Composers Jamie Jackson & WAZ Put the Speed in “Motorheads” Score
With first love comes first car. That’s the case in Prime Video’s new coming-of-age series Motorheads. The show follows a brother (Michael Cimino) and sister (Melissa Collazo) who move back to their parents’ hometown after the death of their father. While initially unsure of what to make of this once-thriving Rust Belt town, the siblings find themselves getting closer to their late father and the fellow outcasts in town.
A car is only as good as the music it plays. In Motorheads, composing team Jamie Jackson and WAZ are in charge of the soundtrack to young love and fast cars. The duo sat down with Beyond the Cinerama Dome to discuss their collaborative process, the role they see their score playing, and their other upcoming project, It’s Dorothy!, that is premiering at Tribeca next month. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Beyond the Cinerama Dome: I want to start with your backgrounds, because self-taught guitarist and classical pianist seem at odds with each other. How do you feel they come together? How does that beginning influence your composing?
Jamie Jackson: We figured out pretty quickly that my weaknesses are his strengths and vice versa. It's quite helpful with our process where he's good at things I'm not good at and we can support each other in that way.
We also maybe have different opinions on the way things go down sometimes, so one of the things we've kind of implemented into our process is, as we're developing music for a new project, we disappear into our own spaces and come up with concepts independently of one another. Then we come together and share what we've written or recorded. From there, we might present two different perspectives to our showrunner.
As we develop the sound with the showrunner, we figure out who has the strongest creative connection, and then that person becomes the leader of the project. Then we just support each other's vision. Once we've established, like, okay, you're the point person creatively for this project, it just makes sense.
Courtesy of JACKSON + WAZ
I read in an interview that you guys said someone has to have 51% of the vote, which I think is fascinating, because as much as it’s about collaboration, somebody has to make a decision at the end of the day. Can you talk a little bit about the balance of collaboration? Are you switching off who’s in charge of making that final choice?
WAZ: We’re also married and we have a ten-year-old (laughs). We were just talking about this yesterday. In the creative process, you have to be passionate and you have to have your expression, but at some point you realize that you're servicing the story and the picture first and foremost. I think what we do really well together is that we keep each other in check, making sure that we're doing that.
Typically, the person who gets to 51% is the one who's made the better argument or made it more clear that this piece works because of this and we seem to be going in this direction. Collectively, we know it's more about the team, the project, and the overall final product.
A really important strength that I think we share is the ability to give each other notes, but also say, you know what, I think you're right. I mean, it's not easy, right? Sometimes you really want to fight for your idea, and sometimes those ideas come back at a later time. But it's the importance of letting go and knowing that we trust each other enough to say, okay, you're making a pretty strong point here. I'm going to let this one go.
Jamie: The story and the creative concept are the decision makers. We do have a third party that helps us make these decisions and breaks the ties.
Is it Buddy the studio dog or someone else?
Jamie: Buddy the dog 1,000%.
WAZ: Our daughter is actually a really good springboard. Kids have no filter. She's just like, yeah, I don't really like that, or I really like that. What is that? Is that you guys? Sometimes it's a good read on what's happening because you can get lost in it.
Photo Credit: Sabrina Lantos/Prime Video © Amazon Content Service LLC
I read in that same interview that you described scoring a TV show as like driving a race car, and now you’re scoring a race car show. Is it still like driving a race car?
WAZ: I think there's an anticipation before it goes. When you're in it, it's like a blur. When it finishes, you're like, whoa. Also, on top of that, if you think about the more abstract or the more visceral part of racing a car with the feel of the engine and the thrill of it, I think that's very much present, in this show especially.
Part of our score for Motorheads is to channel the feeling of the sound of an engine. What does that sound like musically and what does it feel like? In this show, the great thing is that with the sound effects and the cars being these high-performance cars, the sound alone is enough scoring on its own.
Can you talk a little about how you got involved with Motorheads? Who got the 51% here?
Jamie: We worked on a series with this incredible showrunner named Mike Daniels. We did a series called The Village for NBC. He’s friends with and has worked with Johnny Norris, one of the showrunners and creators of Motorheads. He recommended us, and then it took about six months to get the project.
I think we had our first meeting and then the writers’ strike happened. Then it was just waiting to see when everything came back and when we could have these conversations with the writers again.
We were thrilled when we got the call. Johnny had shared scripts with us, and we were really inspired by his writing and by the relationships he created on the page. Just the environment, the atmosphere of the small town, the races, the cars, the memories, and the flashbacks.
