VIA PRESS RELEASE | Red Poppy Films has announced the premiere of It Was the Music, a 10 episodes series chronicling the lives and love of veteran musicians Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams. Directed by award-winning filmmaker Mark Moskowitz (Stone Reader), It Was the Music premieres Sunday, December 13 on FANS, the leading concert and music streaming platform. With FANS, new episodes will debut every Sunday through February 14 with the exception of Sunday, January 3.
To celebrate the series premiere, a unique livestream event will take place on December 13 at 8 PM ET and will include special performances, conversations, and watch-party with Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams, Emmylou Harris, and Buddy Miller. The event is hosted by actor David Keith and will be available on Fans.
It Was the Music is both a musical odyssey and deeply personal love story about two musicians who, in search of what they call “music utopia,” step off the tour bus and into the limelight to make it on their own. A 3x GRAMMY® Award-winning multi-instrumentalist, producer, singer-songwriter, and bandleader, Larry Campbell is a true veteran hailed for his defining work with such artists as Levon Helm, Bob Dylan, The Black Crowes, and many more.
Known for her resonant alto and passion for music “that comes from the dirt,” Teresa Williams is an exceptional singer/actor known for her highly acclaimed roles as Sara Carter in Keep On The Sunny Side and the title role in Always….Patsy Cline as well as her serving as a stellar vocalist for Emmylou Harris, Jackson Browne, Phil Lesh and Friends, and Peter Wolf, to name but a few. Having at long last set forth on their own joint musical career, It Was the Music sees the couple packing their bags, guitars, amps, and 30-year marriage into their SUV and setting out across America to sing their own extraordinary songs along with riveting interpretations of beloved gospel, blues, country, and classic rock ‘n’ roll.
It Was the Music is joined today by a stellar soundtrack collecting previously unreleased music from Campbell and Williams, including very special new renditions of songs made famous by The Band, Grateful Dead, Little Feat, Buffalo Springfield, and more, performed alongside such friends as Patty Griffin, Buddy Miller, Bill Payne, and the late Levon Helm’s world famous Midnight Ramble Band. The full album soundtrack is available now.
It Was the Music follows Campbell and Williams over 15 months on the road, from its starting point on a Friday afternoon on Williams’ seventh generation farm in Peckerwood Point, TN, to Campbell’s native New York City and the couple’s home in Woodstock, NY, to recording studios, clubs, and theatres across the country. Highlights throughout include exclusive live performances from intimate venues and jam-packed music festivals, culminating in its grand finale with selections from the star-studded “The Last Waltz 40th Anniversary Celebration” presented by Lincoln Center at NYC’s Damrosch Park.
It Was the Music reveals the magic and process of creating and performing music as a couple, often captured off-stage in remarkably private, candid moments—on back porches and backyards, farm fields and kitchens, remote cabins, dressing rooms, and of course, in church. As their journey moves forward, Campbell and Williams are joined by many of their famous friends, fans, and collaborators, who speak to the ongoing power of American music while hearkening back to a halcyon era when rock ‘n’ roll resonated with an entire generation to change the world.
Along with the couple’s own personal story, It Was the Music includes exclusive interviews and never-before-seen performances from Jackson Browne, Rosanne Cash, William Bell, Jorma Kaukonen, Jack Casady, Phil Lesh, Jerry Douglas, Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton, Garland Jeffreys, Happy Traum, David Bromberg, and many more. But through it all, It Was the Music is first and foremost a love story, as Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams show how love can create the music and how the music can bring us together.
“It Was the Music is about what music means to us,” says director Mark Moskowitz, “the way my film, Stone Reader, is about what books means to us, and my upcoming film, Art Stops Here, is about what art means to us. In the end, these films are about us, how people respond to the arts. Not quite documentary, not quite reality, not quite memoir, not quite even story, It Was the Music is referential, memory-like. It’s allusive. Things touch other things…much like a song.”
ABOUT LARRY CAMPBELL AND TERESA WILLIAMS | Larry Campbell is of course one of Americana’s most well-regarded multi-instrumentalists and producers, known for his extraordinary collaboration with the late, great Levon Helm on three GRAMMY® Award-winning albums as well as his role as invaluable session player and sideman for such iconic artists as Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Willie Nelson, and Hot Tuna.
Steeped in traditional gospel and years of performing in musical theatre, Teresa Williams has earned applause for her extraordinary voice and a resonant love for American music that bursts forth in her work with Levon Helm, Hot Tuna, Phil Lesh and Friends, Little Feat, Jackson Browne and Shawn Colvin.
After almost three decades as a couple, the two gifted musicians finally united in the studio in 2015 for the acclaimed Larry Campbell & Teresa Williams, followed two years later by the even more ambitious Contraband Love, the latter prompting American Songwriter to rave, “This couple has tapped into the dusky spirit of Americana in all of its forms (folk, blues, rock and roll, gospel etc.) and created a unique sound inspired by the past, that is spirited, stirring and timeless.”
“Campbell and Williams have created another great album of new songs that evoke the old classics of the roadways (and roadhouses) stretching along the Deep South between Nashville and New Orleans and the lesser-known, dustier trails along the way,” declared Pop Matters, adding, “The true Americana isn’t a sound; it’s a feeling. Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams make you feel it with every song.”
