You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishikesh Herway.

Last week, Netflix released the fifth season of Bojack Horseman. In the opening credits of the first episode of Season 5, as the theme song plays,

there's a shot of Bojack in the foreground and in the background on a TV, there's a drawing of a man with a saxophone and the date's 1956 to 2017.

It's a memorial tribute. The man in the drawing is Ralph Carney, who co-wrote the theme song along with his nephew, Patrick Carney, of the Black Keys.

I spoke with both of them in 2016 for the song Exploder episode about the making of the theme song, but in December of 2017, Ralph Carney passed away suddenly. Here's Patrick.

Losing Ralph's been really hard for me. He was one of my biggest inspirations. When it came to music, he always encouraged me ever since I was a teenager.

I know that he would be happy to know that people are interested in this song and encourage you to look deeper into Ralph's catalog, including the songs that he made with Tom Wades on records like Rain Dogs, Mill Variations.

Along with some of the stuff he did with David Hild and Tine Huey and the B-52s, but it's been a rough year so far.

Losing your mentor is a terrible thing and losing your uncle's terrible thing. But it is really cool that we have this song we made together that has been exposed to a lot more people.

Because it's a theme song to a great show than if we would have just put it out like as a seven inch. So every time I hear it makes me happy to know that millions of people get to hear Ralph playing his horn.

With the new season of Bojack Out Now, I wanted to revisit their episode and hear Patrick and Ralph talking together again about how they made the theme. Here it is.

Bojack Horseman is a Netflix original series, an animated comedy about a washed up 90s sitcom star who's trying to figure out his life and career without drowning in self-loathing and existential despair.

It won the 2016 Critics Choice Award for Best Animated Series. The theme song for the show was created by Patrick Carney, who's one half of the black keys and his uncle Ralph Carney, a multi instrumentalist who has worked with artists like Tom Wades, St. Vincent, Galaxy 500 and a lot more.

But the track wasn't written for the show originally. It was just something that Patrick and Ralph made without knowing what it was for.

In this episode, the two of them break down how the song was created and how it went from their long-distance collaboration to become the main title theme.

I'm Patrick Carney, the drummer for the black keys and I produced and co-wrote the theme song to Bojack Horseman with my uncle Ralph.

This is Ralph Carney, the uncle of Patrick Carney. I played some instruments on that Bojack theme.

We've been sending stuff back and forth to each other since I was a teenager.

He used to send cassettes back when you were like 16 or something, those are hilarious, I got some good ones.

I got into music because of Ralph. The first time I think I ever saw Ralph perform my dad, I don't remember if he woke us up or if he had taped it, but it was Ralph playing with Tom Wades on the track.

I played with Letterman and probably 87.

It was 88 but that's okay.

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