A ChatGPT Interview

Posted by Wicasta on 09 Jan 2024.

[NOTE: Like nearly everything else on this web site, the following is an experimental exercise. I was curious what kinds of interview questions ChatGPT would come up with if I added lyrics and told it I was a releasing a single. And then, well, I answered thsoe questions. If nothing else, it will give some background on "Billy Ray Montgomery".]

Can you share with us the inspiration behind your new single, released on January 1st, 2024?

It’s just a groove that took on a life of its own. It probably says a lot that it’s the first song on the album I’ve finished, even though I’ve been working on all of them for years. True to the subject matter, the song just kept coming.

The lyrics of the song are quite intriguing. Could you delve into the meaning behind the lyrics and the emotions you aimed to convey?

Well, I don’t know about emotions. Seems like you’re supposed to bare your soul in every song now, but this one just tells a story. It’s based on a character from the short story collection who is a bad man.

Who or what does the character "Billy Ray Montgomery" represent in the title, and how does this character contribute to the overall narrative of the song?

I think Billy Ray Montgomery represents that threat we always feel lurking out there. Like if you’re living in a gated community, that’s who you’re keeping out. If you buy a handgun, that’s who you’re protecting your family from. The mysterious “they”. Mostly, I was thinking about how people are oblivious to the dangers around them. We don’t think it, whatever that is, can happen to us, so we’re not as aware of our surroundings as we should be most of the time. Like that one line, “Business man closed shop; he don’t look around, he’s late for his drop.” That there’s a guy who has long since consigned and resigned himself to his daily routine. Everything except the task at hand is background. Those are the kinds of people predators look for. The ones who’ll never see them coming.

Releasing a single on New Year's Day is unique. Was there a specific reason or symbolism behind choosing this date for the release?

It was mostly arbitrary. I intend to release a song each month in 2024, and January 1st just happened to be on a Monday. There was no particular reason to start with New Year’s Day except that it fit with the pattern, being the first Monday, the first work day for some of us, of 2024. And since that was the first Monday of the first month of 2024, it made sense to schedule the other songs for the first Monday of their months. There was no grand plan, really.

I guess there could have been some subconscious symbolism about starting fresh in a new year with the first single release from the album. But there was nothing intentional.

Can you elaborate on the decision-making process behind releasing this song as a standalone single rather than part of an album?

Actually, it’s going to be on an album. Someday. Mostly I just wanted to get on with it. I’ve been working on the album for over three years, in bits and pieces, and starts and stops, whenever I could; when I had a few minutes on a weekend, or I got up early and couldn’t sleep. I would have loved to have gotten up every morning and gone into the studio and worked on stuff all day, but I work a full time job. Until or if I can make a living with this stuff, that’s the way it has to be. Such is the life of an artist, I guess. All we want to do is create. But you gotta eat. You have to pay bills.

Anyway, I stole the idea of releasing the songs on this album as standalone singles from Peter Gabriel, who did his last album like that. I also lifted an idea from The Rolling Stones. When the Stones were doing press for their “Hackney Diamonds” record, Keith Richards kept talking about how Mick Jagger wanted to set a hard deadline for them to shoot for to have their album finished, on the premise that a hard deadline would keep them working and moving forward on the project.

I kind of combined the two. I mean, let’s face it. The album as a format is all but dead. We live in a world of singles, for better or worse. Most people stream their favorite tracks. They don’t download albums. I figured the singles approach covers all those bases. Having a hard deadline every month will motivate me to get these songs finished, and it’ll keep the project moving. At the end of the year, if I get that far, I’ll assemble them all into a single project for a proper album release. If there’s any interest. This is mostly what it’s all about. Gauging interest.

Can you share any insights into when we can expect your next song, and what themes or styles might we anticipate?

The next song is going to be “Catching Gears”. It’ll actually be the first song on the CD. I just finished “Billy Ray Montgomery” first, so it was the first out of the gate. They’ll be in sequence from now on. “Catching Gears” is a good example of how the songs and stories aren’t necessarily from the same perspective. The short story that “Catching Gears” is connected to is from the perspective of a rather unique woman, but the song, “Catching Gears”, is from the perspective of her lover. This one has been the most difficult to mix, by far, and it’s a mess. But I hope to have it done and released by the 5th, the first Monday in February.

I guess all I can really say about “Catching Gears” is that it’s a little more up-tempo than “Billy Ray Montgomery” and it has a rowdy bridge that I’m kind of proud of. You could say that if the short story is about the girlfriend, then “Catching Gears” is the boyfriend bitching about the girlfriend. Some songs are from the same viewpoint of the same character in the story, but others mix it up, where each is from a different character. “The Price of Rain”, the song which comes after “Catching Gears” on the release schedule, is like that.

