Interview: “Frog and Toad” Composer Mark Evitts
Are you hungry for delicious cookies too good to share? Does music help a garden grow? Composer Mark Evitts scored the answers to questions like this in the new Frog and Toad animated series based on the classic Arnold Lobel books.
Trendsetters since the 1970’s, Frog and Toad went viral on TikTok in 2023 as cottagecore icons, as profiled by Vox.
Toad plays the violin to help his seeds grow into a garden! Are you the live violinist playing for Toad? Living in the Nashville area, where do you go and what things do you do getting inspired for your composing work? Does it involve the outdoors?
Yes, that actually is me playing violin. Yeah, I did a lot of the different instruments in the show. I played some banjo. mandolin, violin, I did some piano, but a lot of the organic instruments were me playing them.
I live in Nashville. And I've lived here for I guess, like 18 years. And it's an interesting community, because it's the some of the best players in the world. Live in Nashville. It's a real players town. It's kind of musicians’ musicians. And it really does inspire you. And it really does make you a better player. When I first moved to town, I was reaching out to anyone I could that would that was having a live show. I would go down to there was a place called 12th and Porter. And I used to go down to 12th and Porter all the time and just watch live shows and watch players and see what they would do and how they would approach certain songs, a lot of it, you know, like pop country stuff, but it was always interesting to hear how the players would take take like a recorded song and how they're going to interpret that live. And so there was a lot of inspiration that was happening on that. But this was back pre-social media really. And so now there's so much social media.
And there's so much that inspires me that I see like up and coming players that do incredible things like in bluegrass and country, in pop. And there are also a lot of festivals that happen. They're outside, you're outside, you're playing in nature, especially in the bluegrass world, because you've got these acoustic instruments, and you've got wide open spaces. And that is like my background. I grew up playing in bluegrass festivals and folk festivals. They're rarely inside, you're outside, for a lot of these.
Frog makes the most disastrous cake with leaving eggshells and everything wrong in it, but Toad insists it is the best cake ever because his friend made it. In the music for this series, and anything else in your career, what are some choices that felt wrong but ended up working great for the music?
I was a touring musician for years, and I wanted to get into composing. And I knew I had to take that leap. I knew I had to get out of touring because it takes a lot of time and energy, and obviously, it's a career in itself. So by going into composing, I knew I was gonna have to get out of touring. So I left my job touring. And I started e-mailing a bunch of people and calling, cold emailing and finding anyone that would want to go to coffee with me, and to where I could just talk to other composers and figure out like, “What did they do? How did they do it?” So I had reached out to this guy. His name is Alex Geringas. And Alex was kind enough to invite me to a studio. So I'm living in Nashville. He's in Los Angeles. And he said, “Why don't you come by this Thursday?”
I booked a flight and flew out to Los Angeles and met with him at his studio. And when I met with him, I thought, “I want to sound like a composer. I want to come across as if I do this all the time.” So I kind of put on these airs about myself that I thought were the right thing to do. And in my head, I thought, “You shouldn't tell him that you're a fiddle player. You shouldn't tell him that you play mandolin and banjo. You shouldn't say any of those things. It's going to come across as too country boy.” But in my head, I knew that it was wrong to pretend to be something I'm not. So in the middle of talking to Alex, I just go, “I’m a country boy from from Nashville, Tennessee.” I thought that he would see that as bad.
Immediately, he was way more interested because I was my authentic self. And I was who I actually am. And he immediately was like, “Oh, let me hear more about that.” And he showed me this movie that he was working on called Arlo the Alligator Boy for Netflix. And he said, “Would you want to co-write some of these cues with me? This is about an alligator from the swamps of Louisiana. What do we think about like co-writing some of this stuff together?” So when I was my authentic self, I actually got work, as opposed to putting on the airs and being something that I wasn’t.
