Corner Brook singer Allison Crowe's newest gig? Oh, just Zack Snyder's zombie heist movie
Singer songwriter and longtime Corner Brook resident Allison Crowe was using the elliptical machine at the gym one afternoon before the pandemic when her cellphone rang.
"On my call display it said 'Netflix,'" Crowe said.
At first she thought it had something to do with her account but quickly realized it was an opportunity to sing a song on the soundtrack for the Hollywood movie Army of the Dead, set to be released globally Friday on Netflix.
Hollywood connection
Crowe's friendship with famous director, producer and screenwriter Zack Snyder helped land her the singing gig.
Crowe, who's originally from British Columbia but has lived on Newfoundland's west coast since 2005, teamed up with lounge singer Richard Cheese for a duet of a signature Elvis Presley tune Viva Las Vegas during the opening title sequence of what's being billed as a zombie heist movie.
"It's always so much fun to put sort of a different twist on things anyway. For me, I start the duet while it's big fun jazz band-sounding stuff and go right into the more piano vocal version of it," she said.
At home recording
Normally, to record a song for a movie, the musicians would be flown to a studio. Due to COVID-19 travel restrictions that wasn't an option for Crowe, so she improvised and sang her parts in her spare bedroom at home and played the keys in her living room.
"It was all done digitally, and there were samples being sent back and forth. I got to see what I was singing along to," she said.
While the Army of the Dead contract came first, Crowe closed out Zack Snyder's Justice League with her version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah in March. Crowe also appears on camera in the bar scene in Snyder's Man of Steel, released in 2013, singing Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire.
While there's no red carpet premiere in her future, Crowe says she and her family will watch Army of the Dead together Friday night.
Then she is packing her bags and moving to Cow Head to perform in the summer season of the Gros Morne Theatre Festival.
