HBO’s True Blood

True Blood’s music supervisor, Gary Calamar, talks about a few things.

I heard that Alan Ball found the opening title song, Jace Everett’s ‘Bad Things’ on iTunes, and you weren’t particularly taken with it at first. Yeah, it’s not that I wasn’t taken with it. It was almost too easy, or too perfect. It gave me the challenge to go out and try to find something even better.

Were there any runners up? We could never really come close. At the end of every conversation we never really got any better than what we had.

How much leeway and freedom does Alan allow you to do what you want? He gives me total freedom. Basically I’m pitching ideas to him knowing what he likes, the sensibility of the show, and what I think works. I’ll usually give him several different ideas for each scene and they could be in somewhat different directions, but hopefully it’ll have the same basic thread of True Blood going through it. Sometimes he has an idea about one thing and I pitch him something totally different and he’ll say ‘yeah, lets go with that.’ He’s open to everything. He does make his decision at the end of the day, though.

Has there ever been a song you really loved that he completely shot down? It happens all the time. It actually happened on Six Feet Under a lot. One was New Slang by The Shins, and it was a good year before it came out on Garden State. It was a great scene when they traveled up to Portland for an episode. Then we wound up going with Yo La Tengo. There was another scene where there was this beautiful Son Volt song that I’d loved and worked fantastically, and we wound up going with something else. There are some heartbreaks to the job of music supervisor.

Did it kill you when you wound up hearing New Slang in Garden State? It was definitely a little jab, especially that Zach Braff is given all the credit for discovering them. It was a little annoying, like what the heck?!

What does Alan like to listen to? What’s his taste? I’m not really sure. I wouldn’t say Alan and I socialize together and go to clubs or anything, but I really don’t know what his favorite music is. He is well versed on all types of music, and he certainly knows the sound of the shows he’s working on. He had a song for every cue on Six Feet Under. With True Blood he’s very particular down to if we’re in a department store, we’ll go through ten different muzak cues to pick out exactly the right thing.

Every episode of True Blood is named after a song featured in that episode. Can you talk about how that came about? That, I didn’t really have very much to do with. It was just kind of handed to me that way. It’s actually very cool, but it makes it a little more difficult for me. Sometimes a song that we have initially titled the episode after, for whatever reason, is not working in the show the way they thought it would when they wrote the script. Sometimes I have to squeeze a song in just because the episode is titled after it. What we’ve done once or twice is actually change the title of the episode because a particular song didn’t work and we ended up going with a different title from a different song.

When did that happen? It’s one that’s coming up. I don’t know if I should say.

They choose the name for a title based on your decision for a song, right? Well the writers choose it from writing the script.

So you have to find a way to fit that song in based on the writers’ decision? Yeah, I mean generally when they’re writing it they have an idea that this particular song will go in this spot, and that happens quite often that when they’re writing it’s much different after it’s shot, or they drop that scene or the song doesn’t work.

The first episode of the new season is titled Nothing But The Blood. There are a lot of versions of that song. Which one did you use? We used a Randy Travis version of that but you’re right, there are a bunch of versions. There’s a really spooky acapella gospel version, and we went through several different ones before we decided.

Is there anything you’re really looking forward to this season? I’ll just say that the show was definitely wild last year and it’s wilder and wilder this year. One of the songs on the soundtrack which is coming up in season two is a favorite song of mine. I’m so excited it’s on the soundtrack. I think it’s one of the only songs that’s on the soundtrack from season two, and it’s called Golden State by John Doe and Kathleen Edwards. That’s a musical highlight.

Has it been difficult working within the framework of the Southern/Louisiana genre? No, I love the genre. I knew a good amount about it before the show but now I was given the opportunity to dig even deeper and learn even more about it. It’s nice to be able to explore. I’m happy about it.

