‘True Blood’ Music Supervisor Reveals Stories Behind Show’s Killer Collabos
HBO’s blockbuster series True Blood recently released its fourth soundtrack, an eclectic collection including an awesome Iggy Pop/Best Coast collabo, a moody duet between former Animals frontman Eric Burdon and Jenny Lewis on “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” and a previously unreleased Alabama Shakes track.
With the show’s sixth season kicking off in just two weeks, Fuse chatted with music supervisor Gary Calamar—a veteran of Six Feet Under and Entourage—to find out the stories behind the show's unexpected collaborations. We learned how a song he wrote on the fly got into Iggy’s hands, what new bands he’s excited about and what exactly a music supervisor does on a daily basis.
So last season featured a collaboration between Iggy Pop and Best Coast’s Bethany Cosentino called "Let's Boot and Rally." How did that come about?
Every show is named after one of the songs in the episode. We had a relatively new writer and she had put in a song called "Let's Boot and Rally" and as it turned out, the song wasn't really appropriate for the show; it wasn't working as well as we'd hoped. So we thought of various alternatives: Either change the title of the show—which we'd done in the past—or have somebody write a song called “Boot and Rally.” I said that not really realizing it would be me—I'm a weekend songwriter. But I went back to the office, picked up the guitar, banged it around a little bit and called up my friend James Combs and we worked on it and came up with a song we were very happy with.
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