Alexis Harte
Songwriter, Storyteller, Producer
About
Alexis Harte is an American Singer-Songwriter/Composer and was Co-Founder/Creative Director at multi-award winning Pollen Music Group.
As a singer/songwriter, his musical roots span acoustic folk, British invasion, Americana, and electrified world-pop. In addition to sharing stages with the likes of Taj Mahal, Dar Williams, and Cat Power, Alexis placed numerous tracks from his 6 studio releases in dozens of national television shows (including CW’s Heart of Dixie, ABC’s Castle, and What About Brian, Jack And Bobby, WB’s Jake 2.0, PBS’s Now with Bill Moyers, Fox’s The Loop) and many films. The cinematic quality of his songwriting helped land him a two year publishing deal with Lionsgate Entertainment in 2008.
With a growing network in the entertainment sector, in 2010 Alexis co-founded Pollen Music Group, an acclaimed music & sound company. Today, Pollen Music Group’s client list includes Netflix, Disney, Pixar, Gorillaz, the Simpsons, Aardman Animation Studios, Baobab Studios, Adobe, Apple, Google Spotlight Stories, and Oculus Story Studio. They just finished scoring a 30-episode Netflix animated series (Trash Truck) and have two more Netflix shows coming up in the near future.
In 2016 Alexis penned the signature song for Patrick Osborne’s Pearl, which became the first Oscar-nominated VR film. The song (No Wrong Way Home) went on to win many awards and garnered national airplay on SiriusXM and others. Pollen has won numerous awards, including three Emmys, two Oscar nominations, a Peabody Award, multiple Golden Reel and Annie’s Awards and many, many more (a full list can be found here).
Alexis continues to evolve his roles further into the film side of the industry, executive producing his own films. His films have screened (and won awards) at film festivals around the world. Night of My Death won Best Music Video at Cinequest (2019) and at the Oxford International Film Festival (2019). June 2021 saw the international premiere of his latest short musical film (Thirsty) at the 20th Annual Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. The film went on to open for Mad Mad: Fury Road at the Rose Bowl as part of Tribeca’s Summer Drive-In Series and in November, 2021 won best music video at Amarcort, a festival in honor of Fellini in his hometown of Rimini, Italy. The film continues its festival run into 2022.
Watch
Hold On
Made at the height of the Omicron surge, this anthem celebrates heroes of homefront struggles past and present, inspiring our oldest and youngest generations to stay strong as the pandemic lingers.
Thirsty
A dried-up ancient mariner chases a fleeting figure across an apocalyptic desert landscape in this modern parable set to Alexis Harte‘s darkly rollicking song. My latest collaboration with Writer/Director, Josh Peterson. Shot in the Fall of 2020 in western Nevada and Inverness, CA. Check out our feature in Post Magazine. Thirsty had it's International premiere at the 20th Annual Tribeca Film Festival, June 9-20. For the song, go here.
Show the Man the Door
Some music videos take months to make. Some take minutes. This was a song I dedicated to bullies everywhere but, in particular, to the one in the White House back in November, 2020.
Pearl
Directed by Oscar-Winner Patrick Osborne for Google Spotlight Stories, Pearl follows a girl and her dad as they crisscross the country chasing their dreams. It's a story about the gifts we hand down and their power to carry love. And finding grace in the unlikeliest of places. I penned the anchoring song, “No Wrong Way Home.” Pearl went on to be the first VR film ever nominated for an Oscar, won an Emmy and a Peabody Award, and we won an Annie for the song. My own version of the song is here.
The Night of my Death
Josh Peterson brought this story to life beautifully. “The Night of My Death” is a song I’d been trying to write for years. It was actually inspired by what I describe in the first verse, though luckily I stepped out of the way at the last minute. “The Night of My Death” freezes the moment of death for the length of a song, in order to explore the final steps we might take to give our lives closure. It’s also a musical nod to one of my favorite short stories “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce. We won Best Music Video at both Cinequest 2019 and the Oxford International Film Festival, and screened at many others in the US and Europe.
Heads or Tails
Kate Isenberg wrote and directed this short animated film based on my song, “Heads or Tails” for her Masters Project at UCLA School of Animation. She won a scholarship from Matt Groening to complete it. We screened at the Mendocino Film Festival for their kids program, opening for Tomm Moore’s Song of the Sea, and at several other film festivals.
Blood Makes the Green Grass Grow
My first collaboration with Josh Peterson involved scoring his debut short film. We settled on a sound palette that required inventing an instrument. Wanting that sound of a finger rubbing on a wine glass, but with micro-tonality, the “Siphone” consists of various sized wine-glasses mounted on old record players, rubber tubing, and a big bucket of water. Increasing and decreasing the amount of water in the spinning glass through siphon created an eerie changing soundscape that worked beautifully in several scenes, including the trailer shown here.
Listen
Herschel’s Song is my first published audio story. It is one part tribute to a dear friend, and to a life well-lived, and one part meditation on the songwriting/creative process. Huge thanks to Erica Heilman at RumbleStrip for airing it. (Rumble Strip was picked as best podcast site in 2020 by Atlantic Magazine) For Herschel Byron Snodgrass (1937-2020)