People are curious about the possibility of a music video. Are there plans to create one for this single, and if so, can you provide any hints about the creative direction or storyline?

I plan to do videos for all the songs. We’ll see. I do tend to aim too high sometimes. But I’m definitely releasing a video for “Billy Ray Montgomery”. Next week, as a matter of fact. The imagery reflects the lyrics. I was lucky enough to find perfect footage on a web site where photographers and filmmakers post their work for other people’s use for free. Well, for voluntary donations. But if the money isn’t there, for credit. I think what I put together for “Billy Ray Montgomery” fits the lyrics, and I owe it all to those wonderful artists who made their work available for people like me.

There are a lot of layers to this project, and a lot of cross-threads. Like each song having a short story that accompanies it. “Billy Ray Montgomery” doesn’t have one, but its sister song, “The Price of Rain”, does. So there are hints about “The Price of Rain” in the video for “Billy Ray Montgomery”. And all of the songs and all of the videos are essentially set in the same arena, since all the associated short stories are associated with, and set in, a fictional nightclub called The Fifth Circle.

Walk us through the creative process of developing this song. Were there any unique challenges or moments of inspiration during its creation?

Some songs write themselves, and this is one of those. I’m not saying it came easy. But bit by bit, this idea, and then that idea, attached itself. That happens a lot. I’ll hum a melody and it’ll get stuck in my head for a few days. And then one day I hear a drum beat to go with it. Or a lyric. Or the melody for lyrics. Or guitar riffs. They just tend to put themselves together in my head, whether I want them to or not. I have songs stuck in my head I never asked for. Admittedly, it’s a good problem to have. But it does create a cacophony of sorts in my head. It’s never quite in there. [laughs]

I guess every one of those steps along the way was a moment of inspiration on this song. “Billy Ray Montgomery” started with that main progression the horns play. I got it in my head. I didn’t know yet which instruments would play the progression, but then I started playing a drum beat on the steering wheel of my car on the way to and from work. I still remember exactly where I was at when the first lyrics hit me. I wasn’t far from home, coming from work, and there are these small houses with small porches that I pass every single day. But one day the riff and beat are going through my head and I looked over at one of those houses, and there it was; “There’s an old man over there, sittin’ on his porch, he ain’t going anywhere.” After that the rest of the lyrics kind of wrote themselves a few lines at a time in the same way. I don’t remember how long it took. The first verse happened quickly. But the second took longer. The third verse didn’t fall into place until I was actively recording the song.

I’ve learned that the only way I do good work is if I get out of the way of it and let it happen. If I set down intending to write lyrics, they’re going to be shit, every time. But if I just let them happen on their own, in their own good time, they tend to work and fit better. So it’s all sort of improvisation and refining. It just happens all in my head.

Did you collaborate with anyone on the songwriting or production, and, if so, how did those collaborations influence the final product?

My wife, Victoria, sang backups on the track. She also contributed some spoons playing, but I couldn’t get them to work in the mix. There was just too much other stuff going on in the song already. Hopefully I can use that somewhere else, though. But other than her contributions, it’s all me. I played the instruments, did the recording, engineering, and mixing. I mean, what choice did I have? I don’t have a lot of resources, and I’m not going to ask anyone for help if I can’t pay them for their help. I’m not asking anyone to put themselves out. And, well, I have an associate degree in audio engineering. I have no excuses I can point to if I can’t pull this off myself. There’s no one else to blame.

Victoria’s vocals add a cool vibe to the chorus. I couldn’t imagine it without her. She wasn't happy with the results, but she never is. [laughs] She told me I needed to have some “soul sisters” to sing backup vocals on this song, but I think what she did is perfect. I would have liked to have had other voices to add to her, just for the tonal variety. But she also tells me to work with what you’ve got, and she’s what I got. I just wish she was nicer to herself. She sounds great, and the backing tracks are perfectly quirky.

How do you hope your audience will connect with this song? What kind of emotions or thoughts do you wish to evoke in your listeners?

Geez, I don’t know. That’s a hard question. In general, people don’t do these kinds of songs anymore. There are only a few subjects songwriters address now. They’re either trying to get laid, reminiscing about when they use to get laid or about somebody they used to get laid by, or they’re moaning and whining about not getting laid anymore. There’s not a lot of depth out there. I mean, I get it. Sex is one of our most primal urges. And there might be more depth if people demanded it. But mostly song topics seem to be people complaining about how they’re struggling or boasting about how they’ve struggled and it made them a badass. Nobody does stories anymore, really. Not on the tunes that aim for the top of the charts, anyway.

