Chris Douridas

Chris Douridas' career in the music industry all started when he placed third in a dramatic monologue at the National Championship Tournament as a senior in high school. Winning that award convinced him that he wanted to continue his path into theater and film. With the help of the third place national ranking, he was accepted to what was then North Texas State University (now University of North texas), on a theater scholarship where he minored in radio/tv/film. He briefly worked as a waiter to help pay off expenses, but he soon realized he could be working in his minor field at KNTU, the professional campus radio station, which broadcasted to all of Dallas Fort Worth.

After college, Chris landed jobs at KERA, the flagship NPR station in Dallas, to KUSC in Los Angeles, then became the music director and host of Morning Becomes Eclectic at KCRW-FM in Santa Monica. While at KCRW, Geffen Records enlisted him as an A&R (Artists and Repertoire) consultant. Two years later, he became an A&R executive at DreamWorks Records. Within a year, he was invited to host and curate the inaugural season of Sessions at West 54th, a weekly PBS music performance and interview program. He later worked at AOL Music where he oversaw Radio@AOL, and created, produced and hosted the popular Sessions@AOL interview and performance program (AOL Keyword: Sessions). After these ventures, Steve Jobs personally hired Chris to be his Creative Programming Consultant and launch the new iTunes Music Store.

Chris’ music supervisor / consultant work came naturally. When he went on air every morning in the film capital, he would often get calls from filmmakers and directors asking him about the music he’d play, since playlists weren’t online at the time. He landed a couple gigs early on as a music consultant, and other projects came along soon after; Chris has now done work for a number of award-winning film and television projects (Flaked, the Austin Powers series, As Good as It Gets, American Beauty, and The Girl Next Door).

In April of 2010, Chris launched School Night; a free weekly live music series at Bardot in Hollywood, presenting upand-coming new artists alongside legendary musicians in a dance party atmosphere. School Night also launched a monthly sister series in Brooklyn at Baby’s All Right.

I was born in Columbus, Ohio. My entire family is from there. My parents divorced when I was 6 and my mother moved my sisters and I to Chicago. When I was 14, we moved to Corpus Christi along the Gulf of Mexico in South Texas, mostly to get away from the brutal Chicago winters.

I had a tremendously creative childhood. My mother instilled in me a deep respect for music. She was a wonderful amateur singer, and keyboardist. More importantly, she had a really great record collection that included Chopin piano works, Ray Charles, Burt Bacharach, The Carpenters, Johnny Mathis, Nancy Wilson, Simon and Garfunkel - records I listened to over and over again. My stepfather turned me onto the Beatles, The Doors, Blood Sweat and Tears. Also, as a kid growing up in Chicago, I was very aware of the radio charts, listening to WLS and Larry Lujack in the 70s. They published top 40 charts every week that were posted in the record department of our local K-Mart. I was obsessed with them, monitoring the rise and fall of my favorite songs, week to week.

In my teens I studied guitar and piano, but soon abandoned music performance (probably because I didn't see myself improving fast enough), and dove into what became my real passion - acting. I worked on a lot of plays throughout my high school years, but more importantly, I became heavily involved in the National Forensic League, performing dramatic and comedic monologues and duet performances in speech tournaments across the country. My senior year, I won 3rd place in dramatic at the national championship tournament.

This all convinced me I wanted to continue working in theater and film, so, with the help of my 3rd place national high school ranking, I went to college on a theater scholarship, and minored in radio/tv/film, at what was then North Texas State University (now University of North Texas). As soon as I started college, I was also working a lot as a waiter to help pay expenses, and it occurred to me that waiting tables would probably be my default job, in between acting jobs, once I got out of school.

I guess I wasn't looking forward to that part of being an actor. So, as part of my work in my minor field of radio/tv/film, I was very happy to see that NTSU had a full on professional radio station in the theater building. The station broadcast to Dallas Fort Worth. And I thought to myself, 'hmmmm. maybe I could do radio work in between acting jobs instead of waiting tables.' So I volunteered at KNTU, the campus radio station immediately after starting my first semester of school. My first show was a weekend classical show, which didn't last very long. Maybe a couple weeks. I did a couple early morning weekday newscasts too, but that didn't go well.

