“You should keep [your songwriting] going,” Iggy Pop said to music supervisor Gary Calamar after the two wrote “Let’s Boot and Rally” for HBO’s True Blood in 2012. “It might have been an off-the-cuff comment,” Calamar says now, “but him talking to me inspired me to take it to the next step.”
Calamar, currently music-supervising Intruders for BBC America, Cocked for Amazon and the indie film Tumble Down, recorded demos of a half-dozen songs. While working with Atlantic Records’ Kevin Weaver on a True Blood soundtrack, he received further encouragement: a budget to finish the songs and release them digitally as the EP You Are What You Listen To, out Oct. 12.
“I never really shopped around the songs — I just did it for myself,” says Calamar, who displays a melodic affinity for The Beatles‘ Revolver and Pete Townshend‘s power chords on the EP. “Like many of us, there are certain types of pop music or rock music where I think I know what works and am able to work in those genres.”