UGA grad, Athens Music Walk honoree receives Emmy nomination for Best Original Song

As a member of Athens Music Walk of Fame honorees The Elephant 6 Recording Company, Heather McIntosh left her mark on the Classic City before moving into the world of music composition for film and television.

Now, as one-third of the team behind the musical episode of Showtime's "The L Word: Generation Q," McIntosh has been nominated for an Emmy Award for Best Original Song.

In this interview with Banner-Herald arts and culture reporter Andrew Shearer, McIntosh talks about her reaction to the Emmy nomination, her history in the Athens music scene and how she made the leap from playing in punk bands and touring with national artists to scoring movies and TV.

The telecast of the 75th Emmy Awards will air live coast-to-coast on Monday, Jan. 15, 2024 at 8 p.m.

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Andrew Shearer: When you worked at Vision Video here in Athens, I mostly knew you as a movie expert. Which came first, your love of music or your love of film?

Heather McIntosh: I'm an arthouse baby and Vision Video raised me. Before I moved to Athens in 1993, I was taking cello lessons in Cleveland, Ohio and went to see a screening of Todd Haynes' "Poison." That was when I realized that film really did something to me, movies like that and Robert Altman's "Short Cuts." I came to Athens to attend UGA, and Vision ended up being the perfect place for me. My love of films came first, so I didn't really think about composing right out of the gate. I started finding folks to play music with in Athens while playing cello in college, then switched to composition and got my B.A. in music.

Shearer: Was there a specific film score that inspired you?

McIntosh: When I was a kid, I thought that film scoring was like John Williams, whom I love. When you hear the Imperial March from "Star Wars," you see Darth Vader in your mind. It's so powerful, but it's orchestral. And when I was in college studying composition, I was mainly a chamber music person, so it didn't translate. I think Mike Leigh's "Naked" was one of the first films I saw that had a chamber score, and I noticed that it created a lot of weird space. The instrumentation is limited, but it puts you right in the moment and hits you so powerfully. I remember thinking that was it, I wanted to do that.

Shearer: Did you break into scoring movies while still living in Athens?

McIntosh: The first two movies that I scored were directed by people I met when I lived in Athens, Astra Taylor and Craig Zobel. We were all sort of bouncing off each other at the time. I met Craig through a bunch of girlfriends, he was always around and we became buddies. Astra I'd known for a million years because she used to come into Jittery Joe's when I worked there. Through Craig I saw David Gordon Green's "George Washington" (2000), which came out of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and had a gorgeously simple score by David Wingo. After I toured as a backing musician for Lil Wayne and Gnarls Barkley, Astra offered me to score her documentary "Examined Life" (2008), and I moved to Los Angeles after scoring "Compliance" (2012) for Craig. It's really about finding your community of filmmakers, which I think you can do from Georgia especially now that there's a film music program certificate at UGA.

Shearer: The musical episode of "The L Word: Generation Q" came as a total surprise for longtime fans of the series. How did that come about?

McIntosh: Allyson Newman and I are the composers on the series, and (showrunner) Marja-Lewis Ryan is a huge musical fan who comes from a theater background. (Ryan) had always bandied about the idea of doing a musical episode, but we didn't necessarily think that it would happen in season 3 until she came back from the beach and was like, "Hey! Musical." When Allyson and I realized we were going to have to dive into the musical, I think we had like six weeks to write everything from start to finish. I knew immediately that we would need some support with the songwriting, so I brought in Taura Stinson, who I know from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and I'm just a huge fan of. It was the first thing since the COVID-19 pandemic where we were able to sit in the same room together and write. It felt like the days of classic songwriting teams like Burt Bacharach and Hal Leonard, where they're sitting at the piano coming up with stuff together. I don't know if that's how pop songs get made so much these days, but it was so special to get to write that way. When I played in bands, I was supporting team member and I still felt like that with this project, but there was this other side where it felt like I had a cool new muscle to flex.

Shearer: How did you react when you found out that you, Allyson and Taura had received an Emmy nomination?

McIntosh: When I heard about it, I was in shock. I was up working on a deadline for another film early in the morning, and when I turned my phone back on, I had a FaceTime message. I was like, "Is this real? What's happening? What the heck?" The the series is over now, but we were just so proud of the work we did on it that we felt like it was worth the effort to push for award consideration. So I'm feeling shocked, elated and so proud of our team. It's a first for my career and it's really wild. We weren't thinking that we would be at an award level when we were working on the music, so it's really wonderful to have peers and folks really respond to the message. I do think that's part of it, and I'm so thankful that "All About Me" has been so well-received by people.

Shearer: Do you have any advice for Athens musicians who are trying to break into the world of composing for TV and film?

McIntosh: You can absolutely do it from Georgia. You can apply to the Sundance Institute. Music production and post-production are being done from everywhere, not just Hollywood, and I feel like the profession is growing around that also. You also have people like EmmoLei Sankofa ("Horror Noire," "Three Ways"), a really amazing composer out of Atlanta who is out there just killing it.

I don't think I would be where I am now without having played in all the Elephant 6 bands, hanging out at The 40 Watt Club, working at Vision Video and at Jittery Joe's. All of those things carved my musical voice. It's so valuable to find your own sound away from the standard that's reaching for what somebody wants to buy. Make something that you want to share and connect with your buddies. Go to practice and make the sounds even if it feels like a limitation.

This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: UGA grad, honored Athens musician nominated for Emmy