One day I was on air, reading a newscast in the middle of one of our DJ's shows, and it was a story about the Pope getting shot at, the DJ on the other side of the glass was trying to make me laugh, and it succeeded. He turned his back to me, dropped his pants, spread his ass cheeks as wide as possible, and pressed his ass against the glass which was probably no more than a foot or two from my face. I start laughing uncontrollably in the middle of this horrible story of an assassination attempt on the Pope. Of course, we got several complaints from listeners. Look, I didn't want to be a journalist anyway, or a newscaster. I was just doing that to get my foot in the door at the station. Anyway, within a few weeks, a weekday morning slot opened up, and I began hosting a show called The Morning Exchange, mixing the best stuff I found in the station's library - and in my own record collection - including bluegrass, blues, classical, reggae, ska, Motown, classic Simon and Garfunkel, The Beatles, alt-pop, kitschy country, and a heavy dose of melodic Blue Note, Savoy, Verve and Atlantic jazz classics (NTSU was and still is an important jazz institute). I ended up hosting that morning show for the rest of my college years, while doing plays and film projects in the afternoons and evenings. That show was the breeding ground for all that came after. It's where I first started figuring out that a wild variety of musical styles could actually fit together nicely.

It was during this time that I also became aware of KERA, the flagship NPR station in nearby Dallas. I became an NPR junkie, listening in to their evening jazz programming, late at night. I remember very clearly falling asleep to a show hosted by Ed Budanauro, thinking to myself how cool it would be if I got a job there, while I extended my acting work to Dallas area theater and film work.

Well, all of that happened. While still in school, I noticed an opening at KERA for a weekend classical host. I didn't know a lot about classical, but I wanted to apply. I had a friend named John Large, who was a frequent customer at the restaurant I worked at. He was a professor in the voice department at the Music school. He offered to give me a crash course in how to properly pronounce Dvorak, and Grieg, and Chopin, and Liszt and Haydn - all the rock stars of that world. So when I went in to do a demo for KERA, I aced it. I was soon doing a show called Weekend Classical at KERA, which I did for a year or so. On that show I stretched the idea of what could be considered in the classical repertoire, occasionally playing things like Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain, and the ECM recordings by cellist David Darling, or Aerial Boundaries by Michael Hedges. Eventually, I was promoted to the overnight jazz slot, doing the graveyard shift midnight-5am Tuesdays through Saturdays. Pretty soon thereafter, Budanauro left and I was promoted to the prime time, Monday through Friday, All Night Jazz program. I was 24.

Meanwhile, the M-F morning show at KERA was a classical show hosted by another former KNTU host, Craig Allen. So we were classical by day, jazz at night NPR station, like most NPR stations across the country at that time. But the station's listener numbers were dwindling, and station management was looking for a fix. Well, unbelievably, Craig and I were able to convince the management to let us begin forging the format into a more eclectic format, inspired by our KNTU days.

So Craig started slowly adding stuff like Andean folk music, Vince Guaraldi classics and Texas based singer songwriters to the classical morning mix, while I started adding things like Joni Mitchell's Mingus album, Tom Waits, Rickie Lee Jones and Steely Dan to the evening jazz mix. Eventually we met in the middle, and became a full blown eclectic format by 1987 or so.

At that point, my nightly show was called 90.1 at Night. Listenership and pledge drives started to spike. Meanwhile, an Austin based radio jock named Jody Denberg had stumbled across the station while on a Dallas visit and championed our new format in a cover story that he wrote for Texas Monthly magazine.

