When Kevin Bacon got bludgeoned to death in bed while smoking a post-coital joint in the 1980 classic Friday the 13th (four years before hitting it big in Footloose), it began a frightful and fruitful entertainment trajectory for him and his family. He went on to star in a string of horror and sci-fi flicks (Stir of Echoes, Flatliners, They/Them, MaXXXine), while his wife, actress Kyra Sedgwick, battled with evil spirits in 2012’s acclaimed The Possession, and their daughter Sosie had a breakout role in the creepy 2022 hit Smile.
Travis Bacon, the famous couple’s other offspring, took a markedly different path professionally, initially avoiding the movie business in favor of the music business. Still, ominous vibes and visuals always influenced his output. Inspired by rhythmic sounds at a young age, obsessed with disco and rock as a kid—and exposed to his father and uncle Micheal’s band The Bacon Brothers growing up—he learned guitar himself and went in a heavier direction, making music with a variety of moody and death metal driven projects.
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The tattooed, black-tressed musician has been churning out brutal beats and atmospheric sonics ever since, working with members of Norwegian black metal legends Mayhem and his own grinding goth collective known as Contracult, on record and live as a touring guitarist. Ultimately, cinematic opportunities came his way and he realized that this form of storytelling offered new realms of expression.
He started following composers, including gaming composers (even though he didn’t play video games) and became obsessed with the Doom soundtrack’s producer Mick Gordon, as well as the work of John Wick and Guardians of the Galaxy composer Tyler Bates.
His mom was directing her first movie, called Story of a Girl, and she asked her son for advice on the music supervision. “I read the script, and we talked about it a little bit,” he recalls via video call. “I think right around this era was when film composition in general was taking a little bit more of a shift. There were a lot of characters bringing very different sounds and textures into the film world. Seeing what Trent (Reznor) and Atticus (Ross) had done got me more interested.”
“I already had the capability to score movies and to do this kind of work so I made a collection of music and pitched for it,” he continues. “Obviously I had a leg up, so I just shared my stuff for my mom and she really liked it. She took a shot with me and she let me score it.”
Scoring and creating dramatic soundscapes was a natural progression for the now 36 year old. After working on his mother’s movie, he forged forward, focusing on films requiring fierce and fearsome aural backdrops.
“I just had this drive to want to do it,” he says. “I do love film and obviously I’ve grown up in a very thespian environment. It was just exciting and up to that point, I had done a lot of production work, recording a ton of bands.”
Bacon is refreshingly real about his “nepo” status and he says it’s something he’s had to answer to “all the time” from naysayers. He empathizes with frustrated artists who begrudge their own lack of opportunities, but says that being in his position doesn’t negate the hard work or skill required to keep getting gigs.
If anything, the standard set by his parents, two of the most revered actors in the business, sets certain expectations for him to live up to. His dad in particular is so prolific, he is seen as the nexus of Hollywood movie stardom. The “six degrees of separation” concept is recognized by multiple generations of fans, highlighting how everyone is connected and can be traced back to the actor and who he’s worked with. The idea only becomes stronger as the years go by and the family resume grows.
Travis has risen to the challenges, most recently scoring his dad’s supernatural Amazon Prime show, The Bondsman, and doing so on his own musical merits. At this point, he’s put in decades in the studio and his experience speaks for itself.
“I’ll give you sort of a funny story,” he shares. “After The Bondsman score came out, somebody reposted my post about it—somebody I didn’t know. He was a young composer from the U.K. He wrote, something like, ‘this is my problem with the industry—be Kevin Bacon’s son and all of a sudden you’re a composer.”
A quick look at younger Bacon’s IMDB page showed that he’d scored 10 films up to this point. “And full disclosure—I pitched for the show,” he explains. “I had a meeting with the showrunner and there was resistance to having me involved.”
He says the stigma of nepotism wasn’t necessarily the issue but acknowledges that from a producer perspective, working with family can be tricky in terms of decision making and problem solving, especially in post production. Bates, who became a friend, was offered the job and asked him to work on it with him, to which Bacon said yes.
“But anyway, this kid doesn’t know that whole story. People are going to have their own views on every situation but I’m gonna do what I do regardless,” he insists.
Bacon shares that later, when he was contacted to score a short film, he gave his British social media critic a chance, recommending him for the job. Unfortunately, when he circled back with the filmmakers later about the composer, they told him “he totally dropped the ball on deadlines and wasn’t willing to collaborate.”
Beyond big Hollywood projects, Bacon has chosen to focus on unique indie projects as of late. His gloomy soundtrack for the short vampire film 15 to Sunrise was released last month on streaming platforms. Featuring vocals from Mayhem singer Attila Csihar and actress Rebekah Rawhouser, it uses metal and industrial elements to convey the film’s tension and terror.
He’ll also be releasing his first solo EP next year. “I’m calling the genre industrial blues,” he shares. “I do the music for this true crime podcast series called Why Can’t We Talk About Amanda’s Mom? and I make a lot of darker acoustic music. I revisited some of the stuff that was rejected and just started kind of adding some more industrial textures and some beats to it, then affecting acoustic guitars and my acoustic banjo and I’m singing on that. It’s a very different avenue for me.”
What’s not different for the musician is the joy he gets from working with everyone in the Bacon brood, which the loving foursome is leaning into in a big way. Their long-planned project called Family Movie, a horror comedy about filmmakers who get caught in a real-life nightmare narrative, was just picked for international distribution by Dark Castle Entertainment and Neon International. His parents will direct and he’ll be seen alongside his sister on screen, in addition to composing the score.
“There’s a distinguished path of privilege when you know you are already around and enveloped in the environment that you want to pursue, but the work still has to be there,” says Bacon. “It’s been thousands of hours of trial and error and just a lot of experimentation to get here. I always have my hands in a few different things at once because we’re sort of in this era where you have to know how to do five jobs instead of one. So I try to spread my time around wherever I can because I love the process of it all.”
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