Frog and Toad has a slight country and I want to say almost bluegrass inspiration to the music in some scenes. As someone whose great uncle left country music on all day and night whenever I stayed at his house and helped expose me to classic country a lot, I appreciated how it was a really nice direction because many animated shows follow the same musical formats. How has your background working with country music been beneficial for your composing career? Outside of Frog and Toad, where else has having that genre skill been valuable?
That's so cool that you have a family connection to country music because that's ultimately what the genre is all about. My hometown is Paducah, Kentucky, and Paducah. Kentucky is interesting in its geographic location, that it is halfway between Chicago and New Orleans. It’s a riverboat town. So it's got this jazz background, but it also has some Dixieland that it pulls up. But not only that, it's Kentucky. So it's got like folk Appalachian music, it's got bluegrass. Kentucky is the home of bluegrass music. The closest larger city is Nashville, Tennessee. So it's sort of a cauldron of different types of music. And this was this was my background. In the 1980’s.My dad was actually on a country music game show because he just knows so much about the genre.
Country music, folk music and Americana music is very important to my family. So I think it's awesome that you have this familial connection to the genre because like I said, that's what it's about. Those genres are very close to my heart. And it's easy to access emotions, and themes that are happening in Frog and Toad, like friendship and loyalty. Having a background in these styles gives my composing a pretty unique personality. It allows me to kind of explore these genres in sort of a deeper way that I've experienced growing up outside of Frog and Toad. I worked with Alex Geringas on Arlo the Alligator Boy, and it was those kinds of authentic sounds, those organic sounds that ultimately drew us together and allowed us to work so easily together, because he knew that I had this background.
To many, the Frog and Toad books and series may be a cute fantasy world. What they do not know is how well Arnold Lobel captured a pre-social media obsessed New York. Frog and Toad is exactly what it is like whenever I have been around native New Yorkers throughout my life. People of all ages asking you to come over to bake a cake, go to the park, attend a going away party for elderly leaving Manhattan, and saying hello everywhere people run into you. The rudeness that people complain about is from the mean people moving to New York or the expected types, and when you get into the “core of the Big Apple,” it’s the friendliest city I have ever met. Had I been involved with the TV series, these are the personal experiences I would have used. What life experiences, imagery, sounds, culture and more did you draw on for working with Frog and Toad?
I'm excited that you've had those experiences in a community because that is exactly what I was trying to emote through the music of Frog and Toad, a sense of community, and a sense of shared lived experiences. Co-writing in Nashville is all about one thing, collaboration. It's really the thing that you hear when you go to writer's rounds, or you go to a show or wherever you are, is, “Do you want to write?” Everybody's wanting to co-write and collaborate. And there's a bumper sticker: “Whatever words you want to write, right?” That's sort of the personality of Nashville is to co-write and to collaborate. So I took that with me to Frog and Toad, and everything was about, “How can I collaborate with the animators? How do I how do I collaborate with the producers? How do I collaborate with everyone?”
With the animation, I'm watching the way Frog is walking. I’m watching his gait and the movement of of everything that the animators put so much time into. I've spoken with Sarah Johnson, who is the director of the of the show, and she told me that for months, she was thinking about how to make Frog walk. Well, why wouldn't I incorporate that into the music? So every time that I would see Frog walking, that's when I'm thinking, “How can I give this some movement with the music?” When I'm seeing him, he's got a musical walk to him. The first thing I would do is lay down a drum and upright bass pattern to the way he walks, and then I'm adding all the other colour and the characteristics that the animation has set up for me to do. For me, family and friends are super important. And I did this with the themes and motifs. I wanted everything to feel familial, and I wanted it to feel this way. So each character has their own motif or their own theme. And so I really wanted to incorporate that into the writing as well. The visuals of being outside and Frog and Toad are important to me. We grow vegetables here at our house. I use that experience for several episodes. They live the country life, as do I, and I wanted to incorporate that into the music.
The ice cream song and kite song are the cutest things. When you were crafting these songs, how did you make them so they were ready to sing along to at home for kids?
