A few years back I entered into a songwriting partnership with a pair of gifted musicians that it was my good pleasure to have known at the time; guitarist Joe Hannigan and pianist Sammy Brown. I had previously performed in an excellent country band with Joe called Cold Cold Heart. CCH was trying to catch the country line dancing wave that was washing over New England at the time. Regrettably, the tide was ebbing by the time we launched the act, and as good as we might have been, the gigs were drying up and the managers were always grumbling about the count when they paid us. All and all a sense of melancholia permeated the whole scene. It wasn’t for lack of trying on our part, but eventually it became more trouble than it was worth, so when bandleader Joe announced that he wouldn’t be pursuing any new bookings, Cold Cold Heart went under, nautical metaphors and all.
My greatest love in music has always been with fifties rock and rockabilly ala Elvis, Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, Chuck Berry and on down the roots rock food pyramid. I’d experienced a taste of success and even fame with my partners in the Boston Rockabilly Music Conspiracy (B.R.M.C.) years prior and kept returning to the genre a slave to my hardwiring.
BRMC’s original lead guitarist (as well a guitarist in Cold Cold Heart) Charlie Ortolani, had remained in touch and we formed several groups over time, often including Kevin Guyer, a guitarist, stand-up bass player and kindred spirit from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. We were toying with the idea of performing as a trio like Elvis Presley’s—that is to say—no drums; just electric guitar, acoustic guitar, stand up bass and lots of echo as was done on his seminal Sun sessions. With that in mind, we did some home recordings of cover versions as well a silly ditty that I had come up with called “I Got the Money.” The song was shelved and we three, whatever we chose to call ourselves on a given day, did an occasional gig until that too ran its course.
Fast forward to an invitation Joe sent me to an anniversary party being thrown for former CCH drummer Carl Bergman and wife Melody—a "celebration" of their eternal bond. I knew a lot of people there including Charlie. With all these musicians around you know there would be a jam and I even managed jump up and perform a couple of tunes. I’d been away from it for a while and I have to say, it felt a little like old home week.
At one point Joe pulled me aside to introduce me to pianist/composer Sammy Brown with whom he had been writing songs and cutting demos in his home studio. He had the idea that I might be a potential demo singer for them. I also had some songs that I would like to flesh out and we agreed to put something together that would be mutually beneficial.
Over the course of the next year we wrote, arranged and recorded a group of tunes we thought worthy enough to put onto a CD. We didn’t have a band per se, but to give the CD a name, we released it as Cold Cold Heart and titled it “Blue Collar Attitude” after one of its songs. Our intent was to seek out channels with which to submit songs to established artists. As we found out, this was a well-worn and mostly discouraging path due to the huge amount of competition. We worked out a deal where we would all get a percentage of any song that came out of CCH based on how much each of us had a hand in its creation.
One avenue that we pursued was an organization called TAXI. TAXI’s approach is to be a song clearing house, that is to say, they position themselves as a service to provide original music for film, television and advertising producers who place queries with them requesting submissions for upcoming projects. TAXI places “want ads” at their website and paid members (such as we were to become) can submit digital songs that fit the requirements based on the listing descriptions. If the song passes the TAXI jury, it is submitted to the potential customer, and if they want your song they get in touch. Mostly they don’t and you are out of your submission fee.
After a few strikes you start to pay closer attention to the descriptions in the listings rather than waste a shot. One request for submission called for a simple uptempo Country/Rockabilly song for an upcoming film project: name TBD. Most of what we were working on didn’t fit that description but I remembered the one that Charlie, Kevin and I cut in Kevin’s parlor in Maine, “I Got the Money.” I knew I had a CD with the file around somewhere, and once I found it, Joe remastered it but other than that we didn’t alter the arrangement or add additional instrumentation or vocal tracks. Once done I sent it off, and wouldn’t you know, this was the song that was accepted. What we got for this exchange was a check (don’t ask) that was split amongst us as per our agreement. I received the most having written the song and singing lead on it, Joe got a nominal fee for mastering, and Sammy got to wet his beak for marking “present” on his time card. None of this mattered a whit to me—my little runt-of-the-litter was going to be in the movies.
Once a song changes hands I came to know, it dips beneath the surface of a sparkly stream beginning a zen-like journey of its own. Not much info comes from the purchaser and research is necessary to track the project’s progress. I began stalking my creation as it wended its way across the country making the large circuit of film festivals.
The film premiered at the Nashville Film Festival in 2011. It was produced and directed by Sam Jaeger who also starred in it I learned (in the interest of full disclosure I didn’t know who he was). Not knowing when or if it was going to be released to the general public, I considered traveling to catch it at a film festival not too far away. When it got to Brooklyn, N.Y. I was tempted to go but held back, however when it finally it came to the Boston Film Festival, I knew I couldn’t pass up hearing my precious jewel up on the silver screen.
The event was occurring early one Saturday evening in Park Square in Boston and I managed to pry myself away from Gloucester to drive into town. I grabbed a buckskin jacket that had been airing out on the porch after a winter in the cellar garnering a musty aroma.
The area around the theater was showbizzy electric with one of those backdrops that celebrities take pictures in front of. There were mingling people with bright smiles and sparkly eyes dressed better than normal as well as photographers, lights and limos— accoutrements that seemed grafted onto the stodgy muted hues of the Park Square that I had always known. Asking directions I mentioned that I had a song in the film and was deferentially directed to where I needed to be.
Waiting in line for the doors to open to the auditorium, I grabbed a glass of wine and was keying in to the sights and sounds around me, when I overheard a couple discussing an odor in the room. “It smells like my grandmother’s cellar” the woman was murmering. When I peeked back at them they were pointing at a vent over their heads trying to ascertain the reek’s source, but I guiltily knew what the culprit was and couldn’t wait for the line to move. Once inside, my first order of business was to find a seat away from anyone. The second was to ditch my jacket somehow. I ended up rolling it into a ball and putting behind a curtain of fabric that covered the rooms wall.
TMH unreels (I guess there are no reels anymore but whatever) as a romantic comedy about a down-and-out NYC cabbie named Thom (played by actor/director Sam Jaeger) who, desperate for money, takes on a fare heading for the West Coast. The customer is an upscale yuppie-type named Claire (played by Jaeger’s real-life wife Amber) who is melting down because she finds that her husband is having an affair with his secretary—this is in addition to her having a terminally ill father in L.A.
From there we navigate through the predictable tropes of a road movie with amusing situations and setbacks. They make a cute couple and, as these things go, they get friendly. This is not the worst hour and a half I’ve ever spent in a movie theater by any means, though the subject matter is a bit on the lite side for my taste. Still, the acting is believable and funny where it needs to be, and production values are first rate (it’s even got Victor Garber in the in the cast last seen apologizing to young Rose that he should have built her a stronger Titanic). The primary soundtrack is by a group called Bootstraps and it’s both punchy and appropriate. There’s a lot of incidental music used as well of which our “I Got The Money” is one, and I was laser-focused as to when it would appear.
It seems to be a convention in movies for there to be an event/plot development 15 minutes in or so and that is roughly when Clair surprises Thom by announcing that she wants him to drive her across the country. Once he agrees she intones the immortal line, “I need an Atlas.” In the following scene she is coming out of a little store with her book of maps, and at 17:43 IGTM starts emanating from behind a screen door for a glorious magical musical 59 seconds (turn it up). From that point the plot continues on to its happy conclusion. I stuck around for the credits and sure enough there we were.
