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| Robin Finck @ the Blossom Music Center, Ohio (Photo: Kevin Keating) |
Acclaimed artist and composer Danny Elfman is set to bring his electrifying live show 'From Boingo, to Batman, to BigMess, and Beyond' to the Shoreline Amphitheater on Sunday, November 3rd. Among the talented musicians joining him on stage will be guitarist Robin Finck, a formidable presence in the rock world for over three decades. Best known for his work with Nine Inch Nails, Finck has left an indelible mark on the landscape of alternative and hard rock. His distinctive style, characterized by intense, atmospheric playing and innovative use of effects, has contributed to some of the most iconic albums and tours of the past 30 years. Beyond his work in Nine Inch Nails, Finck has also collaborated with a diverse array of artists, but has also launched a video game development studio called Eyes Out. As he prepares to lend his considerable talents to Elfman's boundary-pushing performance at the Hollywood Bowl and Shoreline Amphitheater this Halloween (tickets here), we sat down with Finck to discuss how he teamed up with Danny and how he's migrated from music to gaming as a co-founder of Eyes Out and their upcoming game, Sleep Awake.
SFBayAreaConcerts: Robin, first off, thanks for making the time today to speak with me! Let's dig right into the Danny topic first, you've been playing with him for the past couple years now. You contributed to his recent album, Big Mess. Looking from the outside-in, he's leaned into Nine Inch Nails contributors -- Ilan Rubin's on this tour, Josh Freese has performed with him as well. How did you start working with Danny?
Robin Finck: Yeah, let's see. First, I received a call from Ilan Rubin, of all people, who told me that Danny was looking to put a band together for that Coachella experience a couple years ago. That was intended to play in 2020, just as covid was going on. And I believe Ilan was unavailable at that time. And I think he told me in that call that Josh Freese was either going to be asked or had already said yes, I forget which. But yeah, I was excited to receive that call from Ilan. I went to meet with Danny, and we got on, and pretty soon we were in rehearsal together at his place with Stu Brooks on bass. Josh was there playing the drums. And yeah, this was for the Coachella dates. Then soon after, four of us were in the room, Nili (Brosh) joined as well. And so we were alive and kicking.
And well, like the rest of the world, we started to hear in kind of fits and starts or drips and drabs, that there were people getting sick, and it was becoming a worldwide phenomenon. But also maybe not unlike the rest of us, we thought, surely, this is, you know, let's check in on Monday and see where things are at. We were kind of watching that in real time as we were at the onset of our rehearsals that January, maybe into February. And I think the big one was when we heard that one of the big sporting events was shut down. I forget if it was a basketball game or something that, a big pro league event had been thwarted, and we thought, 'oh, no, you don't think that they're going to get out to the polo field over at Coachella and it's going to be a problem out there, right? It's really far from town. We should be good. Maybe somebody knows the fire department or...'
I was driving home from a rehearsal, still sweating through my t-shirt and jeans, and I saw Danny's name calling in on the dashboard, and I thought, 'Oh no.' I just... I was braced for, it's off. It's all off, not just for us, the event is off. So that was the beginning of that episode of heartbreak for me and how it showed up.
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| Robin Finck @ the Blossom Music Center, Ohio (Photo: Kevin Keating) |
But later that summer, that band, we were called to Danny's to record the Big Mess record. And that was an inspired affair. We had already had a bit of time to be playing together when we were rehearsing for the Coachella event, but when we went to track for the record, that was high covid season, where everyone was in masks, and there were back doors in and out, and lunching separately and outdoors and all that. So it was a challenging experience in that regard, but yeah, we got to play on a large handful of songs. I received demos from Danny via email, just sharing .wavs [files] back and forth. And it was really fun to receive them. They were remarkably unpolished and really just raw inspiration plugged straight into the laptop. And even he was kind of quarantined away from his rigs and his studio and engineers, etc. So he was stewing in an alternative location there for a while. And yeah, it was a blast to receive those and to be included, and then ultimately to go and share my sensibility on it all. And later, I think it was maybe later that year that Coachella was not at that time, wasn't canceled in April. It was postponed from April to October. And then, of course, October came and it was, everything was still, just done. And so by the time it did happen for Danny and the band, they did play Coachella, I think it was the following year, I was committed to Nine Inch Nails, and so I introduced them to Wes Borland, and that was great. So they got to do that thing. And I don't know, sometime after that, I got a call again, and I was available. So I was grateful to be able to step back in and see it through to the stage, at least once.
