Sterlin Harjo is a playlists guy. You name it, the writer, director, and showrunner of “The Lowdown” is using music to help him think about his storytelling — and then sending a ton of those playlists to music supervisor Tiffany Anders to see if they can use some of the tracks in the show. This was also true of their collaboration on Harjo’s first FX series, “Reservation Dogs.” On “The Lowdown,” Harjo and Anders have been able to weave some of the texture of Oklahoma into the series through its music cues.
“I always come in with so much music, and Tiffany has a very similar approach. Also, we like a lot of the same stuff, which helps. Tiffany’s there when I need an alt or I run out of an idea for something. She’s always providing bangers that I love,” Harjo told IndieWire on a recent episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit Podcast. “She always brings — something like Ted Lucas, for instance, [during] ‘Reservation Dogs’ she turned me onto that, which I just loved and I put it in the finale.”
Harjo’s connection between music and writing is a very busy two-way street. He keeps a guitar on set when directing, and titles episodes after specific pieces, even if those titles ultimately don’t stick. “I’m such a disgruntled musician. I love musicians. While we made ‘The Lowdown,’ I constantly had a guitar on set and, you know, I was playing guitar with Ethan [Hawke] or Tim Blake Nelson would bring his Mandolin and we would sing songs together. It’s a way to — you know, I’m playing music on a Bluetooth or guitar and the crew just has a good time and we just have fun. It’s kind of like hanging out. It’s so important to me, the way I want to make films.”
The important thing, which Anders also helps with, is not letting the music take over too much. But a lot of Harjo’s sensibility as a writer and director — the way that “The Lowdown” lingers on b-roll and establishing shots to create a sense of place, the series’ easy downshifts between its comedy and thriller modes of being — echoes the rhythms and cadence of the music he’s thinking about. And Harjo and Anders are able to add to that sense of place, but using music that speaks to the specific cultural melting point that exists in Oklahoma.
Episode 4, for instance, opens on Tim Blake Nelson’s character, the late Dale Washberg, out on the prairie, speaking on his life and who he is (was) as a person, which may have led him to kill himself or someone to murder him — to be determined! You have the image of Nelson, a veteran of many a Western odyssey, in a cowboy hat and Western duds, looking out onto the land, and a song caught halfway between warm and mournful on the soundtrack. The cue hints at something deeper, more unseen, going on. And there is.
“The opening of Episode 4, there’s this great track and there’s yodeling in it. You might think that that’s some white guy from Appalachia. He’s a Cherokee guy who sings these beautiful songs in the Cherokee language, you know? The song is actually about being young — it’s like, ‘when I was a boy’ and it’s a nostalgic song. You don’t even have to speak Cherokee to hear that nostalgia in the song. It makes so much sense for that moment,” Harjo said. “It’s moments like that, for me, that music, film, cinema, writing, everything comes together in one, and it’s just, it’s a storytelling device and so important to the work that I do, I think.”
The music of “The Lowdown” is lovingly curated by, from, and about Oklahoma artists. Tulsa-based singer-songwriter Ken Pomeroy plays Dale Washburn’s daughter Pearl in front of the camera, but also lends her voice to a key Lee (Hawke) and Francis (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) father-daughter research montage in Episode 5, for instance.
But beyond that, Harjo knew that setting the story in Tulsa was important for the themes he wanted to explore in “The Lowdown” and the kinds of both emotional and literal roadblocks he wanted to throw up in front of Lee as he attempts to solve the mystery of Dale’s death. In Tulsa, Harjo said that “Tulsa’s a character. You feel the need of people to leave and the people that need to stay; the architecture in Tulsa is like, ‘Oh, this had money once. There was an oil boom.’ There’s all this art deco and these amazing buildings downtown that are hardly used now. There is this duality to that, in the place.”
It’s a duality that can be further emphasized in moments of disconnect, or moments of heartbreaking harmony, between music and image throughout the show. “There’s secrets; there’s darkness; there’s things that are covered up; there’s an underbelly. Those are the places where these types of stories are set and thrive because that’s what they are about. They’re about people with things to hide.”
Not the banger playlists that go with “The Lowdown,” though. Those you can find pretty easily.
To hear Sterlin Harjo‘s full interview, subscribe to the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform.
“The Lowdown” is now streaming on Hulu.
