Jace Everett interview on Swedish TV and 'Bad Things " performance

Jace " True Blood- Bad Things " Everett June 8th re-release of Red Revelations album and new tour dates

Wrasse Records has announced the June 8th US re-release of Red Revelations, the critically acclaimed newest album by Nashville bluesman Jace Everett. Everett is currently best-known as the growly and seductive-voiced composer and singer of the HBO hit vampire series "True Blood" theme song, aptly titled "Bad Things." As it turns out, UK fans across the pond have so embraced the series which was being shown on a small satellite channel when Wrasse Records head Ian Ashbridge noticed the huge effect the song had on sales of Everett's previous album. The label scrambled to sign the artist and rush released Red Revelations in the UK and Europe. The results were so impressive that the album is now being re-released in the US through powerhouse Universal Music via Fontana Distribution.

"We researched and noticed that the new album was not released in Europe and quickly arranged to release the album in October 2009, to coincide with the Channel 4 opening of 'True Blood,'" said Ashbridge. "'Bad Things' instantly went on the radio 2 playlist where it stayed for over 6 weeks -- and Red Revelations went on to sell over 50,000 units throughout Europe, over 20,000 alone in the UK." Glowing UK reviews followed in the same fashion as the US press: Colin Hall's four star review in Rock 'n' Reel magazine raves the "Indiana-born, Texas-raised Jace Everett cuts tough sounding, hard rockin' records... moody and atmospheric, his original songs are heavy on big twanging guitars and hurt, impassioned vocals."

Plans are underway for the upcoming US re-launch which will coincide with "True Blood" season three. Red Revelations will feature re-designed packaging for the re-launch. Everett just completed three Scandinavian dates with UK dates, including Ireland and Scotland, immediately following. US tour dates will begin in June.

Red Revelations is the third studio album by Everett, renowned for writing and performing irresistibly charged-up rockabilly tunes such as the opening theme of the Golden Globe-honored HBO series. In addition to the Globe nod, "True Blood" also received a Grammy nomination for best soundtrack. On the eve of its original release, Jace Everett and his band debuted the entire album live in Nashville which was also web-casted, reflecting the deep authenticity of Red Revelations, as well as the star's proven ability to get this close to listeners in recordings and onstage, through his authoritative, cinematic, often sly, and thoroughly distinctive roots-music fusion of blues, rock and country.

The album was produced in part by Chuck Prophet (Green on Red) and in part by Everett, and was originally released as vinyl, CD and digital release on Weston Boys/Haywood Group label.

The "True Blood" complete first-season DVD and Blue-Ray disc, released by HBO, and the soundtrack album on Elektra/Atlantic, both featuring "Bad Things" as the opening song, are currently available at physical and digital retail. A follow-up soundtrack will feature an acoustic version of "Bad Things." Everett is a 2009 BMI Cable Award winner as the composer of "Bad Things." He is also the co-writer of the No. 1 country smash "Your Man," by Josh Turner.

Tour dates:

May 5th: Bush Hall, London
May 7th: Maidstone, Maidstone,
May 8th: King Tut's Wah Wah Hut, Glasgow
May 9th: The Maze, Nottingham
May 10th: The Boardwalk, Sheffield
May 12th: The Chattery, Swansea
May 13th: Errigle Inn, Belfast
May 16th: Whelan's, Dublin
May 18th: St. Bonaventure's Club, Bristol
May 19th: The Hare and Hounds, Birmingham
May 20th: Sefton Park Palm House, Liverpool
May 21st: Manchester Academy, Manchester
May 22nd: Civic Theatre, Bedford
May 31st: Iota Club, Arlington, VA
June 1st: World Cafe Live, Philadelphia, PA
June 5th: Highline Ballroom, New York, NY
June 11th: Exit/In, Nashville, TN
July 22nd: Santa Monica Twilight Concert Series, Santa Monica, CA

http://www.jaceeverett.com
http://www.myspace.com/jaceeverett

Please contact:
PLAN A MEDIA
Patti Conte:
PattiConte@nyc.rr.com
212.337.1406, ext 16

True Blood house for sale!