So to come back again, we're kind of like skipping stones across the calendar? I think part of that is it's such a large body of performers -- to move that village, to take that show on tour, I think it would be a fiscal challenge.
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| Robin Finck @ the Joint, Las Vegas (Photo: Kevin Keating) |
SFBAC: How big is the tour? Is there a full orchestra?
Robin Finck: Yeah, an orchestra and the choir and percussionists. There's a lot of folks up there. So that's why we've been doing, when we do play, they're close to home -- a bus ride away.
SFBAC: When you got the call from Rubin, how familiar with Danny's work were you?
Robin Finck: Well, Nightmare Before Christmas made a huge impression on me when it was new. It was wildly unique. Interestingly, I didn't know at the time, and for many, many, many years, I had never known that the voice of Jack was, in fact, Danny Elfman's voice, that light bulb just kind of like splintered above me when I put the two together. So I was aware of that film in particular, and the other Tim Burton films, of course... I knew him as a film composer, less so as Oingo Boingo. But I had a peripheral awareness of all things eclectic, eccentric, left field, off... And I really welcomed that opportunity to be involved with him.
SFBAC: So going into a show like this, given the range of content that Danny has, going from Oingo to Big Mess, and all the soundtrack work in between... Do you need to get into different headspaces to practice and learn the material? What's your process like when you're learning this stuff?
Robin Finck: Well, I take it one song at a time, and I build a chart for myself, rudimentary, a crude crayon chart of the arrangement. And some of it was, some of the songs, especially the Big Mess material is a challenge of arrangement because there are so many intentional shifts in bars and time signatures and things. Eventually, after I had started to listen, learn and make notes myself, eventually we were offered the manuscript from Danny's folks. And it was then that I got to see, oh, all of these strange hiccups that I'd been just hieroglyphing myself in a notepad, were actually a bar of 2/4 into 5/4 into 'stop', and then it's 3/4, and then, the intro's different than the outro by a beat... things like this. So it's interesting to see that that was all very intentional and premeditated, although it feels somewhat natural, if we give it a minute.
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| Robin Finck @ the Bill Graham, San Francisco (Photo: Kevin Keating) |
SFBAC: Does Danny give you direction on how close to the original arrangement he wants you all to stay? Or do you all show up with different ideas at the rehearsals and try and shift or influence the songs at all?
Robin Finck: Yeah, no. Danny wants to hear something new all the time. He's all about, how this band sounds today. So he's very much open to interpretation. And, re-approaching the sound, the instrumentation. We even changed the arrangements, together with Danny. Tempos, all this. Yeah, and there's some trial and error there. We've taken a couple of swings at some of the Boingo material, and kind of landed maybe where we where we started, or eventually found some great, big, improvisational, mid, middle section that we decide we like and want to keep. It's cool. It's a very welcoming space to be at these rehearsals. And yeah, all voices are heard and appreciated. It's cool.
SFBAC: How about Danny himself, working with him? Anything that's surprised you? You've collaborated with a number of artists before, although you're probably closest to Trent Reznor, but anything that's unique about Danny that surprised you or that you've taken away that really inspired you?
Robin Finck: Yeah, his immediacy. To act upon inspiration. To really, to have an idea and to immediately get it down, and to demo the idea, and then to share the demo quickly! With so many of us, and really, to kind of catch the spirit of a song, including and especially the lyrics and melody. And I feel like you'd have to talk to Danny about this, to be sure, but I feel like he's always approaching everything brand new. I don't really hear a lot of method to his madness. You know? I feel like each song comes from a void. And as a brand new reintroduction to something brand new, and that's really neat about him.
SFBAC: This is more of an observation, and less of a question. But you're kind of now connected to two really prolific theme soundtrack composers, Danny of the 80s and 90s and Trent of the more modern age. Feels like just coincidence or 'right place, right time' - Have you thought about that at all? Has that ever crossed your mind?
Robin Finck: It has not, but I could allow it to cross my mind now... I'm really open about what's available to my journey here forward, I really follow my nose an awful lot, to be quite honest with you, and I'm anchored in a a broad sense of excited expectation of something wonderful. (chuckles) And so no, I hadn't been attempting to thread toward film composers.
