Long-time Protocol leader and former Toto drummer Simon Phillips returns with multi-instrumentalist DarWin’s self-titled group. He joined Preston Frazier to discuss ‘Five Steps on the Sun’, future DarWin projects and a few key cuts from his tenure in Toto:
PRESTON FRAZIER: How you get involved with DarWin?
SIMON PHILLIPS: It started like many of these projects do nowadays: a simple email. That’s all it was. He had listened to a Derek Sherinian album called Inertia, which I produced. That was the first time Derek and I had worked together. We’re still working together, and we’ve produced about nine albums. When I was with Toto, I wasn’t always able to be involved in the whole album because I was just busy touring the world. I don’t have to do that much now, which is lovely. I have more time to produce artists, play on people’s records, engineer and mix projects, and do related work.
DarWin asked if I would be up to producing him and then we just started a dialogue until it was time to go into the studio and record for the first time, which I believe was around 2015. Mahini Day plays bass now. Matt Bissonette is the lead singer. Greg Howe does most of the lead guitar work. Sometimes, Andy Timmons plays a guitar part. We have various musicians to call on for keyboards. Derek is involved, Julian Pollack is involved – and it’s a project that I can really get my teeth into because now I’m a co-writer with Matt and DarWin. So it really now has a lot more focus, and it’s getting its own sound and style. It’s developed very organically, too, which is a wonderful musical relationship.
PRESTON FRAZIER: Discuss the songwriting process for the album.
SIMON PHILLIPS: DarWin typically starts the process by coming up with some ideas, which might be pretty basic. There won’t always be a full song yet; it might be just a couple of riffs. He sends them to Matt and me, and then I wade through them, select bits that I like, and start to put them into song form, and Matt does the same thing. Matt concentrates on lyrics and vocal melodies, and then I often get his first passes of some melodies and stuff, and then I kind of mess around with that as well. There’s a lot of editing. That’s my job. My job is to take all these ideas, put them into song form, and make them work. Then we go back to DarWin. He’s a guitarist, but he’s also a piano player. Some of the songs are guitar-based, and some of the songs are piano-based.
That’s how it comes together, and there is a bit of back and forth between us.
Matt is on the West Coast, in the Orange County area. That requires some coordination with the core band, which is all in different areas. As a producer, my first preference is to play live with everybody involved. It makes so much more sense to me, and it gives the music a better feeling. It’s quicker and easier to change things. If the songs are at the wrong tempo, you’ll know instantly, so you can just change the tempo. Many of my projects, even if they are straightforward rock albums or song-based albums, are basically songs. I always like to get a live session. That’s my first choice, and DarWin is totally into that as well. The basic track sessions for DarWin are just three of us. DarWin, Mahini, myself – so guitar, bass, and drums. I’ve done all the keyboard parts in MIDI, so I bring them. I get the demo to the studio, and then we might mute some keyboard parts. It really depends on how it goes: Every song is different, but that’s basically where we start. We record in Switzerland, and we have a great studio there.
PRESTON FRAZIER: I noticed that you are recording at Powerplay Studio in Switzerland and mixing at your home studio. You used Derek and Julian Pollock on keyboards, but I’m not familiar with Julian.
SIMON PHILLIPS: Julian played with Marcus Miller for a while, and he just played as the second keyboard player with Herbie Hancock and the Headhunters at the Hollywood Bowl. Julian is a stunning keyboard player, and he’s busy. I can never get him to play on anything because he’s too busy. Once we’ve done our live recording, which we have a drum track, we have a bass track, and we have guide guitar tracks – because what I like to do is go back over when I’m in Europe, I go back over to Switzerland, and then we start zoning on all the guitar tracks. Because guitar takes a bit of time, it also takes a bit of thought. Once we figure out the arrangement, we’ll return to it and sort out all the guitar work. We might do two or three tracks of guitar, depending on the type of song. When I get home studio and start listening to all of the tracks, I’ll say, “This track should have so-and-so on keys.” The keyboardist I work with have good recording facilities, so it’s best to let them do it in their own space.