** I've been there 3 times and it's really known as the Ogilvie-Wiener House, I have some great photos of it here

Are you a true blue True Blood fan? Well now you can own a piece of television history!

The beautiful Victorian house featured in the opening credits of the show is currently up for sale. Not only has it been featured on the HBO hit show but it was once known as The Florentine Club where the likes of Ethel Merman, John Wayne, and even Elvis Presley frequented!

It is 7300 square feet historic home that dates back to 1896 and sits on seven lots. The three story structure has a wrap around deck, fifteen foot ceilings and is one of the largest Queen Anne’s available in Northern Louisiana.

read on accidental sexiness

True Blood Making of and Featurette by DIGITALKITCHEN

True Blood Making of and Featurette from DIGITALKITCHEN on Vimeo.

'True Blood' fame propels Everett into spotlight

Our friend, the wonderful Jace Everett will be in Iowa this Friday!

Nashville has a tradition of producing musicians who are, well, not traditional, and yet they find success in the music industry. The names Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Steve Earle come to mind. Jace Everett, 37, hopes that he can become one of them, but if not, he can live with that too.

"I spent most of my life burning bridges," Everett said via phone from his home in Texas. "I am just not interested in trying to be part of the mainstream by changing who I am to fit into it."

Everett feels a special kinship with Nelson, whose album "Red-headed Stranger" was what turned him on to music. "He crosses all the musical borders and unwittingly I have followed that track."

Everett did brush shoulders with the mainstream in 2005 with the recording of his eponymous solo effort, but it left a bad taste in his mouth. "There was a lot of compromise on that album," Everett said.

Read on

Jace Everett: Good things come to those who wait

A few years ago Jace Everett's career left him in a familiar artist’s quandary: that of a struggling musician. His debut was a mainstream country album, a sound that didn't completely reflect his style.

Flash forward a year and Everett was on the brink of his big break even if he didn't yet realize that was the case.

"I love country music with all of my heart, but I thought 'My career's over, so I might as well do what I want," Everett said.

"Bad Things," a rockabilly track off of his 2005 self-titled album caught the attention of Oscar-winning screenwriter Alan Ball who, in 2006, was scouring iTunes in search of a track to accompany his treatment of the now hit HBO series “True Blood.”

In an age when much of television programming has discarded the use opening credits, “True Blood’s” main title montage has captivated its viewers as well as critics.

“The opening sequence was recently nominated for an Emmy,” Everett said. “I can't take in credit for that, but it's cool.”

read on

Jace Everett wants to do bad things with you, in a nice way

Don’t let him fool you. He might say he wants to do bad things with you in his powerful single “Bad Things” (from HBO’s “True Blood”), but the truth is Jace Everett is a real gentleman. It’s hard to imagine him doing bad things with anyone, unless those bad things involve his unique brand of Nashville country rock. In fact, he’s more likely to lend a friend a helping hand, or charm this reporter starry-eyed.

Everett’s brand new album, Red Revelations came out on June 23 from Weston Boys Entertainment, and I’ve been listening to it ever since. An impressive vocal range and driving bass lines make the album immediately ear-catching, from the sultry opening track “Posession” to the hip-swaying “Lean Into the Wind” to the final track “Bad Things.” It’s an album full of stories, both playful and dark. Some songs will get you tapping your feet to the rhythm and getting down with your bad self, while others will make you want to pour yourself a tall glass of whiskey and take a trip down memory lane.

While listening to lyrics like, “I talk like a junkie but I pray like a saint down here on my knees,” I got to wondering just what the man behind the music was like. Fortunately for my curiosity, I got a chance to talk to the carrot-topped Nashville musician about his new album and live performances, and he had plenty to say

read on

True Blood Digital Kitchen: Creativity in the Blood

Techy article from Apple pro blog about Digital Kitchen ( they did the opening sequence for True Blood)

How do you market to a vampire? That’s the challenge interactive agency Digital Kitchen faced as they created a series of fang-in-cheek ads to promote HBO’s smash show True Blood. Using applications such as Final Cut Studio and Adobe Creative Suite, the all-Mac shop produced billboards and print ads for brands like MINI and Gillette, and a collection of darkly humorous online viral videos revealing that, after all, vampires are people too.