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| Robin Finck @ the Greek, Berkeley (Photo: Kevin Keating) |
SFBAC: When you perform live your body -- you get into a zone, you go through contortions on stage. You evoke, not only emitting energy to the crowd, but I think you pull that in too, and I think that you use that to support the performance itself. My question is, how will the energy differ from a Danny Elfman concert to a Nine Inch Nails concert? Or is it the same type of energy, the same type of Robin that we'll see on stage, or is it more subdued?
Robin Finck: It's a different energy, because the songs are a different energy, and the audience is a different energy. And so I'm finding my place in it all with both Nine Inch Nails, Danny or whomever I have an opportunity to play with. My seminal years were with Nine Inch Nails. So I'm always, really kind of hardened. Or rather, there's an indelible imprint from those early Nails tours that really shaped who I have become and who I continue to become. And the songs, the audience, and with Nine Inch Nails, I spend a lot of time at the mic, and that's something that's dear to me in that setting, and something I'm not doing with Danny's set.
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| Robin Finck @ the Greek, Berkeley (Photo: Kevin Keating) |
SFBAC: No background vocals or just less?
Robin Finck: Not for me. Also, I'm on stage right for the first time in my life!
SFBAC: Wow! Interesting! How is that for you?
Robin Finck: Oh, man! (chuckling) I feel like I'm on the wrong side of it all. I warm up to it. It's actually interesting to me, because, you know, everything else is flipped on its ear for me from my normal operation. So it's cool.
It's fun to be playing with Ilan through this all with Danny. I think he and I kind of get to share a side-eye sometimes, going 'Wow, where are we right now?' It's neat to see a familiar face in this unfamiliar setting. Although, as I hear myself say, unfamiliar, it's very familiar by this point. You know? We're all very familial and really close. We get to do these in such, kind of quick bursts, these Elfman shows. So everyone's really kind of working them into otherwise busy schedules. And it's a lot of high, focused, concentrated energy in a short amount of time. And then it's over, it's like the last day of camp. And we think, goodbye for now, and now we're getting to do it all over again. So that's really cool.
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| Robin Finck @ the Blossom Music Center, Ohio (Photo: Kevin Keating) |
SFBAC: Well, we're looking forward to the show coming up here on November 3rd at Shoreline and can't wait! Now besides this Danny Elfman show, you're also keeping busy with your video game company, Eyes Out, and your first release, Sleep Awake.
Robin Finck: Yeah! Eyes Out is the development studio Cory Davis and I co-founded and are co-creative directors of, our first game project is currently published by Blumhouse Games, Sleep Awake.
Blumhouse Games announced their release slate at the Summer Games Fest, and we were one of the first six or so developers to be included. That was really an announcement that Blumhouse Games exists and here are our first developer announcements. So we're eagerly anticipating our more focused announcement for our game, Sleep Awake. That has yet to occur and we can't wait to share our first teasers and assets and a bit about our world and process, but we're not yet there, we're not at that conversation yet.
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| Robin Finck @ the Joint, Las Vegas (Photo: Kevin Keating) |
SFBAC: How's development going?
Robin Finck: Oh, come on, that's a loaded question! (laughter)
SFBAC: Ha! Have you entered crunch yet? (laughter)
Robin Finck: It's always going, which I have learned, and will continue to know, that if it's going, it's going well, because I am very well aware that there can be tumultuous times with a lot of studios who are mid-development. My heart bleeds for them when I hear stories of standstill for these developers and these projects. So we're very grateful to be moving forward. We're under 20 people, and we're looking forward to an announcement with quite a bit more meat on the bone coming up soon. We don't have an announced release date just yet.
SFBAC: With the studio just under 20 people, does the team work from an office or have you supported a WFH distributed development model?
Robin Finck: No, we came up at the rise of covid at the top of 2020 when we started to onboard our team. So that really forced, and at the same time, inspired us to seek developers, outside of Los Angeles. We thought we were going to be an LA crew -- until the world went away, and so we became a remote crew. We have a large Los Angeles contingency, but we're also all over the country and a few international as well.
SFBAC: My day job is also in the games industry so I'm aware of the challenges of remote working especially on development teams. What do you think of the arrangement and if it will evolve in the future?
Robin Finck: We we sure miss being with one another, and being able to have that shared space and that face time. But for now, remote has been working well for us. As I said, we got to meet really gifted and inspired developers that we otherwise wouldn't be working with, had it not been for that. So we do well with Zoom and Discord and Slack and all that stuff. It's funny, I feel like I know them because they're all over my screens all day long. I did get to meet a few of them when Nine Inch Nails toured in 2022, some of the folks came to Red Rocks, or we met in Philadelphia, and I saw them for the first time in the flesh. And that was really fun.
