that tricky scenario? Do you ever have to advocate or fight to not score a scene?
AL: Almost always and never on MAYOR OF KINGSTOWN. There were a few times when we had an “Approach A” or “Approach B,” but both approaches made sense and they were logical and part of the master plan. I think it's really trying to come up with the DNA for the storytelling and the music so that it makes sense. It’s a language that you understand why it's here and why it isn't here. And it's consistent in that way. But you're right. There are so many that are like that.
I worked on a film years ago, it wasn't a Brad Peyton film, but I worked on an action film and the entire film was score. There were like, 10 minutes that didn't have score. And I said to the director, “This 10 minutes, this should be 30 minutes. We need the space. The most impactful part of the music is when it starts and when it ends. So if it doesn't have those starts and ends, we're missing an opportunity in the storytelling.” And he said, “I noticed those 10 minutes. We've got to add music to that.” [Laughs] But I think one of the things that happens is when you edit a film and there's no music, or there’s no composer yet and you're trying to show that it can be a finished product, if it doesn't have music on it, it’s hard to see it and make that jump. When you put music on something, it takes such a big step towards feeling like a finished product. You have to be really brave to leave it off.
RR: You’ve worked on a lot of feature films, but MAYOR OF KINGSTOWN is obviously a TV show. What are some of the creative benefits and challenges to working on a longer-form project?
AL: Yeah, it’s a weird answer to this because the benefits are also the challenges. One of the benefits is having a theme. You have almost 10 hours to explore all the different ways you can play a theme; major, minor, fast, slow, different instrumentations. And on a film, so often you have to make some really hard choices and let some things you really love go. Simply because there’s no opportunity. Movies are only two hours long more or less.
The other thing is time. On a film, I’ll have sometimes six months to write 90 minutes of music. Or if I’m lucky, 60-70 minutes of music. But on this, I think I’m going to have seven hours in less time than that. It’s really fast, but sometimes if you have a finite amount of time, you peak. You really do manage to find the bat and make it the best it can be in that amount of time. Whereas if you have three months to continue to edit it, you have to really watch yourself because you can make it worse very, very easily.
I really like it because, more often than not, my biggest challenge is with a film that has four or five themes, I’m really sad at the versions I can’t use. So with a series like this, where the director is really approaching it like a feature and the actors are in that mindset as well, I love it. I love having this ability.
MAYOR OF KINGSTOWN is currently streaming on Paramount Plus. And for an inside peek at the creation of the score, make sure to check out this fascinating segment courtesy of ET Canada.
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