"The True Blood campaign is done on software and hardware that you can get at the Apple Store," says Mark Bashore, Digital Kitchen’s creative head. "The tools are easily accessible, which allows us to focus on being creative. That's why we use the Mac."

read on

Jace Everett talks new album, 'True Blood'

from usaweekend

While you may think that’s Chris Isaak’s unmistakable voice crooning the rockabilly-tinged theme song for HBO’s hit vampire drama True Blood, it’s not. That would be Jace Everett, the bluesy singer-songwriter behind Bad Things. The song’s been such a hit since True Blood debuted last year that Everett, 37, has become the No. 1 indie Americana artist on MySpace, with more than 4 million total streams of his songs. Between True Blood’s second season starting earlier this month and Everett releasing his third album, Red Revelations, on Tuesday, it’s been a busy time for a man who counts Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Tom Waits, U2 and Roger Miller on his short list of heroes. Our Stephanie Ostroff interviewed Everett yesterday so click read more to find out about the up-and-coming singer, and check out this video of him performing Bad Things on The Tonight Show.

Read interview

True Blood Opening sequence

A film student uses the True Blood opening for inspiration for a school project.

True Blood Pole Dancing - nope, not kidding !

True Blood Main Title" Digital Kitchen and the making of the True Blood Opening sequence

“This is not going to be Six Feet Under”
–Alan Ball

A truly hand-made sequence for one of the most watched dramatic series in HBO’s history. The final edit contains over 65 shots comprised of original documentary, studio, tabletop photography and found footage. 6 separate shoots took place in Louisiana, Seattle, Chicago on 7 different still, film, and video cameras. 3 new babies were born at DK between award and delivery. No divorces. 1 Bolex passed peacefully in the night.

Case Study

The Assignment
We have a unique relationship with Alan Ball. Our work with him on Six Feet Under altered not only the trajectory of our company but also that of the title design business. The opportunity to work together on a whole new series was an exciting proposition. Although Mr. Ball is addressing many of the same issues in True Blood as he did in Six Feet Under: death, morality, identity with a healthy dose of humor, True Blood is a much more wild, unrestrained ride. Our assignment was to distill the humor, sex, violence and sweaty, sultry vibe of Louisiana—and oh yeah, don’t show vampires.

Actually making the titles for True Blood had mostly to do with setting aside our own prejudices of the subject matter as well as so-called “professional” production practices. We knew from the start that the best way—the only way—to create a powerful introduction to True Blood was to insert ourselves into the middle of Louisiana and found out what happens–unmannered and unvarnished.

Most of the outdoor footage was shot in Louisiana. The bar scenes, titles, and writhing bodies were shot in Seattle. The church scenes were shot in Chicago. We even created our own font family based on roadside hand-painted signage.
Many of us shot scenes on a multitude of formats anywhere we went. While one of us might talk to a subject, another one or two of us would operate a camera while someone else then wandered off into the woods to shoot creepy things.

As many as a dozen DKer’s touched this project at one time or another. There are many influences and sources that colored our final product. We also give a big thanks to the wonderful film In Search of the Wrong-Eyed Jesus. It gave us the courage to dig deeper into the swamps and back alleys where the real color can be found.
Our approach embraced the madcap and deliberate, the lo-fi with state of the art, and a host of other dualities. But what made the project sing and connect with people is the transparency of our love for getting our hands dirty, hitting the ground running and making a little film.

** I collected lots on the opening see all here
There is a much longer, better "Making of video" on DK site here

'Bad Things' by King Diam in Sweden

I just enjoyed it...

'Bad things' dance moves

Now Jace Everett should check out some of Aidan's moves here
* looks like Aidan also has Quinn locked up ;-)

Jace Everett of True Blood Theme song "Bad Things" tells us: How to Become an Over Night Sensation

True Blood Specialty font

Camm's web page isn't up yet but maybe soon you can buy this font for your own computer.