SFBAC: But to back-up, how did you meet Cory Davis? How did that come about?
Robin Finck: Yeah, I was pursuing an interest in sound design and score for games, really audio and music driven. And I was attending game conferences, and really just putting one foot in front of the other and meeting one individual at a time. And this is not my strong suit. You must know this! (chuckles) That was an enormous challenge, and continues to be, but I was doing it!
I was at GameSoundCon in LA here. This is years ago, and it's happening over my birthday. I was really dragging my heels about going, but it's an annual event, and it was gonna happen with or without me and I had put off going for the early bird ticket special. And I watched the price go up, and I said, 'All right, now I'm in!' (laughter) And so, yeah, I went there, and I met, like everybody. You kind of meet too many people at once. And then one of the folks I met was working at Sony Santa Monica. So after that weekend, I had met him at the water cooler at GameSoundCon. He went back to the water cooler at Sony Santa Monica and was chatting with Cory Davis, and said, 'Oh, I met this guy, Robin.' Cory was like, 'No way, Robin? Do you think Robin would come down to play test?' They're having lots of people play test. Here They Lie, a PSVR headset launch title that Cory was creative director on. So I was happy to receive the invitation. I went down and played the beta of Here They Lie, and maybe more importantly, got to meet Cory all the while. And we really just touched antennas about all the important stuff, art and movies and music, and you know, everything, large and small, and exchanged contact info. And then something happened, which rarely happens, I exchanged contact info, and then we actually called one another. (laughter) Which is, I don't know, I thought, sometimes you forget that's where that's headed. So, yeah, we stayed in touch, and then I became available in a musical capacity to projects that he was heralding thereafter. And so we got to work in that capacity. We got to kind of square up around concept and ideas and workflow and Google Sheets and the all of it.
And then one day late, 2018, December, 2018. It was the day after, I think, the day after the final Nails show at the Palladium. I went to Cory's house, and we talked about what it might be like to start a studio together. We also started photo bashing, art and environment, ideas, characters started to, kind of have titles for things, and we'd be at the whiteboard, foot-printing levels and things. It really just started to, it was something that this world, that we're continuing to evolve and develop with our now current team at Eyes Out, really started at his spot. And so, yeah, we made the commitment to one another, and we worked together all of 2019 on pitch materials, a playable prototype, building out this world, the narrative, the gameplay, the art and the environments, and we had the help of an Epic MegaGrant from the beginning. We were one of the first ones to receive a MegaGrant. And we also had the help of several key developers that Cory had worked with previously that were on the Here They Lie team and others -- that was the beginnings of Eyes Out with us. So we're very fortunate to be continuing to really bring this to life and to see it take shape beyond our wildest dreams, it's awesome. I can't wait for people to see it.
SFBAC: Wow, that's great! I had always assumed you were just focused on the music and maybe sound effects for Sleep Awake!
Robin Finck: No, Cory and I really ideated as I was saying -- the characters, story, dialog, gameplay environments, together. So no, I'm not just the music guy!
SFBAC: Amazing! So what can we expect from Sleep Awake? What were some of your gaming inspirations?
Robin Finck: At the onset of what we're doing, we were looking at games like Layers of Fear or Soma, Bioshock, Amnesia. Experiential mazes like Anti-Chamber or PT. Narrative driven games like Stanley Parable, Alan Wake, Firewatch. Of course Spec Ops: The Line. Stealth games like Outlast, Alien Isolation. Chase games like Sequences. Inventory in Amnesia or Splinter Cell. Lots of puzzles. Around the onset of us knocking together, it's when Control came out of the blue. Observer and The Medium. What Remains of Edith Finch is the big one.
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| Robin Finck @ the Blossom Music Center, Ohio (Photo: Kevin Keating) |
SFBAC: I'm assuming you guys are just focused on Sleep Awake right now. Do you have other projects being sketched out or in the background?
Robin Finck: Yes, we do. And we have for a bit, and we're starting to eye our production cycle to where we're having conversations about what's next.
SFBAC: Excellent! Well, I want to wish you all the best for Sleep Awake and can't wait to play it on the PS5 -- but before that, we can't wait for the Danny Elfman show here in just a few weeks now! Hope it's a great show and best of luck with Eyes Out Robin! Thanks again for your time!