In the story, he compared what we were doing at KERA to a station in Santa Monica, CA called KCRW. That was the first time I’d heard about KCRW. Knowing that I wanted to eventually be in Los Angeles, pursuing a film career, I thought that KCRW could be a great next step in my radio work. Coincidentally, a college friend of mine was getting married in Los Angeles, so I accepted his invitation to attend the wedding, and, armed with this hot-offthe-press huge cover story, I was able to set up a meeting with KCRW's then music director, Tom Schnabel, while visiting LA. Tom was actually quoted in the article. I'm pretty sure that had some influence on my getting his attention to begin with. Any way he gave a me a few words of encouragement, saying he'd probably be able to find something for me to do at the station, and that was all I needed.

Upon my return to Dallas, I gave them notice and within two months, I moved to Los Angeles. Funnily enough, when I got to LA, I called Tom to let him know I was in town and looking for work, he had a very different response, basically telling me that KCRW had no openings. After I badgered him a little more, he told me he thought I was a little too commercial sounding. Of course, I took that as a compliment and within three weeks I was hired at KUSC, the classical station across town, subbing for Jim Svejda, their beloved classical host who was recuperating from a heart attack. I hosted that show for the entire Summer of 1990.

To my shock and delight, that Fall, after 10 years on the air, Tom Schnabel announced he was leaving KCRW to start a world music label with Herb Alpert. I swooped in and delivered air checks from my eclectic Dallas days and got called in to audition for Morning Becomes Eclectic, the show Tom had made famous among Southern California music lovers. I guess it went well. I had just turned 28 and I was now the music director and morning host at KCRW.

Because I was on the air every morning in the film capital of the world, I would often get calls from filmmakers and directors asking me about music I was playing and how to get a hold of it. Our playlists weren't online at that time, so they would have to call me to get the details.

One of the frequent callers was Josh Brand, who was the creator of a show called Northern Exposure, a show that featured a character named Chris, who was the morning DJ-turned-philosopher in this mythical sleepy Alaskan town. Josh called me so often that I finally suggested that he hire me as a consultant, which he did. I didn't really ever work on the show, but a lot of the music from my playlists would end up on the show. I guess I was sort of a consultant at large, which helped to make Josh feel less guilty about calling me all the time.

Not long after, I started getting calls from filmmaker Michael Mann (Miami Vice, Manhunter). Michael was working on a new film with Al Pacino and Robert De Niro called Heat. Again, I floated the consultancy idea to Michael and he jumped. This time I was more intricately involved in suggesting tracks for specific scenes. This was my first film credit as a music consultant. I needed an agent to negotiate that deal with Michael, so now I was off and running.

Other projects came along soon after. Grace of My Heart, in which I suggested the pairing of Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach. I had just had Elvis as a guest on my radio show, and a couple weeks later I had Burt on my show. Elvis was a massive Burt fan, and Burt was open to working on film projects, so the idea came naturally. I also encouraged Mike Myers to reach out to Burt for my next film project, Austin Powers. Not long after, I was hired by Mo Ostin and Lenny Waronker as part of the A&R team for the new DreamWorks Records label, a move that led to my being involved in film projects that Spielberg oversaw (American Beauty, Small Soldiers) and animated projects steered by Katzenberg (Antz, the Shrek series, Over the Hedge).

Stand out guests from that era of Morning Becomes Eclectic include Brian Eno, Leonard Cohen, Joni MItchell, Allen Ginsberg, George Martin, Lou Reed, Burt Bacharach, David Bowie, Tom Waits (who appeared live on air for my last official show), and the radio debuts of Fiona Apple (July 1996) and Beck (July 23, 1993).

The highlight of Sessions at West 54th was Beck's live appearance on the show, which turned out to be his last tour stop in support of his Odelay album. I think the general consensus is that we captured his best ever live performance from that tour.

My personal highlights from Sessions@AOL include my first ever interviews with Paul McCartney and Madonna.

When I left AOL, I reached out to my friend Jimmy Dickson to let him know I was available to help with anything Apple was planning to do in the music space. It was the dawn of the iPod culture and iTunes was just about to launch. He went to Steve with the idea and within a few days, I had a call from someone at Apple human resources telling me Steve wanted to meet me. A few days later I was on a plane to San Jose. I recall very vividly waiting outside Steve's office nervously. Awaiting the meeting. He came ambling out in shorts and bare feet. Couldn't have been more lovely. We talked about Dylan, and I shared some concepts I was thinking about for the pending iTunes launch, ideas that came to fruition there after my hiring (iTunes Originals, inspired by my Sessions@AOL project, and iTunes Essentials, a series of playlists-to-go for the iPod culture).