Well, thank you so much. I appreciate that. The mindset behind the melodic structure of everything I did with Frog and Toad was based on, “How can I keep this simple, yet sophisticated?” I saw an interview with Arnold Lobel where he talked about the efficiency of words, and how he tried to keep everything really simple and tight. If he didn't have to use a word, he wouldn't. And there was a word, avalanche. And he was thinking, “How do I find a simpler word for that?” Ultimately, he couldn't. And so what he did was, he was like, “OK, I'm gonna take this opportunity to introduce this larger word to a very young audience.”
But that was his whole mindset. “How do I do things with efficient, simple sophistication?” So I took this exact same approach. My whole mindset around this was, “I’m looking for folk melodies, and I'm looking for jazz standards.” What were the similarities? What were the patterns in folk melodies? What are the patterns in jazz standards? I mean, I feel like I have a million books on fiddle tunes, and jazz standards. And so I took that approach and writing. I would play something that I thought was right, and I would play it and then I would go back over it, and I would clean it up and I would say, “How can I make this simpler? How can I do this and effectively create a melody that is getting to what the emotion is but also keeping it as simple as possible?” So that's how I tried to think in terms for this. I knew that if I followed what was already there, folk tunes and jazz standards and just make them my own, I knew that this was going to be immediately singable and immediately familiar to the audience. But in a way that's unique to Frog and Toad.
Arnold Lobel’s books mask lots of hidden pain. Raised by his grandparents in upstate New York, the kids at school bullied him. As an adult, he got divorced after being closeted but died of AIDS a decade after coming out as LGBTQ, so he hardly got to enjoy the freedom of being himself. Like WandaVision’s Scarlett Witch, he too created a imaginary perfect world of happiness based on sitcoms he loved. Modern day fans see a hidden dream of LGBTQ life in the TV series, and his daughter said, “I think ‘Frog and Toad’ really was the beginning of him coming out.” How did all of this backstory influence your composing for the series? How do you feel that LGBTQ fans have a new reason to fall in love with the stories and show?
The goal was to stay true to the themes and messages of Arnold Lobel’s original books and allow audiences to approach the characters, the storyline from their own points of view. My ultimate hope was that the audience forms their own interpretation of Frog and Toad, while they continue to explore the special relationship between Frog and Toad. I think it's wonderful that the LGBTQ community sees the stories as promoting friendship in every form, and the qualities that come with the close bond that Frog and Toad have, that support, loyalty, unwavering love, these are all great things. And I love that a community wants to spread these beautiful qualities of Frog and Toad.
A fun fact about you: you studied comedy at The Groundlings! What was your reason for seeking this opportunity? Do you have any intentions to act, direct or write comedy projects?
I love that you know that. I'm a huge fan of comedy, writing characters. I think The Groundlings are like the best improv theatre for character creation. Yes, it's had some amazing people that have come out of it. Kristen Wiig, Will Ferrell, amazing, amazing alumni that have that have come from The Groundlings. So I took advantage of several online classes that they offered during the pandemic, and I studied writing and character development under greats like Karen Maruyama and Brian Palermo and Julie Welsh. And I wanted to take a deeper dive into what makes a character a character.
They were on Zoom at the time, but I went into these classes with that mindset that I'm just a composer. I'm not trying to act. I'm not trying to write. They didn't really care that I was a composer. They were so great and embraced me, and even though I felt like I was the outsider going in, no one in the classes, none of the teachers ever made me feel like an outsider, and it actually helped quite a lot.
Each character in the show has their own motif, and they have their own set sound and perspective. With a character like Snail who was voiced by Aparna Nancherla, she did this really cool thing where it was this excitement and always optimistic and just moving lines, like. “We’re really moving today!” But if you're watching it, Snail is just moving slowly. I mean, Snail has a smile, but it's moving pretty slowly. Well, I wanted to build on what Aparna had already brilliantly created. And so what I did was the music is banjos and spoons and things that are rhythmic and things that are moving very quickly. And so the classes I took during The Groundlings really helped me explore how to do those things effectively. And I tried to marry that together with music, and I had a lot of fun doing it.
