Behind The White Devil Theme Song
The surprising story behind "Under the Shade I Flourish," the song featured in White Devil
This is part of Inside the Tent, a series going behind the scenes of Campside’s award winning podcasts.
Listen now to all 12 episodes of White Devil.
There are so many decisions to make when you’re producing a podcast, and one of the biggest ones that we rarely talk about is picking a show’s theme song. The best themes set the tone for a series and can become almost iconic.
Some themes are chosen from music libraries. Others are original songs, composed for the show, which is the case with most Campside podcasts — like Suspect, or Dr. Dante. And sometimes, it’s a song plucked from the world, typically licensed from the rights holder, like “Bad Checks,” the Houses song I heard one day and immediately knew we had to use as the theme for Campside’s first-ever show, Chameleon: Hollywood Con Queen.
Now, the process of clearing that song — of securing the rights and agreeing to a price — nearly killed me. It was long and painful and basically convinced me we would never again pick a piece of pop music for a podcast. Which I guess is a good lesson for the music industry, because millions of people listened to Con Queen, and while I never heard from Dexter Tortoriello, the musician behind Houses, I have to imagine the show directed a lot of people to his music.
Of course, I immediately forgot that lesson when I made Hooked a year later, and once again fell for a particular pop song — this time, “Kevin,” by Macklemore, featuring Leon Bridges. That song — and especially Leon’s devastating hook — was absolutely perfect for a show about the opioid epidemic.
I spent a few weeks talking to Macklemore’s management, and his label, and they kindly agreed to let us use the song for free. Now, unfortunately there were some lawyers who ultimately made the song impossible to use, so…
My producer and partner on the show, Mark McAdam — a chameleon of a musician himself — wrote one instead.
Which brings me to White Devil. Mark was my partner on White Devil, too, along with our excellent lead producer, Jo Barratt, and we hadn’t even started discussing the show’s theme when one just fell into our lap.
If you listened closely to the show, you already know that “Under the Shade I Flourish,” which plays at the end of every episode, comes from a guy you meet in episode 6.
He’s a Manchester-based British artist named Chris Alton who created an incredibly elaborate fake history and album of songs for a real band called Trident that (for a time) fooled Jo into believing it was real. You’ll have to listen to the show to hear Jo’s incredible journey, and to figure out how this connects to our central narrative — and to one of the show’s most mysterious figures, Lord Michael Ashcroft — and I promise you won’t regret it.
But as soon as the truth was revealed, and Jo had listened to the whole album of fake Trident music, he was sure we’d found our theme. Specifically, the track “Under the Shade I Flourish.”
“It speaks to the idea of something being hidden,” he explains. “Something powerful we are investigating and may or may not find. And it SOUNDS and feels lonely. Which is often how I think of Michael Ashcroft. I can see the wealth and power sitting heavy on him, cutting him off in a way from normal life and connection, like a drug, an addiction.”
Listen now:
I agreed that the song was perfect. And so did Mark, who was happy to not have to write a closing theme, or hear me complain any more about how hard it is to clear a pop song.
I’m thrilled Jo found the song, and suggested it. I honestly can’t imagine White Devil now without “Under the Shade I Flourish” as its theme. But I was curious what the song’s writer, Chris Alton, saw in it. Where did it come from? And what does this song mean to him?
For starters, “Under the Shade I Flourish” is the English translation of Belize’s motto — Sub Umbra Floria. This phrase appears on Belize’s coat of arms, which also features two shirtless dudes (one with an axe, one with an oar), and is at the center of the country’s predominantly blue (but also red and white) flag. (Fun fact for you: It’s the only flag in the world to feature humans as a design element!)
The motto supposedly refers to Belize’s thick forests, which were the main draw for early English colonizers, who chopped down and exported lots of mahogany. But Chris’s take on the phrase is a little… spicier. “Somewhat sickeningly,” he told us, “that motto actually means that it's more profitable to make your slaves work in the shade rather than in the sun.”
The band that allegedly wrote and is performing this song — Chris’s fake version of the real Trident — inhabits a fictional world where it’s possible to write a song inspired by a motto that didn’t exist yet. Which is to say that Trident the band (the real one, managed by Michael Ashcroft, and the fake one, in Chris’s project), existed in the 1960s, but Belize didn’t achieve independence — and become a country with a motto and flag — until 1981. “They're recording these songs with certain lyrics and those lyrics predate the national Anthem,” Alton says. “So there's a sort of jumble of timelines.”
The project, and the songs, are political. As is the excellent 29-minute fake documentary Chris produced about his alternate universe version of Trident that also fooled Jo. Like many people, Chris was sort of horrified by his country’s colonial past in places like Belize, and by the byzantine financial colonialism that still exists, in its wake.
The system of shell corporations and tax havens that — like the old colonialism — extracts a lot of wealth for white people while mostly not benefitting the locals. Here’s how the project was explained when exhibited:
“Trident became a vehicle to discuss the interconnected nature of Britain's colonial history, tax avoidance and soft power. Fictitious tours see them zigzag haphazardly between venues, mimicking financial graphs; song lyrics repurpose Latin mottos and tax terminology; and posters advertise performances in notorious centres of tax avoidance.”
“Additionally,” Chris says, “the idea of flourishing in the shade echoed a lot of what I'd read about Michael Ashcroft.”
On both levels, then, it was a perfect choice for our show.
I should point out that this isn’t Chris’s first time making excellent stunt music for a political art project. Prior to his Trident work, Chris did one about “the political potential of music.” He started “an anti-fascist pro disco group” called English Disco Lovers, or EDL, which happens to be the same acronym as a loathsome far right group called the English Defense League. So Chris created this band, wrote some songs, and — doing his small part to fight fascism — pushed the bad EDL down in web searches; his version, the disco band, became the top “EDL” link on Google searches.
“Under the Shade I Flourish,” he explains, is a sort of sequel to that. “I wanted to do something else with music and its political connotations, whilst continuing to grapple with 'Englishness',” Chris explains. “Through the project, I learned a lot about Britain's colonial history, rhythm 'n' blues music, tax avoidance, and how these things are woven together.”
If you’re interested in hearing Chris’s version of Trident, the songs are all online here. Or you can purchase one of the 45 signed limited edition Trident cassette tapes he offers for sale on his website. But you’d better act fast, because he’s getting orders. From some surprising buyers.
Not long after the podcast, Chris wrote to Jo to alert him to a “small development that might interest you.” He’d just sold two copies of the tape to a guy named Alan Kilkenny. “The cassettes don't sell very frequently, so I wondered who Alan was,” Chris explained. So he Googled him. Kilkenny is Michael Ashcroft’s spokesman.
Chris sent Alan a note and they traded some emails. Kilkenny, he said, was very complimentary of the project and even bought some Trident posters. “I imagine one of the cassettes will have been for Ashcroft,” Chris says. “It's pretty cool that your podcast has finally brought him into contact with this project.”
For more about Chris Alton and his work, including his Trident project, check out his website: www.chrisalton.com. (Campside does not receive any portion of revenue from Alton’s sales.)
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Josh