I don’t know what to expect from listeners where my stuff is concerned. If people think about “Billy Ray Montgomery” at all I’m sure they can relate to the subject matter. But it’s so different from everything else they’re being served. It’s a song about a predator. Or a warning about a predator. It doesn’t really lend itself to Tik Tok challenges and 30 second videos on Facebook.

Look, I’ve accepted I’m an old guy and the world has passed me by. But there’s a certain freedom in that. If you’re not expected to do the performative dances of the 20-somethings who are trying to belong somewhere, hoping to become the next viral sensation, it frees you to do whatever the fuck you want. That’s what I’m doing here. Yes, I hope these songs find an audience, and I hope they connect to it in some visceral way. But I’ve already accepted they might not have an audience at all. There’s always that shite in the back of your mind where you think your work is absolute trash and no one could possibly like it. But there’s always that small ember of hope that maybe you’re not so bad, and maybe other people will get it in the same way that you do as an artist. We have no control over that stuff. I just hope it resonates with somebody.

Have you received any early feedback or reactions from fans that surprised or resonated with you?

Not really. The folks who I knew would be supportive have liked it, and given some good feedback, even if it seems perfunctory and obligatory. But this overall project is just getting rolling. It’s early in the game. So far only a few friends and relatives have heard “Billy Ray Montgomery”. And like family and friends tend to do, they’ve been brutally indifferent. [laughs]

That said, I posted a link to Facebook announcing the release of the song, and a lot more people responded to that than anything else I’ve posted of late. So strangers are taking notice, even if friends and family aren’t.

Look, I don’t expect a lot of fanfare. I’m almost 60 years old. I’m releasing what could be seen as a Rock concept album in 2024, when you really only hear Hip Hop and Country on the radio, and the subject matter is about an inch deep. I have fairly realistic expectations. Which means I have none at all, really. This is something I needed to do. But I’ve already accepted it’s not likely to go anywhere. That’s okay. I’m at peace with that. A pebble in a crack in a brick behind a waterfall still exists, even if no one ever notices it. You gotta live your best pebble life, man.

Is there a personal experience or story that influenced the creation of this song? If so, how much of yourself did you pour into the lyrics?

Well, it’s not that kind of song. There’s no soul-bearing here. Unless we want to dig in to the subject matter and the psychological implications of structure and subject matter. I hope there’s not a lot of me in the character of Billy Ray Montgomery. Although, having said that, we all have, or have had, people in our lives who think nothing good will come of us, deserved or not. What’s the old saying? Everyone is a villain in someone else’s story? Old lovers. Childhood rivals. That guy at the tax office who thinks we’re up to something because we’re not trying to get away with anything.

There’s no one experience I can point to where “Billy Ray Montgomery” is concerned. But I drove a tractor-trailer for over 8 years, long haul. When you live on the road you learn to spot the predators. I did think about certain times when I’d look across a truck stop and see someone who was creeping through the proverbial tall grass. Most people are blissfully ignorant of those predators being out there. I mean, it’s all hypothetical, right? Yes, they know there are bad people out there in the world. But we don’t realize it when one stands behind us in line at Walmart. Or we don’t notice the predator who’s been watching us from a few aisles away.

I work for a large county sheriff’s office, helping deputies file their reports. Which means I read a lot of reports about a lot of bad stuff. You’d be amazed at how many reports I’ve taken or reviewed in which someone, usually a woman, was being stalked by someone at a convenience store. Let’s not forget, women and children are abducted all the time. All it takes is bumping into the wrong predator when you’re thinking about what to fix for dinner as you pump gas. Then somebody asks you for directions and the next thing you know you’re tied up in the back of a windowless van.

I guess that’s where the “run child” line comes from. There are no specific experiences I drew from, but just a lot of years on the road and quite a few years working for law enforcement. There’s a lot of bad people out there.

The old man, young girl, and Youngblood seem to represent different facets of society. Can you delve into the symbolism behind each character and how their stories intertwine in the song?

Generally each verse has an observer, a victim, and a predator. The predator is Youngblood or Billy Ray Montgomery. The observers are the old man and the cop. The victims are the young girl and the business man. It’s just a way of summing up the dynamic of criminal versus victim versus witness. No crime happens in a vacuum. Somebody always knows something. And let’s face it, however many warnings some people get, some people just keep walking right into the lion’s den, no matter how many people yell “run child!” But you gotta keep yelling it. Get away from that bull, fool!

