Ransom Canyon star and executive producer Josh Duhamel played a big role in recruiting Jordan Davis to perform at the inaugural music festival that Quinn (Minka Kelly) plans to help save the titular Texas town in Season 2.
Duhamel tried to downplay his involvement in getting Davis to headline the fictional festival, but his costar Kelly pointed out that it all started because Duhamel used Davis’ “Buy Dirt (feat. Luke Bryan)” as his wedding song. This prompted the actor to reach out to the musician, who was going to perform in Devil’s Lake, North Dakota, where Duhamel spends a lot of his time, way before Ransom Canyon was conceptualized. The conversation later continued when Season 2’s music festival came up.
“I started the conversation. We’ll put it that way. I just texted him as a joke, like, ‘Hey, dude, you’re gonna be in Devil’s Lake. I want to come sing “Buy Dirt” with you.’ And he texts back. He’s like, “Sure, man, we’ll be there.’ And then, but my wife and I got stuck, and we get there for whatever reason, so we never got to go. But we always kept in touch,” Duhamel said of the initial reachout. “ [Then] I talked to Jordan over Instagram. I slid into his DMs and said he should come do the show. And he said ‘I’d love to.’ I didn’t know if he meant it or not, but after a little bit of you know back and forth between the suits, they made it work and and they showed up. And then Thomas Rhett too, awesome. I mean, both really, really good guys too.”
Quinn cooks up the music festival partly through inspiration of watching her British beau Oliver (Ben Robson) play cello at Gracie’s Dance Hall, prompted to remind him of the location’s rich musical roots and connections to Jonny Cash, Willie Nelson and other country and folk artists. Her mother Claire O’Grady’s (Patricia Clarkson) thought that the town is dying also inspires Quinn to make a move to challenge Claire’s ulterior motive of visiting her daughters: to sell the house where Quinn currently lives.
“I just loved the whole idea, everything about the music festival. I love the whole story about [Quinn] doing this to spark a little influx of money and the whole theme of coming home. Because I see that a lot,” he told Deadline in an interview with Kelly. “I live in North Dakota and Minnesota most of the time, and there’s all these little musical music festivals all over the place, and people love them, and they look forward to them, and they do bring a lot of money to these little communities. So I think that it was brilliant. I love that Jordan Davis and Thomas Rhett were there because I’m a huge fan of both of them.”
The music festival and headliner idea follows in the footsteps of Charlie Crockett’s appearance in Season 1 to perform “Spade” and “I Need Your Love” at Gracie’s Dance Hall, which Quinn owns and runs with Ellie Estevez (Marianly Tejada).
“There will always be dancing and musical performances. We got Charlie Season 1. He’s so cool. And he won a Grammy after it. We’re like, ‘Ooh, we got ahead of that,’” showrunner April Blair told Deadline, reflecting on the role music has played in the show thus far. “But then we’re like, ‘How are we gonna level that up and not have another guest who comes to Gracie’s?’ The festival was born of that. Of Quinn having something she needs to achieve and save this town and grow it into a place that is a musical mecca, essentially.”
Blair credits Michael Offer with formulating the strategy of shooting such a complex moment she called “a huge logistical undertaking” in the penultimate episode of Season 2. Luckily Davis and Rhett, country musicians who are used to filling big stadiums, already had a working relationship.
“Getting them to come was a challenge. Once they found out what it was about, which is a woman trying to save her small town in Texas, they were like ‘Alright, we’re in.’ They put on a show,” Blair said. “We shot that concert style. We had eight cameras going and weren’t cutting and doing things in segment. Michael Offer, who directed that episode, really talented director, he came up with a plan to shoot it like you would a concert, and to never cut, to run the concert through over and over. So his plan was: ‘We’re gonna do these three songs, and we’re gonna do it all the way through. We’re gonna do it seven times with eight cameras.”
Thomas Rhett comes out first, performing his song “Boots,” and then he brings on Davis for their collaboration “Ain’t a Bad Life.” Davis then performs his song “Bar None.”
“Video Village on that day, the where the DP, the IT tent, where we are, it’s usually like a couple monitors. It looked like Mission Control,” Blair added. “It was eight different monitors and four different scripts. I don’t think I can’t imagine doing it without Michael. He had a plan and he stuck to it. When you shoot nights, and you have a lot of extras like that, usually by two a.m., about half of them have gone home. I think we only had like a couple leave.”
Blair revealed that she tried to recruit Sierra Ferrell, whose song “Fox Hunt” featured in the fourth episode of Season 1, but the musician didn’t end up being available.
“But it needs to be a lady next time. We’re really thinking about, if we keep music on our canvas, keep that going, how to have it feel like something different moving forward,” she said. “We’re just exploring the idea of, ‘Do you have a character who comes to town who’s heard about this festival?’ And you can incorporate it a little more into a character and story rather than a guest appearance.”
As for Quinn’s staying in Ransom Canyon and doubling down on her choice to return to her hometown and commit to Staten (Duhamel), Minka Kelly understands the novelty of Oliver (Ben Robson) side by side with the sense of belonging Quinn feels with Staten.
“I think it’s one of those things where, when things are hard and you want to kind of run away and potentially start something new in a new place. It’s easy to romanticize a new idea and starting fresh, and you meet this new person, and it’s the shiny new thing, but at the end of the day, your heart brings you home,” she told Deadline. “She comes home and really realizes that this is where she belongs and where she has a purpose that is maybe more fulfilling than what she experienced, which was super fun in New York.”
Kelly also echoed the words of wisdom Staten received about home and love from his half-brother Levi (Steve Howey).
“But home isn’t always just a place; it’s a person, and she she knows that with Staten, and I think also with her mom showing up and reminding her of all the mistakes that she made in her life,” the Friday Night Lights alumna said. “Sometimes with your parents, you learn what not to do, and she doesn’t want to just think the grass is greener and go from guy to guy. She wants to really see this through when this love of her life is finally willing to show up and be vulnerable and tell her he loves her. That’s what she’s wanted to hear her whole life.”
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