Patrick Droney Finds Fossils and the Bare Bones in Songwriting

Rising singer-songwriter Patrick Droney is scheduled to kick off his State of the Heart tour with an appearance at the Kessler Theater at 8 p.m., Friday, Feb. 11  with special guest morgxn. Droney is no stranger to the Texas music scene, having frequented Antone's in Austin, shared the stage with Double Trouble, being friends with the North Texan musicians Jonathan Tyler and Alison Ponthier and having recently collaborated with ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons on a reimagined cover of "Rough Boy." But this will be Droney’s first headlining appearance supporting his debut full-length LP State of the Heart.

We caught up with Droney as he was preparing to make his way to DFW to talk about the nature of songwriting, production and what makes a good pop song worth covering.

You’re based in Nashville nowadays, but you’ve lived in a lot of places. How does being based in Nashville feel different from the other places you’ve lived?
This record is a tale of three cities, L.A., New York and Nashville. I grew up in Jersey, then I lived in New York, L.A., then Nashville. I’ve had the blessing to live in these different cities and take what they offer musically — they’re so diverse. Nashville is still a songwriters’ community, so lyrics kind of trump everything. Being here adds a bit of a premium on the storytelling. I really don’t think I would have had the articulation five years ago. My heart lives in New York City, that’s my true home base, but living in Nashville has offered so much to me. I just want to be here and give back to the city. This community is really hard to deny.

How has Nashville directly affected the sound of your music? Lately you’ve been working with (Nashville-based producer) Ian Fitchuk, so how has he shaped your music?
Ian’s incredible. Everything here starts in a writing room, so I met Ian as a songwriter. We wrote a song called "Ruins" from the first EP. We were like, "Let’s record this at our buddy’s house really quick," and that demo ended up being the exact performance that’s on the record. So from there Ian and I decided to make an EP and co-produce. That’s what I mean about the community here. Everybody’s so talented. The guy on the corner plays better guitar than me it’s so humbling. Guys like Ian are gems, and I feel lucky about being in a place with so many of them.

How did you get connected with him?
Ian and I were connected on a writing session, and we became fast friends. I do a lot of my production myself and seeing Ian — he’s like a savant. This was before he made that Golden Hour record with Kacey Musgraves, and you could tell that he had something really big coming. I have a single coming out soon with Daniel Tashian, who is the other half of the Kacey Musgraves' production team. Just really great people with incredible talent.

There’s a slickness to your records, and many times slickness can be distracting, but in your music it seems to be appropriate. Who produced State of the Heart?
I’m behind the board, it’s entirely in my hands, and my collaborators are true partners. I did a lot of this record with my buddy Ben West, who is an incredible engineer, songwriter, producer. We co-wrote a song called "Always Been the End of the World" from the first EP. That was our first endeavor together. Most of this record we went in and cut a band live, and I brought Ben in to help make sense of everything. And this was in COVID times, so it was entirely through FaceTime. Ben and I would be doing virtual sessions, trading files over a screen. It made us get really resourceful. The way I approach production is everything is an emotional arc. There’s obviously the voice and lyrics — telling the story of the song — but every element to me, as far as that "distraction" with production, and I agree that sometimes really shiny production can be distracting, but I grew up listening to music in movies and TV, and that music has a cinematic quality where that specific drone or pad is an emotional pressure point. I love creating worlds production-wise for the songs to live within. I spend a lot of time figuring out what the color of a production is, what that feeling is, not just the brass tacks. It’s just a lot of intention and a lot of time. Ben West is an amazing partner for me. We have a great relationship with our mixers and we trust them to take it to the next step. The assembly line is strong.

What’s an example of that on this record?
A song like "Nowhere Town." That’s a journey. That’s standing on the corner of a small town, trying to get to the big city and figure out your life. It’s hard to have that courage. I was lucky enough to get this Moog One synthesizer that really became a rocket ship for me on this record. A lot of the synth sounds come from that machine, and that first synth sound — the arpeggiator -— it just puts you in this mood like "the engine is starting" and there’s a little sonar blip like I’m just showing up in the world, coming out of my shell. I’m really happy to be able to introduce sax into this record, and I use that in a lot of moments to create this lift. I grew up on Springsteen and Clarence being a huge part of my emotional core whenever I hear that horn. There little things, they’re movies. They’re coming-of-age movies.

John Mayer once said, "Songwriting is like lucid dreaming," and as a result, it’s difficult to co-write. What was it like co-writing "Nowhere Town" with Sarah Buxton?
Sarah is like my spirit animal. She and I have been writing songs for years. My tribe of collaborators, we have that language and Sarah is the kind of person where she can finish my sentence. We come from the same kind of heart background. Writing songs is like finding fossils, and the process of discovering a song that’s meant to be found is just being in the moment, brushing off the artifact and revealing it. It’s already written, the best songs find you and all you have to do is stay in the moment and brush them off. That’s how I feel about every song on this record. I was just lucky that they picked me. We wrote so many songs for this project, hundreds, and "Nowhere Town" was just not on anybody’s radar. It was just a song I always had in the back of my mind. I think we were cutting the title track, and on a break, I started playing the chords, and we cut it with no pre-production, in real time. It was just meant to happen. All those moments are just following your gut.

What attracts you to a cover a pop song like Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball?”
I’m fascinated by the idea of dressing songs in different clothes. I’m a sucker for a massive chorus and I’m a sucker for a song in the top 40 that makes me put my foot down on the gas pedal and makes my heart beat a little faster. "Wrecking Ball" always did that for me, and I always felt there was a depth to that lyric. A friend of mine, Sacha Skarbek, is one of the co-writers of that song, and I remember talking to him when we were on a writing retreat, and I was fascinated. These are massive records in an age where big, big songs are rare. I like a challenge in dressing "Wrecking Ball" in State of the Heart clothes. Music is just fun, and it’s a worthy challenge to make these songs have more life.

What is your mental state going into a writing session? Is it nerve-wracking to have to potentially write with strangers?
The nucleus of that whole world is publishing, your publisher. What they’re good at is curating personalities, writers’ styles. "Hey, Patrick would be really good with so-and so." A great publisher helps a songwriter find his people. I don’t do too many first dates anymore; I really do have my tribe. The mission of that tribe is derived from people that really know me. I don’t really do the stranger thing anymore. That being said, otherwise, it’s hard to walk into a room with a stranger and bare your soul. You’re very vulnerable and you have to just get to it. That’s the beautiful thing about songwriting and collaborating. You become so human so fast and you so how we’re all connected and all so much the same. These are just the speed-round versions of those, and they can go horribly wrong too. Maybe there’s no chemistry, they’re having a bad day, or have totally different point of view. That happens too, but it’s always worth a try. Collaboration is so fun, but can you be honest with yourself?