EXCLUSIVE: Tyson Ritter Talks Writing “Shotgun Clown” for Film, ‘Prisoner’s Daughter’
As the front man of the hit rock band, All-American Rejects, Ritter’s music has impacted generations of people over the years. Now, Ritter is lending his musical talents to the new film, Prisoner’s Daughter.
Also starring in the film, Ritter became inspiried to create the new song, “Shotgun Clown” after he read the script for the film. Featured during the end credits, we got the chance to chat with Ritter about the song, how making this differed from making a song for All-American Rejects, and so much more. Check out what he had to say below.
Let’s talk your song, “Shotgun Clown”. How did that song come to be and how did you know that it needed to be in the movie? I mean, obviously you starred in the movie Prisoner’s Daughter, but how did you know that this needed to be in it?
“It’s funny, in the adventure that is songwriting, every time they’re all snowflakes if you’re doing it right. They occur to you or happen upon you in such a different way. And this, when Catherine Hardwick, the director sent me the script, I had just celebrated my son’s birth into the world. And if anybody is lucky enough to have that wild experience of being someone who creates someone else, that wild openness that is being a father or a parent, that beginning, that moment, that first week, the first month, it’s almost like your own bit of psychosis. And in that, reading or just movies, a heartfelt movie that you never would’ve looked twice at, as far as just not this film, I just mean commercials impact you in a deep way. Songs, music hits harder, everything. You’re so fucking open that what you digest, you have complete empathy for.
And that script for Prisoner’s Daughter fell right in front of me a week after my son was born. And immediately after I read it, I was blubbering to myself being like, this is incredible. What a great story about family. And I went to sleep for a couple days and something happened I guess after my 30s where when music does come to me now, it comes to me in my dreams or it wakes me up in the twilight of the morning. And this lyric, the first two lines of the song, did you hear the one about the shotgun clown? He left his heart at the lost and found. I don’t even know where that was floating around for. I just kept saying it and I was like, I like this. And whenever I get a song idea or something, I’ll kind of tease it to a friend. Not the song, I’ll just say it in passing, like a lyric. And if they say something about it, it’s kind of like… As the old insecure artist, if somebody notices it, I go, oh, maybe that’s a thing then.
And so, I think I said it to my friend, he’s a fellow actor named Josh Stewart. I think I wrote it and he was like, man, that hits deep. Just that lyric. And I was like, shit. And I realized, my subconscious often informs my consciousness. And honestly, it’s the wisest person I know because I’m a fool. It came from the way that that film sort of ruptured my subconscious, the Shotgun Clown was this character that… Oh, why am I forgetting his name? Logan Roy. Why do I want to say Brian Cranston? You know, him. Help me fill in… Brian Cox. His character was this guy, the shotgun clown, who had been shamed by this horrible stain that he put on his family. And that came in the form of this lyric. Did you hear the one about the shotgun clown? And some say the day that he skipped town, the whole wide world went upside down for Kate Beckinsale’s character. She lost a father, and her whole life was completely changed. And I think I’m a guy who’s historically written pop songs for a band called the All-American Rejects. And it’s funny, I think this song coming to me, like I said, I was just in the bliss of being a father for the first time, and I was really brazened. And I called my old A and R guy from DreamWorks because I used to be on DreamWorks with Eels, and I was like, hey, do you know how to get ahold of Eels? He’s like, what?
It’s kind of a crazy ask for him and coming from me. I grew up listening to college radio so when Nova Came For The Soul came on, I was hooked. And he kind of always followed me through my life in this bizarre way, Mr. E from Eels. And so, when I finally got the courage to ask my A and R guy, I got this idea, I feel like the universe is telling me I have to reach out to him because he’s going to sing the second verse. And he’s like, yeah, okay, well, I hate to break it to you, but he doesn’t. He’s a notorious hermit. This is a guy who’s recorded with Tom Waits and Ringo Star. He’s been a guest on Ringo Star’s stage. He’s an artist’s artist and I have no business getting to even communicate to him. What am I? I’m just a guy from a pop rock band from the early 2000s.
But somehow through the synchronicity of the will I had to find him, my phone rings, an anonymous caller ID is on the screen and I pick it up and its E. And what I assumed, and I’m sure he did too, I think he was just morbidly curious that this kid was like, hey, so tell me about some movie, whatever. And I sat on the phone with him for like two hours and I was just, like I said, in such a blissful zone of openhearted… I believed everything was magical in that moment after my son was born. I can’t describe it. And some people as I guess sensitive as me have this experience that can relate, but very few maybe, I don’t know. So, I talked his ear off, told him about the movie, told him every detail. He said at the end, he’s like, send me the script, send me the song. And he’s like, yeah, let’s do it. That sounds cool.
And so, he came over to my home and then it was very brief because it was Covid. He came over outside my house, said hi. He’s like, yeah, let’s do it. Goes back home and sends me his vocal that he recorded on his… He records all his vocals now on a USB mic into his phone.”
Oh my God.
“And I threw it in there and I recorded the song in GarageBand. I’ve only ever demoed and recorded in GarageBand. I’m a songwriter. I have no idea how. I have no care to learn or be proficient at Pro Tools or all this modern recording equipment. But thankfully, Apple has made the most comprehensive and playschool version of great recording software. GarageBand is incredible now. And so, I did it there in my living room and I played it for Catherine at the end of the film. I don’t know if you… Jesus Christ, I’m not even letting you ask a question. I’m just telling you the whole lineage of this thing.”
You’re answering every question I have, so please continue.