The repeated warnings about Billy Ray Montgomery creates intrigue. Who is Billy Ray Montgomery in the context of the song, and what role does this character play in the larger narrative?

It’s a little weird for me to talk about, because Billy Ray Montgomery is a fully formed character for me, not just a name in a song. I know roughly what he’s done. I know his backstory. And while he doesn’t show up himself in a short story, he’s connected to a few others. He’s there just on the periphery. So, to me he’s just this larger than life outlaw, whether that’s “outlaw” in the literal or proverbial sense. He’s a rule breaker. And that’s why you have to look out for him. He’s basically the structure of the entire song, which all the other characters connect to.

The Law Man and Business Man add depth to the story. Can you discuss the significance of these characters and their interactions with the other characters in the song?

I think maybe the law man and the business man represent society. I didn’t put much thought into their significance, to be honest. But if we’re going to riff on it, I guess in a capitalist country, business and law work together. Not directly integrated, of course. But that’s generally where our order comes from. Corporations keep the machinery of capitalism puttering away nicely, and law enforcement makes sure folks like Billy Ray Montgomery don’t come along and just take what they want. So I guess I would see the first verse as being on a personal level, while the second verse with the law man and business man represent our governing infrastructure. Honestly, I didn’t put nearly as much thought into it ahead of time. I just stumbled across the “law man” line and liked the rhythm of it. The rest just followed. Make of it what you will.

The parlance section with the voiceover introduces a unique perspective. What inspired the inclusion of this part?

Honestly, I’m not sure what inspired it. That center section of music established itself early on and always felt like it was going to be a bridge. It just took me a while to figure out what needed to be there.

I started thinking about those old propaganda films from the early 20th Century, like Reefer Madness. Most of those films are in the public domain now. I started digging, and I found the dialog I wound up using in an old drug propaganda film called The Pusher. As soon as I heard it I knew it just fit. I liked the guy’s voice, the timbre, and his sort of old-school melodramatic but matter-of-fact soliloquy. I guess the verses are from old Billy Ray’s victims and witnesses, but that parlance section is a message direct from Billy Ray himself. And I liked the “without me there can be no normal people”. That wasn’t a line in the film. I spliced it together like that, because it felt right. I can relate to that, and see how people like Billy Ray would relate to it as someone on the edge of the herd. A predator like Billy Ray Montgomery will most often feel like only they see things as they truly are, and only they are righting wrongs. It’s ridiculous, of course. No matter how heinous their crimes, they feel justified, and they see themselves, at least in part, as victims of society themselves. So, you know, “without me” you people wouldn’t know how precious life is, or some such. I am the metric against which you measure normal. So, without me…

The mention of Devil Man towards the end adds an intriguing twist. Can you share more about this character? It seems different from the other verses.

The devil man is a connecting thread between Billy Ray Montgomery and the character from “The Price of Rain”. So I guess you could say it’s the thread between the two songs. I know who that’s supposed to be, and folks who read the stories will know who that’s supposed to be. But it’s a little early in the game to lay those cards on the table.

I do hope within the context of the other verses the devil man adds a coda to this idea. If there are predators and victims and witnesses yelling “run child!” it seems reasonable the Devil gets involved somewhere along the line. Assuming you believe in such stuff, I guess. I liked the symbolism. The idea of repercussions.

The repetition of the phrase "Run, child!" is powerful. Can you explain the significance behind this warning and how it ties into the overall message of the song?

I’d think it’s self-evident. It’s somebody yelling “Run, dumbass! Run!” I mean, that could apply to a lot of different scenarios. Some woman starts dating a new guy, and he gives her friends the willies. “Run, child!” Some guy picks up a girl in a bar and finds out she wants to have sex with him but only if he’ll pay off her car first. “Run, child!” I think we’ve all had those people in our lives, where our own warning systems told us to run in the other direction, with red flags everywhere. Hell, that’s my first marriage in a nutshell right there. The voices were telling me, “Run, child!” But I didn’t. And, well, it’s no surprise I’m in my second marriage now.

When I first started putting together the video for “Billy Ray Montgomery” the footage took me in a direction which suggested he was a serial killer. But it felt too obvious and clumsy to me, and I really didn’t feel like Billy Ray Montgomery, the character, was a serial killer. A bad man, yes. Someone who earned the fallout that followed. But a serial killer? Nah. So, I reworked the footage and removed some that. It worked better. After that my wife said, about the video, “I see it as a cautionary tale.” That’s preferable to it being a song about a serial killer. I think that sums up the significance behind “Run child!” pretty well. “Nothing any good comes of Billy Ray Montgomery.”

