A Conversation with Black Iris/White Iris’ Daron Hollowell – HuffPost 6.21.13
Mike Ragonga: Hi. How are you doing Daron?
Daron Hollowell: Good. How are you Mike?
MR: I’m good. You’re working on the Maron soundtrack now, right?
DH: That’s correct .
MR: The show is nicely boundary pushing. First of all, how did you score the gig?
DH: Well our company sort of has two arms to it. There is Black Iris Music, which is our company that does original compositions for advertising and TV, and we’ve been doing that for almost eight years. We also have a record label called White Iris Records–you can sort of see the connection there–and we release mostly seven inch singles by up and coming bands, which we’ve been doing for a couple of years now. We have a music supervisor that works with us named Anthony Roman. He got the job as the music supervisor on the show and then brought Black Iris in to compose original music for the show, which we did with Anthony Rizzo, the additional composer on the show. Through that, a few White Iris bands ended up being placed on the soundtrack throughout the course of the season, and we pitched the idea of releasing a soundtrack album for the first season of the show on White Iris, so that’s kind of how that all came to pass.
MR: Did you find it easy to pair up some of your artists with the Maron soundtrack?
DH: Yeah, it was actually pretty easy. A lot of our artists are sort of up and coming indie rock bands, and I think it’s the kind of music that Marc is drawn to naturally. It seemed like that music really fit the vibe of the show really well. Yeah, it just sort of came together pretty seamlessly, without too much pushing.
MR: Give us a little history about how and why Black Iris/White Iris started.
DH: The core members of Black Iris, the main owners, we were all playing in a band together some years ago, and just sort of figuring out, as people in bands do, how we were going to try to sustain our lives as musicians and how we could do what we really wanted to for a living. We just sort of happened upon some people that we knew in advertising that let us know that people wrote original music for advertising. We kind of tried our hand at that, won a few jobs and decided that we had something there. We built it from there around the other musicians that we knew and kind of brought other people in. I think our main thing was really about trying to keep our artistic dreams alive and keep real music alive. That’s sort of what we started doing for ourselves, and then we extended that out to other people we knew from playing in bands.
MR: What are some of the most successful projects that you’ve been associated with?
DH: We’ve done quite a bit of stuff for advertising. We actually did this Toyota music video for one of their mini-vans called Swagger Wagon, which ended up being a huge viral hit on YouTube. That was one of our higher profile projects. We also have worked on soundtracks for everything from the McGruber movie to working in conjunction with The Lonely Island on some of the SNL digital shorts. On the record label side, we’ve done early singles for bands like Best Coast and FIDLAR, who have gone on to do well in the larger indie rock world.
MR: What are some of the bands on White Iris that we should be looking at?
DH: This year, we actually have a lot of exciting up and coming stuff. We kind of pride ourselves on being really early with some of these bands. We like to say that the bands that we’re putting out now are the bands you’ll hear about in about six months. We just recently worked with an artists called Ludwig Persik from New York, who is a real up and coming artist and he’s on the Maron soundtrack. We worked with a band called Strange Names from Minneapolis, who has a single that just came out–their really fantastic. There’s this band from LA that we’re really excited about called Quitapenas, who play essentially Cumbia music, but it’s sort of an updated version of that and it’s really fun party music. Those are some of the things this year that we’ve been concentrating on. There are a lot of good White Iris bands on the Maron soundtrack as well.
MR: Beyond Maron, what’s going on with your collective over the next few months?
DH: We’re kind of continuing to do what we do on the original music side, and most of the artists that we work with on the label side are involved in that in one way or another. Again, it’s about helping people sustain and keep their lives going, so they get involved either singing on tracks or composing for us in the projects we do on the original music side. Advertising has been the big bulk of it, but it looks like there are a couple of TV shows that I can’t quite mention yet because they’re not yet solidified… But yeah, we’ve been working on more and more TV work, and we’re excited to see what comes out in the next few months. Currently, we’re working on an array of different advertising projects–everything from Norwegian Cruise Lines to Lincoln car commercials to the Delta in-flight safety video that you see when you’re getting ready to take off. It’s just a whole range of different projects that we put our music on.
MR: Do you also supply music for industrials or any infomercials?
DH: We’ve done a little bit of that historically, throughout the course of the company, but less of that now. It seems to be more TV spots and more TV shows now. We’re also starting to work our way into film as well.
MR: What is your advice for new artists?
DH: Really just to keep going, and if you really believe in what you’re doing and actually keep working at it, then there are ways to sustain that and make it successful. So being consistent and not giving up are the biggest things when it comes to being an artist.
MR: Anything else we need to know on the Black Iris/White Iris front?
DH: The big thing is to look for this Maron soundtrack. We’re really excited about it.
MR: Would you ever have been able to predict how popular a show this became?
DH: You know, I think Marc is really having a moment right now. His podcast has been extremely successful. We had a really good time working with him on the show. We felt like it was really funny and we hoped it would catch on. It’s doing really well, and I think everything is just kind of lining up for him right now. It’s just exciting to be a part of something that is, like you said, boundary pushing. It’s quality work and it’s really funny.
MR: Thank you so much for your time, Daron, and all the best with Maron and beyond.
DH: Great. Thank you Mike, I appreciate it.
Transcribed by Ryan Gaffney