I can trust them to do their thing, and then they send me the track. I take a listen, and nine times out of 10, it’s fantastic. I do the vocals with Matt. He drives up to my house, and we spend time doing vocals properly, the way they should be done. It’s tough for a singer to be on his own and record. Sometimes, when we’re doing the track, I come up with different ideas. I’ll say, “Hey, Matt, let’s, how about singing it this way?” You know, these words are not working there. There are too many syllables, and it doesn’t feel comfortable. Let’s change this line. Let’s simplify that and elongate these notes. It’s a pretty long process. It’s an old-school setup for vocals. I provide an excellent microphone, great sound, headphones, cappuccino, water, a pleasant environment, and off we go. Toto’s Steve Lukather used headphones when I set him up with a microphone. I could hear his hair grow. The headphone mix was amazing. I will often say, “Don’t sing so loud.” You get a richness in your voice that’s more wide, more broad – and that can work wonders sometimes, depending on the tune.
PRESTON FRAZIER: How is it working with Mahini Day on bass?
SIMON PHILLIPS: It’s just straight rock, and it’s very different for Mahini. She’s never really done that kind of playing, but she adapted beautifully – and again, it’s the thing about production. I do very specific demos. The demos will have a bass part. Sometimes, it’ll just have to do it with machine drums. Sometimes, I’ll go out and throw a quick drum track. It is very rough on purpose. You sometimes run into this problem where you play something that just worked on the demo and can never get back to it. I purposely make it really basic. It’s just to get the idea—and sometimes the sound. As a producer and with demos, remember that you’re the only person who will ever hear that. Once the record’s released, nobody will ever hear a different version of that unless I release the demo version. It’s a guide; it’s an idea. Mahini takes that idea and says, “Actually, I really dig that” – and that’s cool. Let’s go with it. She’ll probably come up with something a little bit different anyway. Mahini has such a great sound. It’s the fingers, and I have an amp as well. I constantly record a direct and an amp. I hardly do anything except a little bit of compression. She’s absolutely fantastic and has become part of Darwin’s sound.
PRESTON FRAZIER: You can hold a groove better than anybody and focus on that part. You have that element in this album, as well as more prog-rock stuff with interesting time signature stuff. So, can I ask you about a few songs on the album specifically? “Inside This Zoo” has an unusual time signature.
SIMON PHILLIPS: It’s not too out there.
PRESTON FRAZIER: The first single from the album, “Soul Police,” has a progressive edge too.
SIMON PHILLIPS: So, three bars of four, one bar of three. That’s not too complex. There’s another one, which is much more complex than that, but I think it sounds more complicated because it’s very syncopated. It’s all in four; it’s just where the accents are lying. That is something. DarWin’s specialty is coming up with that stuff all the time, and that’s what makes this project so much fun. The other thing he does is he never uses the same tuning. What’s so interesting about his guitar playing is that he will find an unconventional tuning and then write a song around that. That’s why a lot of these songs come from a totally different type of tuned guitar, making it a bit challenging to record. It can be hard to go to a different section too, if the different section has a slightly different key. It’s very challenging, actually. We spend quite a lot of time on the guitars, ensuring they sound right for each section.
PRESTON FRAZIER: Are there lyrical themes or common threads in the album?
SIMON PHILLIPS: Often, DarWin and Matt combine to write the lyrics. I didn’t write any lyrics. What I do is, I know when it just doesn’t sound right – and I was thinking, “These words are too narrow.” That just doesn’t feel good. It potentially doesn’t work. I’m more concerned about the way that the word sounds. This is the whole thing about singing, how a word is pronounced, and where the accent is placed. It’s fascinating. Music, of course, has to work with the groove that’s going on, so that’s when I get into, and I can start picking apart some of these lyrics. You know, we’ll often be right in the middle doing vocal recording, and it is not working.
PRESTON FRAZIER: It all holds together really as an excellent, cohesive album. If you’re a non-musician, it is challenging in a good way. Your production is always wonderful, but you have such a talent as an engineer. It’s also a must-have on vinyl because the packaging is fantastic.
SIMON PHILLIPS: I love vinyl. I’m quite a big vinyl buff, and I still like the way the music sounds on vinyl and the way the mix is. I learned to mix when we were mixing vinyl.
PRESTON FRAZIER: Any tour plans for DarWin?
