Listening Carefully to the Music Behind The Scenes

 

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Although relatively few people stop to notice the music behind their favorite film or television show, everyone would notice if that music wasn’t there. Most would notice, even if only unconsciously if that music was particularly bad, cheap, inappropriate, or ineffective. It’s an odd bit of artistic irony that the end goal of a great film score is to effectively disappear. Finding that emotional and ethereal space, forming it, and riding it, without dominating it, is a unique and challenging form of creative expression that Jars of Clay vocalist and songwriter Dan Haseltine and multi-instrumentalist Matthew S. Nelson have embraced in the service of the surprisingly successful and effective television series The Chosen. On this special two-episode series of the True Tunes Podcast (available on all podcast platforms or at the links below), we visit with Haseltine and Nelson to dig into their personal stories, the ins and outs of scoring this fascinating show, and what they are learning about the music running in the background.

Though Haseltine is certainly most well-known for his work with Jars of Clay, he has been involved with film scoring for a number of years. He has also applied the same sensitivity for which Jars has become known to the work he is doing with The Chosen. “Music and film,” Haseltine tells the podcast, “at least as I want it to be, is an invitation but not an instruction. I don’t like when the music tells me exactly what to think or feel.”

 

Later he continues the thought. “I always felt that I was either being lied to or being talked down to when shows created too much certainty around the emotions of a scene. When you’re telling me what I’m supposed to think I feel like you’re treating me like someone who is not very smart. I have found that if you need the music to set the emotional tone with such force then you are probably lying in your character. That has been part of the problem and challenge of Christian filmmaking. They put their agenda first and then create characters who are not responding to the way the world is happening around them in human ways.”

Although Haseltine has moved away from formal Christian music, the honesty and integrity with which show creator Dallas Jenkins was approaching the crafting of characters and story in The Chosen compelled him to get involved. He knew, however, that he was going to need help. He immediately turned to longtime Jars collaborator Nelson, who has played guitar, cello, and other stringed instruments for Country, alternative, CCM, and rock acts both in the studio and onstage. Although Nelson had long wanted to explore this kind of work, even referring to it as a “bucket list” thing for him, he had no experience on day one.

The celebrated musician is powerfully transparent in his conversation on the podcast. He shares about his musical upbringing, a changing career in music, and some surprising challenges once work on The Chosen got underway. “I was chomping at the bit to get started in the process,” Nelson explains, “because I was so excited to be the next John Williams! Then it turned out that a bunch of my initial ideas didn’t work! We went back and forth, and I got super discouraged. I thought they were going to let me go. I just wasn’t hitting the mark. But Dallas was super patient and said ‘Man, we’re gonna get there. Don’t worry, we’re gonna get there.’ The more that Dan and I experimented together, and the more conversation that we had with Dallas, I started to get some lightbulbs.”

Hear both in-depth conversations now on the True Tunes Podcast, a long-form program hosted by author and music industry veteran John J. Thompson who calls the audience to “listen to better music, and listen to music better.” The podcast has featured conversations with a wide range of guests from various genres and backgrounds, including veterans like Amy Grant, Charlie Peacock, Steve Taylor, Buddy Miller, Kevin Max, and others, and up and coming young artists like Liz Vice, Ella Mine (whose voice can be heard on the Season 2 Trailer for The Chosen,) Christa Wells, Taylor Leonhardt, Sandra McCracken, and more. The show has even featured rare, previously unheard conversations with Jesus Music pioneer Larry Norman and the late Rich Mullins, both from True Tunes’ extensive archives. True Tunes, originally founded by Thompson in 1989, was re-started in 2019 after a nearly 20-year hiatus.

 

“I was honestly reluctant to watch The Chosen,” Thompson admits. “The last thing I thought my heart or mind needed was another white American imagining of Jesus. Even after I found out my longtime friend Dan Haseltine had done the score, I was slow to join the party. Once I did, however, I was hooked. And when I heard the music Dan and Matt had composed, I knew I had to have him on the show.”

 

In the show’s closing “soapbox” feature, Thompson wonders about scores and soundtracks and how the music, or noise, playing around and behind us affects the way people around us receive and perceive the words we say and the lives we lead. “We all have a soundtrack playing in our heads,” Thompson says, “and the things we do and say contribute to the soundtracks being heard and experienced by the people around us. May that soundtrack – that score – be seasoned by grace and love – and not fear, self-protection, and empire-building.”

Listen to Pt 2 on APPLE PODCASTS HERE

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