Can you talk about the process of how you come to pick out a song? I start with the script and start to sort of get some initial ideas. Sometimes the writers will put in ideas of songs they think might work. That will then usually go into the pool. Then I’ll see the rough cut and usually we’ll sit down and go through them [Pauses to answer the phone:] So sorry, I’m actually trying to track down some square dance music for True Blood right now, so my square dance associate is out at Amoeba Records shopping around. So, the producers get together with our music editor and we go through the show. We go ‘is there going to be a song here? What are we looking for? Is this going to be scored?’ Then we all go back to our homes and offices and studios. Then I’ll go back to Alan with 3-5 choices based on what we talked about. Hopefully he’ll say ‘Gary, brilliant! Once again! How do you do it?!’ Generally I find stuff that he likes but there are times that I have to go back to the drawing board, or what he thought originally might work is not working so I have to take that in a different direction. I also have to keep an eye on the budget so there are a lot of financial pieces I have to put together. If we’re going to go for a big song at the end credits then maybe we need to go for a real cheap song in the background at Merlotte’s.

Have there been times when you’ve wanted to go after a big song but didn’t have the budget to do it? Or it’s just been denied? We’ve definitely been denied before. I’m not sure if I should mention names, but we were trying to get a really cool Wilco song from the new album for the show, but it got denied because they were looking for a very special place for this particular song and they didn’t see it in this scene. And it was crazy because it was a beautiful scene. Mostly we get what we want and sometimes budget is a factor, but if you want something bad enough you figure out a way to get it.

So Alan might say ‘how do you do it?’ But how do you do it? What’s the creative process in your mind? I’m on the computer, I’ll go into iTunes, and I have a special section in my office of things people have sent for True Blood, and stuff I’ve gathered for the show, and just kind of freestyle to get creative about it. Then I’ll start making a folder ‘episode 201 scene 8,’ and maybe I’ll have ten songs in there. I’ll put them up against the picture and then narrow it down to 3-5. I don’t have a great formula. Sometimes it’s just getting up from my desk, walking over to the stacks of CD’s and seeing what jumps out at me.

That could take anywhere from five minutes to five days. Yeah. Sometimes it comes really easy or sometimes there’s some little nuance to a scene that I just can’t nail.

Is there one you remember taking a long time to nail? There are some scenes coming up with a very important vampire in his lair and we were having a little trouble finding exactly the right tone for him. We went through classical, some freestyle jazz things, then we went to some electronic groove things, and I think we’ve kind of nailed it but it definitely took several tries.

Do you ever just hear songs and think they might be great for the show, not even knowing where or when it’ll work? Well I also do a radio show on KCRW so I’m always kind of throwing things into my KCRW folder. My radio and TV folders will often overlap.

What’s your personal collection like? How many records and CD’s do you have? What about on your iPod? I don’t know how much music I have on my iPod. I have harddrives full of music. I still have a lot of vinyl, not that I play it that much anymore. I have stacks and stacks, and shelves and shelves of CD’s.

How many gigs of music would you say you have? I don’t quite know. My mind doesn’t really work that way [laughs]. People are also sending me stuff all the time which is kind of a blessing and a curse because I’m always stressed that all this music is coming in and I don’t have time to listen to everything. When am I going to find the time to listen to it all? I just try to keep everything organized. It’s a constant battle. Actually, one of my favorite things to do is prune my record collection. I pick a few things out and add a Best Of here, and pull out all the individual discs.

Throw an Old Gin Blossoms album out. [laughs] Yeah, I only need the Best Of the Gin Blossoms, not every single album.

When you’re doing something you love so much personally as a profession, the lines between the two can get blurred. Does it ever get to you? Well I certainly don’t go out to shows as much as I used to. I’m not living and breathing every second after the work day is over. I feel very fortunate, though. This was always my dream. I always wanted to work a job that I love. I didn’t want to work a day job and then listen to music at night. It’s definitely a lot of work and I still love it completely. It’s what I loved all my life. When I worked in record stores, or managed bands, or on radio it was like ‘what can I do to get more free records?!’

The second season of True Blood premieres Sunday night at 9 PM on HBO. “TRUE BLOOD – MUSIC FROM THE HBO ORIGINAL SERIES” is available through Amazon and iTunes.