WATCH: The Revivalists, “Kid”

Artist: The Revivalists
Hometown: New Orleans, Louisiana
Song: “Kid”
Album: Pour It Out Into the Night
Release Date: June 2, 2023
Label: Concord Records

In Their Words: “‘Kid’ is about capturing the essence of life. We all go through ups and downs. Sometimes, we don’t believe in ourselves. We’ve got skeletons in the closet trying to drag us down. But you’ve got to believe in yourself. You’ve just got to live for the spirit. Nothing good ever comes easy. If you don’t have hope, what do you have?” — David Shaw, vocalist/guitarist

“As you get into new phases of life, you’re always learning, growing, having new experiences, trying to achieve something. Everyone has an inner child, or like many of us in the band, we have our own children now, and this song is just saying ‘hey, you got this’ to anyone in any generation who may need to hear that.” — George Gekas, bassist

“David and I wrote the bulk of ‘Kid’ on January 6, 2021. My wife was one month pregnant with our twins, and I had a fire lit under my ass to write a great song. But also, we were getting real-time updates on the insurrection at the Capitol. There was a lot of intense energy swirling around us that day as we were trying to stay focused on this exciting, beautiful thing we were channeling.” — Zack Feinberg, guitarist

β€œFor this video, we wanted to focus on crafting something artistic and visually engaging, without really trying to tell a story or worrying too much about how it lines up thematically with the lyrics or anything like that. We were looking for ideas that were driven more by art and imagery than literalizing the text of the song. The specific concept came from a member of our management team named Adam Smith, who was inspired by a short video by a group of artists called Sunday Nobody Art where they used a series of stencils along a heavily graffitied tunnel to achieve a flipbook-style effect. We teamed up with director/animator Johnny Chew, who was really excited about the concept and totally understood what we were looking for. We wanted to use the city of New Orleans as a backdrop in order to showcase the character and color of our city. We debated the merits (and legal implications) of making physical stencils and using washable paint, but Johnny was confident that he could achieve the desired look by filming us individually in front of a green screen and then adding the wheatpaste effect in post and planting us on shots of the city. He knocked it out of the park. He took a lot of liberty with those little animations and artistic flourishes, and it really brought the video to life.” — Rob Ingraham, saxophonist


Photo Credit: Alysse Gafkjen

ANNOUNCING: Two New Ways to Hang & Sang

Last summer, Team BGS noticed that Facebook was really pushing their Live videos. We also saw that our friends Ann Powers and Jewly Hight were doing some casual sessions on Ann’s porch here in Nashville for NPR Music using that medium. So we decided we should give it a whirl. Ani DiFranco was coming to town, and we asked if she’d be our first. We didn’t have a name for it or much of a plan at all, but Ani said yes and City Winery said we could use their lounge. On June 30, 2016, what would become Hangin’ & Sangin’ was born.

Since then, we’ve had Sam Bush, Lori McKenna, Uncle Earl, Indigo Girls, Chely Wright, Colin Hay, Natalie Hemby, Ruby Amanfu, Special Consensus, the Revivalists, Marc Broussard, the McCrary Sisters, Whiskey Myers, Glen Phillips, Mary Gauthier, and a slew of other fantastic artists on the show.

And we’re just getting started.

In the weeks ahead, we’ll be hangin’ with Johnnyswim, Angaleena Presley, Drew Holcomb, John Paul White, Rodney Crowell, Sunny Sweeney, Keb’ Mo’, Gaby Moreno, and so many more of your favorite artists at Hillbilly Central, right off Music Row, in the heart of Nashville. Join us every Friday at 2:30 pm CT on Facebook Live, catch us every Sunday at 6:30 am and Tuesday at 9 pm on WMOT Roots Radio, or listen to the podcast via iTunes any time you like. We’d love to have you hang with us.

 

Special thanks to Alison Brown, Garry West, Gordon Hammond, and everyone at Compass Records for lending us their historic studio. Additional thanks to Jessie Scott, Val Hoeppner, John Walker, Craig Havighurst, and the whole team at WMOT Roots Radio for giving us some air time. And an extra shout out to Josephine Wood for helping get this thing off the ground to begin with. We couldn’t be happier to partner with all of you.

WATCH: The Revivalists, ‘King of What’

Artist: The Revivalists
Song: "King of What"
Album: Men Amongst Mountains
Release Date:  July 17
Label: Wind-Up Records

In Their Words: "This one came out of a guitar part that I'd be playing with for a few years. I came up with the title and chorus and showed Dave what I had. We recorded a demo of the guitar part at his house. He went to bed that night and had a dream about how the verse melodies and harmonies should go. He woke up and put it down. I think there's a very beautiful, peaceful, dream-like quality to the tune. I also really like the haunting textures that Ed and Mike provide with e-bowed pedal steel and synthesizer. " –Zack Feinberg


Photo credit: Travis Shinn