One of proudest interviews happened as part of the iTunes Originals series. I spent a couple days following Paul Simon around, and recorded a couple of interview sessions with him. I repurposed the resulting conversation to create a two-hour radio special about his life as it relates to music, along with stories of his greatest recordings. It's archived on my Soundcloud page (link: www.souncloud.com/chrisdouridas).

Around 2008, our fearless leader Ruth Seymour was experimenting with the idea of an online all music channel, as an alternative for our listeners that would tune out during our news and public affairs shows. The channel was to be called KCRW Music. We launched it in a sort of beta form, but it was flawed out of the gate. It was a patchwork quilt that repurposed all of our on air music shows laid end to end. so there was really no programming continuity from show to show. While a well done freeform programming offering, it was kind of choppy to listen to.

And, since KCRW's on air format was a mix of news and music programs, we didn't have enough repurposed music shows to fill a 24 / 7 offering, so we actually had to have several DJs, including myself, produce new shows that would be exclusive to the online channel, and fill up the holes that remained in the schedule. So it was quite costly to produce. I could feel management was teetering on the edge of canceling the project or at the very least canceling the shows that were produced exclusively for the channel, to cut costs. I knew that would end up making the channel sound even less fresh, and more like a retread of what was on air, and never gain any traction with listeners.

As a rescue mission for the channel, I drew on a radio concept I had created for Radio@AOL, which was a 24/7 stream I had called EclecticXL. I worked with the station engineers JC Swiatek and David Greene to fine tune the idea, (it was JC's idea to call it Eclectic24), using a software called Selector and soon presented the concept of a fresh, voiceless, daily mix of the best music we've played over the years and the coolest new tracks we were excited about. I said that I would like to be the person to oversee the effort, as long as I could be the gatekeeper on what gets on the channel. And while we originally gave the impression that it was a collaboration of all of the station DJs, in truth that can't work day to day. You need to have a lead arbiter in order to have a cohesive sound. Station management agreed. Since the launch, I have been programming the channel, drawing heavily from my own playlists, and the best things I hear my colleagues playing.

In 2009, I was working on a film project called Morning. The cinematographer on the film was dating the owner of a bar in Hollywood called Bardot. Consequently, we had our wrap party at the venue. I'd never been there before, and so the owner was giving me a tour. I was so impressed at how beautiful the space was, that the owner invited me to come back and DJ some time.

I was always terrified of being a club DJ but I saw this as a chance to face my fear and I accepted, partly because we agreed to do it on a Monday. I figured since they were usually closed on Mondays, their expectations of a great turn out were pretty minimal. The owner could sense my anxiety so he suggested I invite a band that I am excited about to come play after my set. I wanted the night to have a party atmosphere, partly as a response to the programming offered at the nearby Hotel Cafe, which was predominantly acoustic. I wanted it to be as much fun as possible and dance-worthy.

So I lined up two bands - Dawes and The Like. I also brought in Valida, a friend who was real club DJ, and she introduced me to a promoter. This was all so I could guarantee at least a relatively good turnout. As we got closer to the event, we decided to do a month, since we were going to all this trouble. Of course, we need a name. My promoter partner, Matt Goldman, came up with the best Monday club night name ever - School Night, which also happened to be a phrase that many of our friends were using as an excuse for why they couldn't make it to the show ("I can't make it, it's a school night. I gotta work tomorrow!"). Our first show was April 12, 2010. In our mailings we described it as a 'new Monday night Hollywood party'.