WAZ grew up in Cleveland and his father had an old Stingray when he was growing up. We kind of felt that it was going to be WAZ as the point person.
WAZ: It’s guitar driven, too.
Jamie: So he’s the 51%. This time (laughs).
Courtesy of Prime Video © Amazon Content Service LLC
You mentioned how the sound of a car is so visceral, especially this type of car. Some other composers I've interviewed have talked about how they've incorporated tangible aspects of the show into their score. I talked to the composer who did the Apple TV show Silo, and he went to a silo and just started banging on it. Did you do anything with an engine or with cars or use any sounds from that in your score?
WAZ: We had talked about it, and Jamie's known this guy for a really long time who builds instruments for composers based on the concept or the theme of the project. If the second season is coming, there will be a lot more racing. We talked about potentially building something out of some part of a car.
I think the first season was more about establishing the characters. There’s plenty of racing, but it was more about letting just the cars do it. We've already kind of talked about what an instrument would be like, something unique and different.
Come season two you're gonna hear that, and it will be an instrument based off a motor from a car or some other element.
Jamie: The first season we were really focusing more on the relationships and establishing the story. They're using a lot of sound effects. Johnny wants it to feel real. Like you're sitting in the car, you're racing, you're with them, so we stayed out of the way a bit. We're hoping for a renewal, and it'll be a great excuse to build a really cool instrument.
I'm picturing a guitar with an engine as a body. I don't know if it's feasible, but that would be so cool.
Jamie: That would be so cool! That's a really good idea.
Courtesy of Prime Video © Amazon Content Service LLC
The first season is a lot about relationships. It’s a young adult series, so you get sweeping emotions and the drama of teenagers. Can you talk about using music to help those stories along, and how the score can speak to their true emotions and maybe not what they're actually saying out loud?
Jamie: It's a lot of first love, first car. Moving to a new town, making new friends. I think we wanted to support those moments, but also try to stay out of the way because the actors in the show are so incredible and the writing is great. They really made our job easy.
There are some moments where we turn up the engine just a little bit because it moves pretty quickly. You start the first episode and boom, they have their crushes, their kisses, their races.
I think we helped accelerate that storyline a little bit in the first episode, and then you kind of just let it flow and stay out of the way of all the great work of the cast.
You guys also have a project premiering at Tribeca which is, I would say, pretty different from Motorheads. Can you talk a little about that?
It's Dorothy is a documentary made by a wonderful filmmaker named Jeffrey McHale. He’s done an incredible job with this doc. It's basically about the character Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, The Wiz, and The Return of Oz. It's almost a thesis on this character and how so many underrepresented people in our community and our world can really relate to Dorothy.
The LGBTQ+ community, women, Black and Brown artists and how their story is really tied with Dorothy's story, how they overlap, and how there's a little bit of Dorothy in all of us. It's a beautiful message at a really important time when the world needs this messaging. Jeffrey's a queer filmmaker, and we've been so thrilled to support his process in this.
It's going to be premiering at the Tribeca Festival June 7th, at the Angelika at 5 p.m., and then there are a couple of other showings. We hope it gets bought and distributed so everybody can see it.
Courtesy of Tribeca
I absolutely adored the process. For me, when Jeffrey reached out and said Dorothy, I was like, Dorothy! Diana Ross is one of the first artists who ever moved me as a child, and also Judy Garland. To be able to work on a film where it's modern-day story telling about the struggles of these incredible humans, but also overlaying archival footage of The Wizard of Oz and Diana Ross live performances, was absolutely thrilling.
I was pleased that we had a really short amount of time to make the music, so I didn't have time to get nervous. It was pretty mind-blowing to wake up in the morning and score to The Wizard of Oz. That film that really shaped me as a kid.
WAZ: Not enough time to really let it soak in. Just enough time to get work done.
Jamie: It still feels like a dream. Honestly. That whole process and that opportunity.
How much time did you have compared to Motorheads?
WAZ: Motorheads was actually a pretty rapid pace once we got going. I think we did all ten episodes in three months. That's pretty fast for ten episodes. For Dorothy, we had…
Jamie: 30 days to make about 100 minutes of music. I had such a vision for the score. We did end up bringing in the Budapest Orchestra because I was like, we just have to have the best for this. Jeffrey needs everything for this. It was a great whirlwind.
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