As the season finale of “The Bear” Season 2 opens, Chef Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) exudes the high-stress atmosphere of the restaurant’s “friends and family night,” underscored by the sound of alarms ringing, pots clanging and a cello’s strings being played in quick arpeggios. The scene shifts to the dining room, and the sound changes too, to Liz Phair’s “Supernova” being played as the restaurant’s background music. Back in the kitchen again, the music becomes even more percussive, with a string pizzicato amplifying the high-stakes emotion of the scene. As the scene continues to switch back and forth between kitchen and dining room, the music alternates between the anxious strings and the likes of songs by the Pixies, Brian Wilson, and Wilco.
Two Chicago musicians wrote the original music for the show, which gets interspersed between recognizable songs from mostly ’80s and ’90s bands. Jeffrey “JQ” Qaiyum and Johnny Iguana add to the emotion of the story’s arc through their underscored music, and help add to the Chicago feeling of the whole series.
Johnny Iguana, the stage name of Brian Berkowitz, grew up in Philadelphia. He came up with his stage name as a teenager, and moved to the windy city from New York in his 20s when he got a gig playing piano for his hero, blues artist Junior Wells. He formed the Claudettes with drummer Michael Caskey in 2010 and have brought in additional musicians over the years. They’re currently performing with guitarist/bassist/vocalist Zach Verdoom and singer Rachel Williams. They’ll be hitting the Turf Club in St. Paul on Thursday for a night of rollicking melodies, re-imagined classics and more, with local singer-songwriter Annie Mack opening.
Here’s an interview with Iguana, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Sheila Regan: Would you say your band has a Chicago sound?
Johnny Iguana: It’s a very interesting question, because I often will say, you’re hearing the sound of Chicago. There is some Chicago blues in it, which is what brought me out to Chicago when I was 23. I got hired by the Junior Wells band and moved out of New York City. He was a hero of mine, and he’s one of the Chicago Blues greats of the 20th century. I got to play with him for three years and tour with him, but it’s kind of like a small part of the formula of the band as it’s emerged over the years, which is some blues, a classical kind of elegance combined with garage rock, and a kind of a punk spirit. But it’s centered around the piano, where most indie rock has a bluesy, punky defining element to it. You think about slide guitar, you think about John Lee Hooker and Elmore James and stuff. You think about Black Keys, and White Stripes and, and the Kills and things like that. We have that element in us, but it’s a little bit different in that it’s generally centered around piano because that’s what I write the music on. We started as just piano and drums. Over time, we grew to add guitars and multiple vocalists, so it’s got that a bit. But you know, Chicago has a proud punk history too. Actually, none of the four of us are from Chicago, but we’ve all been there for years.
SR: How do you get your ideas for lyrics?
JI: A lot of it comes from words in a journal, just thoughts, phrases I hear that seem like wow, I could very easily turn that on its head. It’s good to listen to things like NPR, where people are talking, talking, talking, and you can just take something and put it in your own context. My little notebook app on my phone has a lot of good phrases.
This really well known guitar player and singer in Chicago came to pick me up to go to a recording session, and I knew that he just came back from weeks in Europe. When he came back to Chicago, it was like 15 degrees. And I think when he left, it was probably 60. I was gonna get in the van and say that winter came while you were gone. And then I thought — winter came while you were gone — that’s a very, very good title. That’s a good chorus right there. I love loading up the journal full of something that comes out in conversation and then it can just flower into a song quickly when you get a concept.
SR: How much does improvisation play into your work?
JI: The drummer [Michael Caskey] and I are the two main ones that I think almost can’t play fully one way without improvising. The drummer — sometimes I feel like it’s almost too much for me, where I want to have like a game plan and then have bits of improvisation, but he sometimes will change his whole approach to a song just on how he’s feeling. And luckily, he’s a master of many beats and styles, where if it’s coming truly from an honest place at the time, and not just too much of a cerebral place, if it’s just something you’re really feeling inside you, then it’s going to be good.
[image_credit]Courtesy of the artist[/image_credit][image_caption]Johnny Iguana: “It’s good to listen to things like NPR, where people are talking, talking, talking, and you can just take something and put it in your own context. My little notebook app on my phone has a lot of good phrases.”[/image_caption]
JI: I am. I’m really glad to know that because the show got bought by Disney after the first season, and there were a lot more cooks in the kitchen, and we didn’t know we’d get to keep that gig. And we really have to just talk about justifying your existence. We really had to turn it on for the second season. And we did, I think. We made our best stuff for that. The way that my collaborator [Jeffrey “JQ” Qaiyum] put it is, they’re under no contractual obligation to use what we give them, but we’ve got the green light to keep giving them music and hopefully it will be like season two, where, it was a delight to me. A lot of the pieces that we made — I didn’t know what scene they were for. We just sent them a bunch of music knowing the sort of general emotion and plotline. We sent them some things kind of preemptively.
SR: So you didn’t necessarily know which recorded music they were using?
JI: No, we were uninvolved with the soundtrack where they select, you know, Wilco and ACDC and Genesis and stuff. We just created all of the new original pieces, instrumental pieces that are in there.
My wife and kid were in New Jersey on a beach trip, I don’t really enjoy the beach, so I stayed home and they dumped all the episodes all at once and I watched it over a four-day period. And it was just so cool, where like, the lead and his romantic interest meet at like the ice cream section in a grocery store, and all of a sudden, the music starts. I feel like a self-satisfied kid or something.
SR: Can you tell me how you got your name?
JI: I was in a band when I was 15 or 16, my first blues band in Philadelphia called Stevie Lizard and his All Reptile Orchestra. And when I joined that, I was designated Johnny Iguana, who is ostensibly the brother of Bobby Iguana, who was already the bassist in the band. And then seven years later, when I was 23, when I joined Junior Wells band, I decided when I was 15 and 16, I was playing these Junior Wells songs in a band and I was called Johnny Iguana. Now I’m playing them with actually Junior Wells and so I just bought the name back kind of for nostalgia. Now a whole lot of people only know me as that.
SR: Rachel Williams recently joined the Claudettes as a vocalist. How is that going?
JI: Oh my god, complete godsend. And to be honest, I wasn’t sure we’d continue because I was with Berit Ulseth who is a Minneapolis native for almost seven years. She didn’t ever really love traveling around in a van, and she wanted to kind of move on with her life. And you know, we all had great times together but she didn’t really want to do that part anymore. And so I wasn’t sure what I was going to do and then someone in Chicago told me about Rachel and said not only is she a great singer, but she’s also a huge Claudettes fan. And I found both to be true. She’s a very different singer as fantastic as he is. And so what I did was instantly I got to writing for her, having her over to my house and just kind of listening and playing a lot and between the covers and writing for her. It’s probably two-thirds different now, but it’s still the same band.
You just always play to your strengths, I’m just kind of writing what it seems like she really shines on. And she’s also a magnificent stage performer.
The Claudettes play with Annie Mack on Thursday, Dec. 14, at 8 p.m. at the Turf Club ($20). More information here.