Camm Rowland was the Type Designer behind the gorgeous font used in the opening credits of 'True Blood'. He was influenced by makeshift signage that he saw along the roadside.

To create the 'True' family fonts he drew each letter by hand, cut each letter out with an x-acto knife, and then scanned them in to the computer. He created 8 font families altogether!

The fonts used in the opening sequence of the show were a mixture between “True Gothic” and “True Blade” which had alternate characters and weights - so it adds to the hand made quality.

http://blanketmagazine.blogspot.com/2009/03/true-blood-font.html

Digital Kitchen Founder Paul Matthaeus Steps Down: Creator of True Blood Opening sequence

...Matthaeus is probably best known for his creative approach in television entertainment- which includes the opening creative direction for Six Feet Under, Nip / Tuck, House, Rescue Me, Ghost Whisperer, The Path to 9/11, The Company and Dexter. His latest contribution was in the creation of the opening sequence for True Blood, the highly anticipated HBO series that broke this Fall by Oscar-winning creator/writer/director Alan Ball.

“What I like about Digital Kitchen’s creative approach is their intuitive ability to depart from the status quo,” said Alan Ball, creator/director, True Blood. ” We first worked with DK on the titles for ‘Six Feet Under’ and the opening for True Blood is equally thrilling. This vivid title sequence so effectively evokes the spirit of the show. It immediately transports the viewer into the True Blood world."...read on

I am obsesses with the opening here is what i have collected on it

http://motionographer.com/2009/03/05/digital-kitchen-founder-paul-matthaeus-steps-down/

True Blood Opening Title Sequence: Doing Baptisms, Bars, and Bloodlust

From September 2008

The scene opens beneath murky swamp water, where a potentially prehistoric sea creature patiently lingers. Rising above the surface and backed by a bluesy guitar riff, the camera moves through the bayou and transitions to a dryland highway and the small town South, where the environment and buildings grow more human, but the primeval sense remains. This is a world where the conflicting ecstasies of religion, sex, and bloodlust share striking similarities. This is True Blood, where "doing bad things" has never felt -- or looked -- so very, very good.

The latest brainchild of writer/director Alan Ball (American Beauty, Six Feet Under), True Blood premiered on HBO last Sunday September 7, and the scenes described above are only the beginning. Conceived and created by creative studio Digital Kitchen (www.d-kitchen.com), the show's opening title sequence shows a chaos and mixing of cultures, races and social strata, where whores and churchgoers commingle in a region with many influences and a town of many characters and mindsets.

"What I like about Digital Kitchen's creative approach is their intuitive ability to depart from the status quo. We first worked with DK on the titles for 'Six Feet Under' and the opening for True Blood is equally thrilling," said Alan Ball, creator/director, True Blood. "This vivid title sequence so effectively evokes the spirit of the show. It immediately transports the viewer into the True Blood world where the conjured thematic images of sex, death and religious fervor blend into a gripping crescendo. I'm enthralled every time I watch it."

The True Blood project originated with a creative brief to launch the development stage; the brief asked for DK artists to contribute their ideas, with a particular focus on finding what techniques or imagery could best express the dirty, messy collisions of ideas in a contemporary northern Louisiana town.

The concept that stood out the most was the work of Digital Kitchen creatives Rama Allen and Shawn Fedorchuk. "We were super excited to be working on such an interesting project," says Allen. "Shawn and I had several extended conversations late into the night, and we quickly discovered we were on the same page as to how we could make this opening exceptionally cool. I came up with a set of storyboards with a loose, linear progression that juxtaposed the type of images I wanted. Shawn is also the editor on the project, and he created a very complex edit, based on found footage, that communicated stylistically how we wanted things to play out on screen."