That same week, I happened to run into Chrissie Hynde of the band The Pretenders outside of a restaurant on Sunset Blvd. She confided in me that she was in town for a week or two and was looking for a cool place to do an underplay somewhere in Hollywood to showcase her latest album. I suggested she headline our second show. She came down to Bardot the next day to check out the space and immediately agreed to do it. Brett Dennen had also jumped on the bill. So our second School Night ever had Chrissie Hynde and Brett Dennen. We had a line four blocks long, and turned away hundreds of people. So we just kept going.

Within a few months, Paper Magazine awarded us the title of "America's Best Party", in their annual poll. Because the magazine was a New York publication, we started getting offers from New York venues, wanting us to bring the series to NY. We opted to partner with the Bowery Hotel there, which we did as a monthly for four years. Then we moved to the Brooklyn Bowl as a weekly last year. And this year we relaunched as a monthly at the Brooklyn venue Baby's All Right, our current home there.

Not really. I can only really trust my inner compass. I simply gravitate to music I love, not that I kinda like, or that I think people want to hear. It just has to be something that moves me or exhilarates me somehow. My only edict in my approach is that I have to LOVE it, and I hope those that pay attention to what I'm doing trust that. And so really my only responsibility is to not betray that trust.

Of course. So many. Most importantly, my mother gave me an appreciation for music. The creative zest exemplified by Ruth Seymour, the matriarch of KCRW will forever be part of me. Through their work in erasing musical boundaries, Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon were deeply influential in inspiring my understanding of what KCRW could sound like. Tom Waits set the bar for how an artist can explore his many voices. Lenny Waronker defined for me what it means to be a creative person on the label side of the music business. And Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno gave me a very visceral perspective of how to capture the essence of music. Just working alongside Steve Jobs for the short time that I did was spectacular, seeing him shape the launch of iTunes. Right now I am learning the world of artist-friendly publishing through an icon in that world, Lionel Conway.

Typically, I get a call from the director of a film or a producer of a TV show. Usually they have some awareness of my taste in music because of my radio show. Very rarely do things come through my agent or my pursuit of a project.

It varies, but generally the music supervisor oversees all things musical in a film, TV show or commercial. It's my job to help the director create the musical world that the story lives in.

Like all creative heads on a project, I am there to serve the drama as best I can. So everything comes from the script. If someone is whistling a tune walking down the street in a scene, I'm involved. If they don't already have a composer hired, I work to bring the right composer on board. If needed, I work with bands and artists to have original music written for the project. Producing the soundtrack album also falls under my duties. The biggest change over the years has been with regard to soundtrack albums, which are not the cash cow they were at one time. It's rare these days to get a large advance from a record label for a soundtrack, which used to be a reliable source of revenue for a film music budget. Soundtracks now are mostly marketing tools for a film or TV show.

TV programming has evolved so much in recent years, and the creative brain trust - our top writers, actors, producers, directors are all working in television, so I'd say that TV has really raised the bar as a creative outlet. Used to be that film was a better space to get creative with the use of music. I think television has now surpassed film in that regard.

Again, you're there to serve the drama, so you take your cues from the script and the characters that are on screen. I like to be bold and push the possibilities as much as possible. Ultimately, the tone of the piece is decided by the director and producer so we're at the mercy of their courage. My job is to present the best, boldest ideas - only ideas that I LOVE - and let them decide.

Yes, exactly. It's trial and error. You throw things again the picture and see what delights. Sometimes you'll work closely with the editors to shoehorn the music into place, in the best way possible to give the ideas their best chance.

Unless it is composed for the scene, it's always a happy accident. But often I will come across an artist that happens to be just right for a new project I'm working on. While working on Shrek 2, we had David Bowie's "Changes" temped in a scene that has Shrek and Donkey transforming into 'beautiful, sexier' versions of themselves. I felt the song could use an update, so I was looking for someone to cover the song. Of course the studio was encouraging me to find a big artist, but I just wanted to find someone that could nail it. I also really like introducing new artists if possible. Right around that time, I was having dinner with a friend who brought along a demo of an artist named Butterfly Boucher he was working with.

