Kathleen (L) and Nick Arnal of Team Callahan, which plays Hooch and Hive in Tampa, Florida on Sept. 24, 2021. Credit: Team Callahan

On a new version of Team Callahan’s “Backwards Hat” reimagined for the feature film “Night Swim,” Nick and Kathleen Arnal turn their bop into a full on synth and guitar party.

Kathleen told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay that she and Nick were asked to picture a pool party, with hot dogs and neon inflatable pool floats. The director, Bryce McGuire, who plays in 2000s St. Pete indie-pop band Grecian Urns, was looking for an ‘80s, synth-pop vibe to match the scene, but the Arnals didn’t have anything to match on hand, and they didn’t have time to make something new from scratch.

“So we thought, ‘Let’s see if anything in our discography can be retrofitted’ and ‘’Backwards Hat fairly easily molded itself to this new sound,” she added.

So McGuire started to help tweak the song and reproduce it, while Nick brought it home and made sure it still had the pop feel of Team Callahan.

“It was fun to creatively stretch ourselves to deliver on the sound Bryce needed. It was really a dream come true. I’ve always wanted to have a song in a film and now it’s actualized,” Kathleen added. “[It’s] Surreal and deeply moving to be a part of the project in a tiny way and work with one of our best creative friends from the Tampa Bay legacy art/music scene.”

“‘Backwards Hat’ is already a total bop. I think the pool party mix is even spicier and really, really creative,” McGuire told CL. “People are gonna love it.”

Don’t expect those vibes on Friday during a live debut of the couple’s new project, Don’t Call Me Kathy. “Nick and I wanted to have a musical outlet for the more story-driven folk songs I’ve been writing the last few years.We got our start playing in an indie-folk band almost 15 year ago and this feels like closing the circle,” Kathleen, not Kathy, wrote on social media. Hunter Moore (of Bay area folk duo Hunter & Avery) is also on this BYOB (beer and/or buddy), mostly acoustic showcase along with Bridge Noise.