“And Catherine fell in love with it, and the writer called me. He’s like, I just pulled over and I’m crying next to my wife. The song always was going to be there. Brian Cox, they shot some scenes where he was humming along to it. The son Ezra was playing it on the piano. It was kind of always floating around. And it’s funny, in a scene that’s a flashback to the wedding, he shows up with a shotgun. Catherine, she’s really fun when she gets inspired. She’ll take inspiration from everywhere. And so, the song inspired her to sort of make something else nuanced in the film as far as the scene. So, it was a song that was destined for its placement because it was one of the purest experiences, I’ve ever had in having a song, having that great muse find me and tell me, you’re going to write this, it’s for you.”
A lot of times you find songs that are featured in movies are used as just place fillers or they’re just put in there to be put in there. Yours plays a part, and is teased in the movie, so when you’re listening to it in the end credit, it feels like everything has now finally come together. Okay, this all makes sense now with everything coming, that this is the perfect way to just end it out.
“Yeah. It’s so cool that you received it that way because yeah, the woman who scored it, she meticulously sewed in a lot of the instrumentation from my stems from that song to where it was teased, whether you could hear it or not, it was coming the whole time. And I’m glad that that was how you received it because yeah, I think even… It’s crazy. I’m a child of soundtrack and maybe I’m not even… Look, I like a lot of crazy shit from my childhood. I’m a poor boy from Oklahoma who didn’t have cable. We had a VHS player and my uncle owned a crappy convenience store that had rental videos of all kinds mind you. And I would give him a buck and he’d let me take Wayne’s World or take the Bad Robinhood movie or a lot of movies.
But I remember there’s some seminal shit about when we were growing up or when I was growing up where soundtracks used to be so definitive of a film and really almost… I think back to the one that was completely definitive of my childhood, which was not even the best movie, but it was called Disturbing Behavior. And it had Flagpole Sita by Harvey Danger. It had Got You Where I Want You by The Flies. I mean, this soundtrack literally was the design of the film. So again, I’m really happy to have been able to contribute something that hopefully people identify as the film because it was so inspired by it.”
In your songwriting process, obviously you’re very well known for the All-American Rejects and you created music with them, some iconic songs through them. But in your songwriting process, how do you differentiate that pop rock song that you’re creating for the All-American Rejects and then a song for a movie? Are there two separate thought processes that go into either one of those or is it just whatever you’re feeling?
“Yeah, no, I grew up in front of the record button. I started that band when I was 17, and I haven’t contributed music for it for almost a decade now. And my process has grown with me. There’s this beautiful purity of opening your heart and mind accidentally for a purpose that you don’t understand until it’s already pulling you by the tail. And that was the All-American Rejects’ first record. I was riding alone in a home at 15 living by myself, and I never knew that that was going to be the skeleton of what would be the first record for my band.
And I never questioned the process. I always am just open. It’s funny, you don’t realize your process until you’re old enough to understand that process is a thing. My 20s, I was so full of piss and vinegar and presence that I didn’t consider anything about how I approached songwriting. I just knew they came to me. And now on the other side of my 30s, I’m so… It’s so funny, you hear about all these people that you know never started out like this. You know Neil Young never started out making sure the moon was in the correct phase and facing towards some special magical energy flowing constellation in the star map. People have a ridiculous process now, and you know that they didn’t when they were younger.
But I think my process, now as I’m getting older, I just honor it differently. Whereas I think I probably just took it for granted or it saw that I was just such a pure kid who didn’t know any better that the muse was like, yeah, man, this kid’s got a good spirit for it. But now when I sit down because something came to me in a dream, it’s a little more enchanted nowadays when I’m sure that it needs to be written. It’s not just me sitting and trying. And I think a lot of writers, especially even my partner in the band, he’s a Nashville guy who’s sitting there chucking it out, right? It’s almost a mechanized process for a lot of writers and hats off to them. But for me, I just think those are the sort of people in the world that are killing and homogenizing and commodifying really an art form that is truly a language barrier breaker.
Music is the only thing sacred that can speak to anyone in the world. And I think maybe I just honored that sacred gift. And you can chalk up whatever music I have done to whatever it is that you think I have, but it’s not what I am. And songs like Shotgun Clown and even songs that are going to be coming. It’s funny, that collaboration, I just finished writing and producing E’s next record for the Eels.”
Oh wow
“If you would’ve told me… Because look, I didn’t grow up listening to a shitload of music in the traditional way that kids went out, bought a CD, they heard it, bought it. I was the kid who was lying to Columbia House and then got my ass beat because my grandparents found out that I racked up some bill that could never be paid. Records and CDs were so few and far between. I was sitting on the radio dubbing cassettes whenever I could hear my song. So yeah, I think just that I got to do something that took a childhood hero of mine really. Eels were one of the very few bands that I could spot from my childhood and go, I listened to Eels.
My friends had that Nine Inch Nails record. My friends had that Smashing Pumpkins record. But I had that Eels record. That was probably one of the three I had. And so, to get to be able to create something for this film that made it almost a dream come true to be able to continue working with one of my heroes makes me believe in all that hippie synchronicity even more.”
Well, as you said, everything happens for a reason.
“I mean, you can say it, and a lot of people will roll their eyes at that, or people say it at the worst times when something bad happens. They’re like, hey, everything happens for a reason. Well, that’s not fucking comforting.”
No. No, it’s not.
“But when it’s something cool, yeah, it works.”
Yeah, and it comes around right at the time when you need it, or when you least expect it.
“Absolutely.”
Prisoner’s Daugther and “Shotgun Clown” are now available on all digital platforms.
Photo credit: Jonny Marlow
*This interview has been edited for length and clarity.