"From the start, I loved the idea of images of Americana linked to scenes of lonely, stark places," says Fedorchuk. "When I worked on my initial edit, I gravitated toward a point of view of a supernatural, predatory creature observing human beings from the shadows, almost stalking them. We wanted to convey a feeling of bloodlust, together with a vivid hyperreality. Stitching together these contradictory, yet strikingly similar worlds of sex, death, and transcendence was a major influence. We were after a frenzied effect, a cathartic crescendo, and an apex of emotion linked to the possibility of redemption and forgiveness."

Based on the "Sookie Stackhouse" novels written by Charlaine Harris, True Blood stars Academy Award winner Anna Paquin (The Piano, X-Men) as a feisty waitress in a southern town populated by religious fanatics, redneck bigots, and vampires. As evidenced by a billboard announcing 'God Hates Fangs,' the show explores the vampires' sense of oppression and outcast as much as it shows the humans' fear of them.

FOUR DAYS IN LOUISIANA

In the interests of the raw mood, Digital Kitchen Creative Director Matthew Mulder deliberately steered the project away from computer- aided effects, opting instead for live action footage and striking physical transition effects involving Polaroid photographs.

"We're particularly proud of our analog work," explains Mulder. "The transition effects have an eerie, tactile quality because they were created with Polaroid transfers, water, and airguns. The resulting transitions feel almost like scorched skin."

Developed by designer Ryan Gagnier, the Polaroid transfer technique uses chemicals to separate the emulsion in a Polaroid from its backing. The resulting image has the quality of thin plastic wrap, which is then placed on a wet glass plate, then is blasted with canned air and water to create a violent effect.

"For those transitions, we took the last frame of a cut and the first frame of the next cut, blew them up, and shoot a Polaroid of them together," explains Mulder. "We then put the Polaroid in a chemical bath to separate the transition, manipulate it on another camera, shoot it, and place it back in the edit. It made for some great transitions."

The True Blood titles themselves are rendered in an original font created by Digital Kitchen. Some of the fonts were created using an exacto knife and other hand tools; Camm Rowland developed the font for the show credits based on southern-style road signage.

This very literal "hands-on" approach also took the Digital Kitchen creative team on a four-day Winnebago odyssey through Louisiana, during which they shot footage of anything and everything they felt would be appropriate to the True Blood mood:

"We would drive along and jump out when we saw something cool," says Allen. "I saw a wrecked schoolbus in somebody's yard, so we knocked on the door and ended up getting approval to shoot all over his property, even inside his home. There's a scene of a man in a rocking chair, and he was just a good guy who invited us over for beers. We met all kinds of people and shot more footage than we could possibly use, but it was an incredible experience. We threw ourselves into this project literally, artistically, and physically."

And Mulder isn't kidding about that last part. Several Digital Kitchen staff members make cameos in the opening scenes. A shoving match in a rough-looking bar involves Digital Kitchen Executive Producer Mark Bashore, who also volunteered for a particularly rousing dance with a female bar patron. Digital Kitchen's office assistant and an assistant editor portray a couple of weeping religious women, while Bashore's sons make short, messy work of some blood red berries. The climactic scene of a very wet night baptism involves a young Cajun woman flanked by a line producer and Producer Morgan Henry.

"We had a lot of fun working on this project, and we hope that shows," says Henry. "This is the kind of work Digital Kitchen is best at. There are no tried-and-true techniques used on the True Blood opening. The way we decided to gather imagery was entirely new to us, and we wanted to celebrate that adventure. The practical shooting in unfamiliar territories is philosophically and psychologically what Digital Kitchen is all about."

The True Blood project adds to Digital Kitchen's portfolio of main titles work; DK's opens created for Dexter and Six Feet Under both were recognized with Emmys. True Blood premiered September 7 on HBO.

Read on:
http://www.redorbit.com/news/entertainment/1550089/doing_baptisms_bars_and_bloodlust/index.html

CL Feature: DK's True Blood - The Making Of from Creative League Team on Vimeo.

Jace Everett Reaps Good Fueled by ‘Bad Things’

For one week in 2006, Jace Everett’s “Bad Things” was downloaded for free by about 210,000 iTunes users – and one of them just happened to be Six Feet Under creator Alan Ball. Country radio ignored the single but Ball ultimately resurrected the spooky-but-sexy song to play under the opening credits of his HBO vampire drama, True Blood.