When graduating with any performing arts degree, things can go either way. I used to know a woman who graduated from Juilliard and worked as a realtor. It’s about so much more than the knowledge. What are your tips for transitioning from a music degree into being a studio level film composer? What was your Berklee experience like?
So right after high school, I went to a college called Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky. It’s pretty close to my hometown. And I met a guy there named Chris Thile. And Chris is a brilliant mandolin player and just a wonderful composer in his own right.
Chris and I would play music together. And Chris told me flat out like, “You need to be playing music, full time. You should be doing that.” Because at the time, I wasn’t. I was in a couple bands and that kind of thing. And that was about it. But Chris really encouraged me. And he did not encourage me to do this. But I dropped out of college and said, “I just want to pursue music. And so I joined bands, and I toured, and I did all these things. And I knew that I had always wanted to go back to school. And so I decided Berkelee had online classes. And so I was like, “Well, I'm gonna give this a shot and see how well this works about me going back to school.”
The great thing about Berkelee was, first of all, the community you get, it's really, really great. Everybody is so good and has their own personality and things that they bring. And you get to see these, especially in composition classes, where you go, “OK, here's how to approach this, here's how to do this assignment,” to where it's done, and I got all of the requirements met, and I did all these things. And then you see what other people do, and you go, “Wow, this is the power of creativity, and the power of of the human experience,” because nothing sounds the same, yet, it still has empathy. It still has all the things that you're looking for, and it's whatever that person's life experiences are where you can sort of hear that in the music. So it's a fantastic experience to see that in the community. Another great thing that Berkelee does is it has the systematic way of naming things and coming at it from its own perspective in the way that an institution should. I definitely have taken that from Berkelee. Now, the one thing that Berklee tells you to do, but a lot of people don’t, is reaching out to other people. They're always saying, “Get to know your classmates. Get to know other people in the industry.” And a lot of people don't do that. They don't take the time to network. They're so focused on getting an A or getting through the class. Rightfully, so I understand. But at the same time networking, getting to know others, hearing about their own story
is, I think equally as important. That was a real big part of my coming up is that I didn't have this institution. I had dropped out of school. All I had was taking people to coffee and getting to know people and networking. So I think Berkelee is great. And it's an amazing institution. And you should get to know people.
Second most likely reader wants to know question. What is the easiest way to make a low budget score sound expensive?
With Frog and Toad, I used a hybrid approach. I programmed bass and drums and some of the string stuff. Some of the woodwind stuff, I programmed. But there is a lot that I played with real instruments, and I think this is the key. If you want to make something sound more expensive, record yourself with a decent microphone, have some good sound proofing, have a good quality recording, but blend in real things with your sample libraries. It definitely will make things sound more expensive.
It sounds like you've hired players, and they could just be you doing it, but it definitely brings a higher quality to your recordings. I think also getting to know your sample libraries is very important. I try to really dig in. I dig into mic placements. I dig into kind of what makes that sample library. They can be expensive. And if you're only using the things that they've kind of put at the the first level, you're not really getting your money's worth. You should dig in. You should find out what mics placement sounds the best on what instrument, what makes that instrument library unique. And I think blending your own way of recording with these kinds of professional tools really can heighten your recordings. It's going to give it a little bit more personality. I think it'll make it sound more expensive. It definitely gives it a little bit more of a unique factor. And doesn't sound so stock or so out of the box.
What do you like to do when you aren’t working?
I feel like I'm working all the time. I do have a great family and I spend time with them. Obviously, I love watching movies and TV and doing those things, but also we love cooking and trying new foods, trying new drinks. My son and I love The Simpsons. We watch it all the time. He’s seen more Simpsons episodes than I have, and that that is weird to me. Because I thought I was the biggest Simpsons fan. But yeah, I just love spending time with my family. We have a garden here. I love going out with that. I love eating the food from the garden. So yeah, I feel like I do work all the time. But when I'm not I try to hold those that are around me pretty close. And that's ultimately what I think Frog and Toad would do.
