Harjo / Noir / Tulsa are three nouns collected  together which might cause anyone's wig to flip in general, but mine in particular.  When Mr. Harjo asked me to produce music for a Noir set in my hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, I could not have been more thrilled.  Tulsa is a truly unusual city made up of Art Deco architectural masterpieces casting long shadows over storied honky tonks, cars zooming around with tribal license plates, coney shops, and a rich, living history of jazz, funk, blues, country, western swing, and art rock.  There's a diverse cast of real characters everywhere you look.  I knew that with Sterlin at the helm, the show would be an earnest love letter to our wild and wooly city.

To build the sound palette for the show, I revisited not only the particolored musical history of the Noir genre, but also gathered influence from Japanese "westerns", obscure 50's rock and roll, western swing, and blues... all which somehow fit Tulsa's wild and surreal landscape.  I used the  tools with which I'm familiar - old battleship-colored analog tube gear, 1/4" tape and 1950s ribbon mics, along with the astounding modern tools at our disposal to try and weave a soundscape for The Lowdown as gritty, revelrous, and eccentric as Tulsa itself.

NITE OWLS

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