SIMON PHILLIPS: We’re talking about this, which is quite a production to carry off live. The arrangements are quite thick. That’s what makes the mixing of it tricky: There are so many elements. It’s relatively easy to mix, let’s say, a Protocol record because there are very few overdubs. There are a few keyboard overdubs and a few little tasters in there, but basically, it’s all planned.
PRESTON FRAZIER: What are you doing now besides working on subsequent DarWin albums?
SIMON PHILLIPS: I just played a few nights with Alfonso Johnson at the Baked Potato. We have a little project going, which is great, and we would always love it if you went out and played with him. We haven’t gone any further yet, but I know he wants to do more gigs and put a little tour together. Otherwise, I am recording. I’ve got a whole bunch of sessions to do. But next I will get back into mixing DarWin – the next DarWin, DarWin 5. That’s my main project. I’ll be going to Europe to do some guitar setups on No. 6, which we just recorded. He really wants to release these albums in quick succession, just to keep the interest up. And then maybe we’ll start thinking about putting together a live presentation of the band.
PRESTON FRAZIER: I’d like to see more albums and DarWin on the road. Meanwhile, let’s get some thoughts on your lengthy tenure with Toto. I will start with the song “Let It Go” from the album Falling in Between.
SIMON PHILLIPS: That album was actually all written by the band. We decided to just bring in ideas and sort it out in the studio. So, actually, everybody gets credited on that, apart from one ballad that Luke wrote and one ballad that [David Paich] wrote, which were recorded at my studio. I was in engineering. It was pretty wild because we were writing in the studio. While I was getting sounds, I had an assistant who operated Pro Tools when we were recording. Still, when another song was being started, I often ran backward and forward, checking levels. Because Luke’s changed his sound, we’ve got Dave on organ. He just said, you know, Mike [Porcaro]’s decided to put a different bass on.
So I’m trying to listen to what they’re doing too, so when I sit down, I can play with them because I don’t want to get too far behind in the learning process of the song. I came up with a couple of songs, like the beginning of a song, and then Luke came up with the next section, or David did. “Let It Go” was one of those. We just started playing this riff. I can’t remember who started it. Maybe [keyboardist] Greg [Phillinganes] did. Maybe that was more of a Greg-steered song. I think that’s the only song he was involved in composing because the band was strictly Dave on keyboards. Greg wasn’t always there, but I think we just said, “Let Greg sing this,” because Greg was going to go out on tour. That’s how that came together.
PRESTON FRAZIER: How about “Better World,” the epic from Minefields?
SIMON PHILLIPS: I started that one. That’s interesting. We were in a writing mode for Mindfields, and I wanted to contribute to the instrumental piece and expand a little bit on it. I thought the one would be like “Jake to the Bone,” a riff-based tune.
PRESTON FRAZIER: How about “Dave’s Gone Skiing” from Tambu?
SIMON PHILLIPS: “Dave’s Gone Skiing” — yes, I started that one as well. I came up with that riff, and Luke came over. He learned the groove, the riff, and everything. Then he came up with the next section, and we went backward and forwards, and that’s how that came up. But I wanted to do something a little more orchestral. I was dreaming of this intro, this whole intro section. When I woke up, I thought, “Oh boy.” This often happens because it sounds amazing in dreams – and then you try to transfer that to the keyboard and get it down, and you go, “This isn’t very good.”
It’s just how it is. But on this occasion, it was. That’s just how I heard it.
Now I had to try to remember all the harmony, which I’m sure I changed because I couldn’t remember what it was. I came up with this whole intro and the melody and everything. I called Dave and Luke. I said, “Guys, can you pop around? I’ve got something you need to listen to.” I wanted to write something challenging for Paich, so I came up with this piano line. I could barely play it. I can do it slowly. I got it into the sequencer, moved a couple of notes around, and then went to play it again. I went, “That’s doable.” If I can do it slowly – I’m hitting some wrong notes in there because my fingers, you know, I’m not a piano player. But I went, “I bet he can probably do that.” He came around, I played, and he went into the studio, and he got it exactly as I envisioned it.
Going back to the Falling in Between album, from the production point of view, it was a tremendous honor to be given the responsibility of engineering that album. Toto worked with everybody – you know, Ed Cherney, Elliott Schneier, and Al Schmitt. There are so many great engineers, all the people I look up to. The band asked me to engineer the album in my studio, and it was a wonderful honor to be entrusted with this task.
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