“He just fell in love with it,” Everett says. “You know, it’s campy. He’s smart enough to know that it’s kind of cool and bad-ass, but it’s also with a wink and a grin. And that’s the kind of show he wanted to make.”

Since True Blood premiered in September 2008, “Bad Things” has been streamed nearly 5 million times on Everett’s MySpace page. He describes it as “basically a rockabilly song with minor chords,” and when he’s asked how they captured that distinctive growl in the production, he confesses, “I don’t know how the hell we got it to sound the way we did, but I’m glad we did.”

With True Blood just starting to air in Europe, Everett is eager to set up an overseas tour. He’s already traveled there twice on behalf of the Country Music Association to introduce international audiences to contemporary country music. (Everett’s writing credits include Josh Turner’s No. 1 hit, “Your Man.”) In the meantime, he’s wrapping an album with producers Chuck Prophet and Brad Jones for an independent Nashville label, Weston Boys Entertainment, with the goal of securing more music placement in Hollywood.

“It wasn’t a publisher, it wasn’t a record company,” Everett elaborates. “It was really an organic thing which should be encouraging to people out there like me, who are struggling to make ends meet in this business. Sometimes if you just put something out there, good things can happen.”

Craig Shelburne

http://www.bmi.com/images/musicworld/e/everett_j_500.jpg

True Blood Behind the scenes : True Blood Opening credits compared to " Wrong Eyed Jesus"

I have read this a number of places on the web over the last few months. I am just infatuated with the opening and have even visited the real places and i think Digital Kitchen did a great job. Some of my many posts about the opening can be found here
I'll just let their response speak for itself.

Dear Enthusiasts -

DK chiming in. Thank you for the mostly kind words, heated dialogue and too harsh accusations. The accusations are not at all unfounded insofar as "Wrong Eyed Jesus" was one a myriad of other influences - features, docs, material found online, in print, somewhere in the deep recesses of our collective cobwebbed psyches. That's how creativity works - we put these pieces in the blender, press the eviscerate button and then see what comes out in the pour. Everyone in this forum knows that. So our remaining peace goes something like this:
You're picking on 5 shots. Out of over 65.
The tone of the "True Blood" title - in audio, coloration, dynamics, editorial style, etc - is so obviously different from the WEJ trailer as to make accusations of plagiarism obviously nitpicking. It's tantamount to claiming the opening of "The Sopranos" is ripped from "Night Court" - look it's New York!
3 of the 5 shots called out are standard southern bayou fare - car in the woods, evangelical church, honky tonk bar.
Chris Cunningham doesn't own nor did he invent undercranked nudes.
On the 5th shot we have to say good catch. There was no specific intent to match the shot from WEJ specifically. We knew we wanted a midnight baptism shot b/c the concept was so perfect for "True Blood" - midnight+baptism+vampires? Holla! It's like bacon+lettuce+tomato. We
researched the midnight baptism subject quite a bit and in this case one of several shots in that scene came out remarkably like the one in WEJ. A subconscious homage? Apparently. Plagiarism? Absolutely not. We're influenced by the work that's come before us. Everyone in this forum is, and sometimes elements share striking similarities because of it. This is fairly described as one of those cases.
Lastly, DK has received 10 of the last 36 Emmy nominations in the Outstanding Main Title category and been nominated therein 6 of the last 7 years. DK's made a name in main titles and beyond based on our originality and execution. We don't need to steal from anybody. Then, now, or ever.
Thanks for paying attention to our work and this thread and feel free to get in touch directly anytime. And by all means please have fun continuing to argue these points but if you do so try to mix in a little more humor. With all the election banter in the air this too serious tone is too much - design should be fun, people!
Dave Skaff
Executive Producer
skaff@d-kitchen.com
http://www.d-kitchen.com/


Discussion can be found here

View One Eyed

View True Blood Opening