As I left, I listened to the demo, pulled over a few blocks away and called my friend to see if she would try to write something for another scene in the film. I met with her and within a week or so I had a new demo from her. While the song was lovely it didn't work for the scene, but it occurred to me that her voice could be right for the Bowie cover. She jumped at the chance and within the next week she sent me an astounding new version of the song. Everyone loved it. Of course, I had to send it to Bowie's camp to get his approval, since he was the writer. I nervously awaited his response, because I really thought the version of the song was perfect, and if he said no I wasn't sure what I would do.

His manager called me and said, "Yeah, David loves the new version, but there's one other thing." There was a pause. "Yeah?" I asked. "David wants know if it'd be alright if he joins her on the track, swapping verses." The version in the film and on the soundtrack features Butterfly Boucher and David Bowie.

Well you always want to do what's best for the project. Sometimes that's an established artist or a well-known song, but whenever possible, it’s always nice when you can introduce the world to something new. Think of how Harry Connick, Jr. was introduced to the world through When Harry Met Sally. Or Lisa Loeb through Reality Bites. As evidenced over the years in all of my work, I have a special fondness for bringing up new artistry in the world. I'm very proud of so many new artists that I’ve been able to bring to my projects: Butterfly Boucher and Imogen Heap in Shrek 2, Oren Lavie, Regina Spektor and Hanne Hukkelberg in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Nellie McKay's songs in Rumor Has It, Lucy Schwartz's songs in The Women. Also I really love it when I can help bring original new songs to the world from any artist. Some examples from my projects include Counting Crows "Accidentally in Love" from Shrek 2, Michael Kiwanuka's "It Always Comes Back Around" in House of Lies, Grizfolk's "Way Back When" in Mr. Peabody and Sherman, Alt- J in Sea of Trees, Elliott Smith's take on the Beatles "Because" from American Beauty, and the stunning Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello collaboration in Grace of My Heart.

Will Arnett is a big fan of Bon Iver and Local Natives, so I reached out to both camps. Natives were just finishing their new album and suggested we come listen. We all felt that song would play well in the show, so we found a way to work that out. Bon Iver was unavailable but the drummer of the band, Sean Carey has his own solo stuff too under the name S. Carey, which I love. Without telling Will, I asked Sean if he would write something on spec, which is just to write a song after reading the script to see if it's something we might be able to use. I suggested that he focus on the last scene of the premiere episode. I sent him a rough cut of the scene as well. He just nailed it. I showed it to Will and (co-creator) Mark Chappell and it was approved instantly.

While film budgets industry wide have declined overall, it's far more important now than it ever was for an artist to find placements in film, TV and commercials. Along with touring, it's one of the few remaining ways to find greater exposure, and bring in revenue for the artist to survive on. The importance of artist's maintaining relationships with music supervisors has risen accordingly.

Sometimes you don't want a song at the front of a film. Sometimes a score piece is best, sometimes silence works. Sometimes you want it right at the top to set a mood, like "Stayin' Alive" in Saturday Night Fever.

Sometimes you want the payoff musical moment to help leave the audience with a feeling at the end of the story: Elliott Smith in American Beauty. It's different for every project. Depends on the story.

I am especially fond of the soundtrack for the movie 187. It's the one and only film I ever worked on in which we never hired a composer. I essentially 'scored' the film entirely with licensed music. It was also my first main title film credit as music supervisor, which I’ve since gotten on every film since.

Handling the paperwork and clearances can be the least attractive aspect to the job, but I now work with people that actually enjoy it so I let them handle that side of things.

Among the ones I can talk about, we're starting season two of Flaked, the Netflix series created by Will Arnett, and we're doing a reboot of the famed Fox series 24, called 24: Legacy.

First, if you're doing it for the money, find another profession. It's become a very crowded, competitive field, since several universities now offer programs that include music supervision. I'm lucky to have other sources of income so I can still be selective with what projects I work on. If you still have an interest, I think it's very important for you to have a way to showcase your taste in music. Most of my work has come from the fact that filmmakers, directors, producers, and advertising executives are familiar with my radio show or with KCRW and come to me because they like my taste in music.

Photography provided | Interview by Heather Hawke