It was a dream come true to have a scene in Cameron Crowe’s award winning movie, Almost Famous. The way I got there was thanks to a great consolation prize.
Pete was asked to audition for the role of the bass player when Cameron was casting Almost Famous. While Pete had acted in plays when he was young, he had no experience on camera, but that didn’t stop him from doing a screen test! The role ended up going to Mark Kozelek, but Cameron had another idea. He asked Pete to write a song in the vein of, “We’ll Sweep Out the Ashes” by Gram Parsons. So Pete got busy, and “Small Time Blues” was born. Cameron loved it and said he'd like Pete and me to come to LA and shoot a scene, singing Pete’s song. We are credited as The Hyatt Singers, but we were definitely channeling Gram and Emmylou.
We sang the song live just one time on camera, and it was a magical, calming moment, with people on the floor, holding mic's and lining the walls, being totally quiet for those three minutes while we sang.
Here’s a clip of the actual footage. (Our edited scene is quite a bit shorter.)