ONE ON ONE | John Davis Composer enjoys tempo of small-town life

When did you first find that you enjoyed creating music?
I was 9 years old, and my parents bought me a plastic clarinet for Christmas. The following year I had a real one from school. I joined the band, took lessons and seemed to have kind of a knack for it. I guess I had some innate ability that some people recognized and nurtured.
When I went through school, it was at a time when the school would still spend money on that kind of stuff to encourage it. And it was real good; I remember going through high school and I had theory classes, composition, arranging, stuff that kids today don't even get in college.
What type of music do you like?
I don't know if I can answer that. It's different things at different times. Anything from [metal singer] Ozzy [Osbourne] to rock to Beethoven. I probably don't have any favorite type. Anything that's good. I may not like the style, but I can appreciate it if it's done well, if there's some musical artistry. I do have a problem with rap because there's so little musical content.
What do you think of today's music?
I think it's OK. I like some of those boy groups, *NSync and those guys. Some of those songs are a little sugary, but they do it well.
What was the inspiration for your music?
You would always sit down with your producer, and he would give you some guidelines. You look at a scene, and the producer looks it over, and says, "Look, this was supposed to be funny. The actors were terrible. So give me some laughing clarinets here, do something funny. You've got to help us out."
Most of the time, you're trying to superimpose an emotion into a scene that the actors maybe didn't pull off properly. Or for some reason, the script didn't make it work. That was probably half the battle right there, filling in some holes.
Then there were these other ones where you just see it and it would just hit you, you just feel it right. That's where the real art came in. In the few instances where they give you enough time to develop that, because you're up against a clock every week.
They'd give you the film, maybe five or six days ahead of time, and then two days later, change everything. Then you'd have to go in, it's like a big math puzzle, and rearrange. You don't want the guy falling off the cliff while you're playing "Happy Birthday."
What goes into writing music for television?
It's funny, because the concept of music has changed so much in the last 10 or 15 years, from these big 40- to 50- piece orchestras, now everything's done electronically. Everything's done on MIDI keyboards, you're pretty much writing music on a computer. It's become a little more introverted, I think.
There's not that big, grand, bigger-than-life kind of musical scores like you'd hear on "Love Boat" and some of those kind of shows that were just so overdone. Now it just seems a little more intimate, a little more personal, much more high-tech than ever.
What about the theme songs?
Theme songs, you've got to hit something that, boy, just nails them the first time they hear it. It's got to be immediate. Most of the time it has to be pretty peppy, unless it's a stylized kind of show. ... You've got to make a whole battery of people happy too, before it even gets to the air.
What do you think of Canfield?
I like the people. It's kind of, and I don't mean this in an insulting way, it's a little backwards. Small-town USA. Nothing like this exists anywhere in the world that I've seen. [I've said to my wife,] "What a great little place to raise your kids."
Why decide to open the Koffee Korner?
I always thought about having a place like this. That's what I used to tell everybody, "Some day, I'm going to open a barbershop." Just hang out with people. When you're a writer, you're pretty much by yourself. I've been locked in a room for 20 years. I feel like I'm a raving lunatic. Put me with some people! I just wanted to open up sort of a "Cheers" kind of place, but not alcohol, with coffee. In California, they're all over the place. I figured the trend's got to hit back here. ... I wanted a neighborhood hangout kind of place.
What do you do to relax?
Spend time with my kids, hanging out with my kids. I have more fun with my kids than anything I do. I've been blessed with three really good kids, and my wife, we do everything together.