He joined the B-52s for the twang. But sacred harp singing brings him to Melbourne

The twang was the ticket for Pat Irwin. To this day, the New York composer, guitarist and keyboard player finds it hard to describe the feeling he got from the Ventures, the Washington group that popularised the electric guitar as a lead instrument, or from the “scary” vibrations of John Barry’s Goldfinger and Thunderball soundtracks in his youth.

“The sound. The sound. So evocative,” he says, shaking his head in his New York studio. “It just hit me in the sweet spot.” He heard something similar in the B-52s, the oddball Atlanta pop band of Planet Claire and Love Shack fame, before he joined them in 1989 for a few weeks that turned into 18 years. “I love being taken to a place by music,” he says. Which is cool because from working with John Cage in mid-1970s Paris to joining New York’s No Wave rock melee in the ’80s, to a swath of scene-setting scores for film and TV shows, travel by thought or deed has kept Irwin busy for six decades.

What brings him to Melbourne, musically speaking, is grounded in another place entirely. The Hall is a musical theatre piece by Irwin and New Zealand writer Ro Bright, down for its world premiere at fortyfivedownstairs this month. It draws on a very particular kind of choral music called sacred harp singing: a sound as viscerally transporting as any you’ll hear.

“It’s part of that Old, Weird America,” Irwin says, borrowing writer Greil Marcus’ book to describe a dark, tangled neck of the folk music woods. “Mostly it comes from a Scottish, Irish and English combination of folk music and church music that landed in a hymnal called The Original Sacred Harp.”

Irwin in his New York studio: “I love being taken to a place by music.”

First published in Georgia in 1844, the songbook collected Baptist hymns from the hills of Appalachia, recorded in a suitably weird notation called shape notes. As devotional music goes, its clamorous, pagan attack is a long way from the pious cadences and upright manners of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. “It’s this beautiful, austere, primitive, social choral music,” Irwin says. “I’ve been to a couple of churches that were singing from that hymnal, and it’s very, very powerful and energetic and raw; ancient melodies that seemed timeless to me. When you get a good head of steam going and a bunch of great singers, it can get pretty raucous.”

Bright began to fall for sacred harp while studying film composing under Irwin at New York University. At one convention of more than 400 singers, “the roof felt like it was going to blow off”, the writer says. A decade later, The Hall was conceived “to capture the immersive feeling of sacred harp within a story about a family’s battle to stay together”. When Bright asked Irwin to collaborate, he sensed adventure.

“I’d never [written] it before,” Irwin says. “It’s basically four-part singing … but you can almost feel the cold and the wind and the earth in parallel lines. I didn’t want to copy it, but I really love adventurous choral singing, so I guess I was drawing on that.”

He mentions the work of contemporary classical and avant-garde composers Caroline Shaw, Philip Glass and Steve Reich, though in terms of significance more broadly, none compare to Cage’s influence. As a young man, Irwin’s chance meeting with the great American composer and music theorist in Paris cemented his resolve to become a musician. “He was the kindest, most generous composer I’ve met,” Irwin says. “He had so much conviction, and he cared so much about his music, and music in general, and the power of music. He found music in all sorts of different places that were hardly conventional. And at that point, it was all very new to me.

TAKE 7: THE ANSWERS ACCORDING TO PAT IRWIN

1. Worst habit? Not taking enough breaks.
2. Greatest fear? Not being able to make music.
3. The line that has stayed with you? William Burroughs said, “Paranoia is knowing all the facts.” 
4. Biggest regret? I don’t think I have any.
5. Favourite book? Silence by John Cage. That’s a real treasure.
6. The artwork or song you wish was yours? I don’t really wish anything was mine, but I really admire Dream Baby Dream by Suicide, Einstein on the Beach by Philip Glass and Music for 18 Musicians by Steve Reich.
7. If you could time travel, where would you choose to go? I’m fine with right now. I mean, I’m happy to stroll down memory lane, but I’m happy where I am.

“It’s one thing to be a fan and know [his work], but to actually work with him up close … he had very, very powerful and passionate ideas about what music could be … His sense of joy and curiosity is with me all the time.”

Cage’s work ethic was another aspect of his character that rubbed off. Returning to New York, Irwin threw himself into dizzying permutation of so-called “no wave” experimental musicians – Suicide, DNA, the Contortions, and Teenage Jesus and the Jerks – culminating in the short-lived but memorable 8 Eyed Spy with Lydia Lunch and future Bad Seed Jim Sclavunos. “New York was a place where you could do that kind of thing,” Irwin says. “This was music coming after the big bands that we know and love: Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Television, Blondie … it just turned me upside down. Like, ‘Oh my god. This is scary and weird and powerful’. They were taking rock and roll into a new place.”

When the B-52s breezed in from Georgia, they brought another perspective to the musical landscape of the time. “What appealed to me is that instead of finding the darkness, they found light,” Irwin says. “Not all the music is light and funny. It’s got some depth and grit. And that’s my kind of band. When Kate [Pierson] asked me to join, I said, ‘Hell yeah’. When she and Cindy [Wilson] sing together, it still thrills me.”

In 1993, their vocal harmony and Fred Schneider’s Rock Lobster bark were unmistakable elements in the theme tune to a cult Nickelodeon cartoon show called Rocko’s Modern Life. It was a breakthrough for Irwin’s next step as a screen composer, one which has kept him jumping right up to this conversation. Deadlines for the latest series of Dexter: Original Sin are “relentless and unforgiving”, he says with a nervous laugh.

We’ve run out of time to talk much about SUSS, an ambient, country-tinted trio in which Irwin gets to indulge his twin passion of twangin’ guitar and vivid invocations of space: their half dozen albums are heavily weighted with songs named after towns, landforms, planets and other places to soak in with your feet up.

We can only cover his stint as a book reviewer for The New York Times in passing, too. Reviewing The Rolling Stones 50 in 2012, he quoted Malcolm Gladwell’s philosophy that “what distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works”.

Never mind the Stones. It sounds like he may have been referring to himself. “Well, that’s definitely part of the deal,” he says. “I really need to recharge my batteries, otherwise I’m not going to be good for much pretty soon. But I mean, I’m not here to fool around. I’m here to work hard. I don’t think about it any other way.”

The Hall by Ro Bright and Pat Irwin runs from November 21 to December 1 at fortyfivedownstairs.com.