How did you approach the musical elements to complement the storytelling in this particular piece?

I honestly thought this would be more of a Hard Rock song. That’s how I heard it in my head initially. But it never sounded quite right to me. I started out with some really distorted guitar for that main riff, but they didn’t fit. So I paired them back. I decided to fill it out with a horn section. But it still didn’t work. I couldn’t find the sound of the song. It really wasn’t until I reduced the guitars to accents and made the horn section the main focus that the song worked. I think in some ways I kept thinking of an action piece from the movie. Given the subject matter, the song needed to be bigger than it was with just guitars.

I had someone tell me it sounded like I had a whole New Orleans orchestra in this song. When I heard that I thought, “Okay, that might be big enough.”

Ironically, there’s a short guitar solo section at the end of each chorus which is the exact opposite. It was originally played by the horn section. But I wanted a little definition in there, and I put a guitar part underneath the horns to give it a little more bite. But it felt clumsy. I mean, horns and guitars are very different instruments, and you just can’t do the same things on both. It was kind of like that. What sounded right on the horns didn’t sound right on guitar. At least not when they were together. So, I finally backed the horns out of the mix entirely to see what I could do with tightening up the guitar part. And when I heard it without the horns I thought, “Wow, that’s it. That’s fucking it.”

I guess I’m just saying that the verses got bigger with more horns and less guitar, but that solo section got bigger by removing everything but the guitar, bass, and drums. In the end, at every point along the way, it was all about making the song as big as possible to match the scale of the imagery in the lyrics. All of the songs on this album are supposed to have been performed in a performance room in a nightclub, after all. I wanted a certain ambiance.

The vivid imagery in the lyrics could translate well into the music video for “Billy Ray Montgomery”. Are there specific scenes or moments from the song that you envision being particularly impactful visually?

The video I had in my head is not the video I wound up with. I’ve been tinkering with A.I. image and video generation over the last few years. I thought I could generate images for the video that way and get right to the heart of what I was looking for visually. And I did use some zooming segments that were generated with Midjourney and its zoom out feature. But it was just too limiting. I couldn’t do what I wanted to do. We should keep in mind that as amazing as the A.I. generated stuff is and as convincing as it may be in some context, it still feels primitive. At least to me. I’ve seen a lot of videos where they’ve clearly used A.I. imagery to an amazing extent. But the first thing you realize when you use the generative A.I. stuff is that it’s pretty generic. It is very difficult to get something that exactly matches what you see in your head. Sure, you can have a simple prompt of, like, “beautiful olive-skinned woman with black hair in a Bohemian dress” and it will give you an image that is initially very impressive. But if you look at other people’s examples on the generative web sites, you quickly realize that the A.I. has generated hundreds or even thousands of images very similar to the one it gave you.

That’s a big problem where videos are concerned. A lot of people are trying to use generative A.I. for videos because it can be impressive. But all of their videos look similar. I feel like A.I. stuff, as impressive as it may be, is limiting. If it fits what you want and gives you something you can work with, that’s great. Go for it. But I think we’re just getting started, and we really haven’t discovered how to use it in an artistic manner. We’re all just pushing buttons and flicking switches and kicking the tires, to see what might happen if we do this, that or the other thing.

That doesn’t work for me. I never came close to what I had I my head. But I did find a lot of great footage that came close. So yeah, I had specific things in mind for each section, visually.

If anything really worked visually, I think it’s the central dance sequence where the parlance voiceover is. I wanted it to represent the obliviousness of people in general to the danger that’s right outside. So, I wanted to have people in the video dancing and having a good time, while a predator lurked just on the periphery, like those predators I saw when I was on the road. That’s my favorite sequence, in both the song and the video.

Any final words, or anything you’d like to say to listeners?

I keep thinking about something that happened recently. We had some people over, and my wife decided to play “Billy Ray Montgomery”, because it had just posted to Spotify. Man, it was brutal. They couldn’t have been any less interested. I would have preferred they hated it than be indifferent to it.

I do realize this was that generalized contempt friends and family have where your work is concerned. If you like something, it is vitally important you let the artist know. I mean, if you have a song at the top of the charts and someone has turned on the money hose, you’re going to be full of confidence. But most artists are starved for feedback. If you like something an independent artist is doing, let them know. They may need to hear it. You don’t have to shower them with praise, but at least give them an opinion, whatever that may be. Silence is far more hurtful for people who are trying to justify their passions in a world where they’re constantly told they should be more realistic.

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