On Jan. 12, when the opening credits for HBO’s “True Detective” began rolling, it marked the birth of TV’s latest cult hit and also the rebirth of a talented dark Americana band.
The Handsome Family, comprised of husband and wife Brett and Rennie Sparks, has been releasing deeply haunting albums since 1995. They’ve built up a solid career over time, blending murder ballads with hidden histories and gaining fans like Bruce Springsteen and Ringo Starr. Now they’re experiencing a boom thanks to musical maestro T Bone Burnett, who as the show’s music supervisor helped pick their evocative 2003 tune “Far From Any Road” as “True Detective’s” theme.
In a phone interview from their Albuquerque, N.M., home, the couple — who have been married for 20-plus years — mused about the music they make together, the curiosity behind “Far From Any Road” and how this exposure has affected their careers.
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When did you guys first meet and then when did you start writing music together?
Brett: We first met in New York where I was going to school and she had tequila in her purse that I could smell from five miles away. But we were married in 1988 or something and it was five years before we could ever write a song together.
Rennie: Basically when he couldn’t find a bass player for his band he was like well, chicks can play bass and brought me on and now I write all the lyrics.
Brett: Yeah, when my rhyming dictionary ran out of words for baby, I thought I’d bring her on. [Laughs] I’m not what you would call a wordsmith. I’m not a lyricist, I’m just a hack that throws together chords so it was easy to work with her since she’s so good.
Where did the name “The Handsome Family” really come from?
Rennie: Well, his version was that we had a drummer that kicked us out of a band because he said we “couldn’t rock hard enough” and he always said it kind of sarcastically to Brett. But for me, it reminded me a bit of the Carter Family and the Manson Family and I feel like we kind of live in the middle of those two.
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Specifically for “Far From Any Road,” what was going through your mind when you wrote that song, both lyrically and musically?
Rennie: I saw some Jimson weed and it’s a plant that only blooms at night and you can see these huge white flowers and there are these moths that feed on them just at night so it’s like a secret night time blooming and romance. Jimson weed actually goes back to Jamestown and there’s a story of it driving people insane because it’s psychedelic and because it gets into people’s water all the time. So it’s about these moths and this sexy, forbidden ritual they have in the darkness.
Brett: The vernacular here is that it’s “loco weed.” So the song is basically about psychedelic plants and love and dark love.
Rennie: And also the poisonous plants that you can’t get really close to. I found that really interesting.
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Brett: So if you have any questions about Rennie’s lyrics, you can go to nature, that’s usually the first step.
Share this articleShareHow did you first find out that your song was going to be used for a major HBO miniseries?
Rennie: We were on tour in New Zealand and we got this e-mail that was like HBO saying that they’re considering our song for one of their shows.
Brett: And we considered it for two seconds and laughed for about 15 minutes.
So since you really didn’t know until the show aired, what was it like seeing your song on television for the first time with all this insanely cool imagery in the opening credits?
Brett: I pinched my leg until it was literally black and blue. It was a highlight of my life. Absolutely awesome.
Rennie: I think they understood the song and, you know, we always worry that they’re going to misunderstand the song and that there’s going to be an overlay of like kids riding ponies and we would have to freak out and be like, that’s not what the song is really about!
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Brett: There’s this really great article that just talks about how they took the song and kinda frame by frame deconstructed the opening credits and one night I watched it like 30 to 40 times because I was just so amazed by the quality.
Then after seeing a few episodes of the show, do you think your song blends well with the series and all its themes?
Brett: I read that the hard thing was not to make it like “down in the bayou” kind of stuff but to make the music more evocative and another character in the show. I think the song is perfect because it’s evocative and [has that] weird clicking sound … and actually when creating this song I wanted to get this insect sound that I heard on a Miles Davis record for the first time. When somebody told me that the song was in question [for use in the show], I thought immediately that it was because of the weird clicking sound.
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Rennie: It’s really about things taking place in the middle of nowhere. It’s about tricks and death and something sinister and I think they [both the song and the show] live in the same emotional landscape but exist in different physical landscapes.
In what ways has this exposure affected your careers?
Rennie: We’ve heard from people from all around the world. A few days after the first show aired, we got an e-mail from a guy from Tehran, Iran about how he just put our song as his ringtone and we get e-mails from places like Kyrgyzstan and we’re actually charting in Ukraine right now which is totally insane.
Brett: We have been doing this for a really long time and our longtime fans seem to be really nice and you know how people can be like, “You guys are sellouts, man!” but it’s not like that at all. Everybody’s just been so nice and there’s this new group of people finding our stuff which we think is great.
What are you hopes for Season 2? Another Handsome Family theme, perhaps?
Rennie: I think we’ll still probably be sitting on our couch shaking in anticipation like last time, but all we can do is hope for the best.
Brett: And I guess if T Bone is looking for some more creepy vibes next time around, he knows who to come to.
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