Tag: Video premiere

WATCH: Sara Trunzo, “Nashville Time”

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Artist: Sara Trunzo
Hometown: Unity, Maine
Song: “Nashville Time”
Album: Cabin Fever Dream EP
Release Date: September 24, 2021

In Their Words: “One reason I was excited to have this song show up for me was that it encapsulates my most recent chapter of orbiting the axes of Nashville and coastal Maine. At first edit, I worried the song mixed too many different images and place-based metaphors, but that’s actually a good reflection of my voice and life. I’m a northerner who loves the south, a flip-flopper between music and community organizing, a New England veggie farmer with visions of sequin dresses and high-end Nashville recording studios dancing through her head. I’m not a purist. I often wish I was, because it’d be handy to be able to say, ‘I’m a teacher and I live in Bangor,’ but being a seasonal, migratory, hybrid creature seems to be more in the cards for me.

“Because I had lived in Maine for most of my adult life, coastal life and the water have shown up in many songs. I have REALLY missed the ocean during the seasons I lived in Nashville. ‘Nashville Time’ surprised me with the amount of nautical references that stuck, as I didn’t have much firsthand experience with sailing at the time of writing. But since coming back to Maine after the start of COVID, I have fallen in love with sailing to the extent that I’m now living aboard a 30ft sloop on Penobscot Bay.” — Sara Trunzo

Photo credit: Chip Dillon / Blue Horse Photography

WATCH: George Jackson Feat. Wes Corbett, “Mississippi Sawyer”

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Artist: George Jackson featuring Wes Corbett
Hometown: Christchurch, New Zealand
Song: “Mississippi Sawyer”
Album: Hair & Hide
Release Date: Single, August 25; Album, October 29
Label: George Jackson Records

In Their Words: “I live just up the road from the house where the legendary musician John Hartford once lived, on the edge of the Cumberland River in Madison, Tennessee, and for this live video we had the amazing opportunity to record the take in the crow’s nest on top of Hartford’s old riverside home. The current owners were very generous to let us film in that space and they even keep John’s old chair up there, a nod to when he used to sit in that same room overlooking the river and play banjo himself. It was magical to get to play in that room!

“Wes Corbett and I played a version of ‘Mississippi Sawyer’ together while we were warming up together one afternoon by jamming on some fiddle tunes in preparation for arranging some music to record on my banjo and fiddle duets album, Hair & Hide. It was immediately so much fun and had such a great energy to it that I decided then and there that I wanted to record it with Wes for the album. This tune lends itself really well as a way to bring together elements of old-time fiddling that I bring to the table and of virtuosic bluegrass banjo playing from Wes, as well as being a great vehicle to muddle the lines of both genres as we play it together.

“I ended up taking a deep dive on some old recorded versions of ‘Mississippi Sawyer’ from various old-time fiddlers after that initial jam, and came across two really unique versions that I loved from a couple of legendary West Virginia old-time fiddlers, Ernie Carpenter and Edden Hammons. I liked elements of both of their versions so I decided to take inspiration from Ernie’s A part and Edden’s B part to create this really fun and unique take on this great old chestnut fiddle tune that’s endlessly fun to play. Wes is one of our generation’s great picking banjo players and it was so fun to get to work on this tune with him and hear how he improvises around the melody so fluidly. I hope you all enjoy this!” — George Jackson

Photo credit: Natia Cinco

WATCH: Jamie McDell, “Dream Team”

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Artist: Jamie McDell
Hometown: Mangawhai, New Zealand
Song: “Dream Team”
Album: Jamie McDell (early 2022)
Label: ABC Music (AU/NZ)

In Their Words: “We’d stuck it out for about nine months in Toronto. Coming from the coast of New Zealand, the pull of the ocean and the nature we were used to was becoming too hard to ignore. We were unsettled and uncomfortable, but the opportunities of living in the big city were helping us survive. Rain outside, twelve stories up, we’d finished watching Chernobyl and the bathroom had nice acoustics. I had started to get a little bored with the way I was playing my guitar so I put my capo on the 10th fret and started to pick away to a minor-based, squeaky chord progression. The first verse started to flow and the tales that were coming to mind were inspired by those prices we’re willing to pay for power and possession. I’d noticed ‘Dream Team’ on captions of people’s social media posts and it became relevant to the sentiment in the verses.” — Jamie McDell

Photo credit: Jake Smith

WATCH: Side Pony, “Bad Ideas”

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Artist: Side Pony
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Bad Ideas”
Album: Lucky Break
Release Date: October 8, 2021
Label: Mule Kick Records

In Their Words: “This tune was actually inspired by a person in our life who had nothing but poor suggestions to offer us and it’s a discussion as to whether the fallout is worth it. But it morphed into a celebration of our own bad ideas, which are decidedly more fun. Except our latest bad idea, which was to make our own Laverne & Shirley-esque sitcom for the music video collaboration with East Nashville filmmaker Scot Sax.” — Alice Wallace, Side Pony

“Yeah, that’s one song I’m glad we got out of idea land and into tangible form. Getting those impulses down on paper and embedded in an Alt-C rock stomp can be better than embedding them into your personal life. If you can’t beat your bad ideas, join ’em!” — Caitlin Cannon, Side Pony

Photo credit: Adrienne Isom

WATCH: Chris Coole, “My Name Is Lie”

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Artist: Chris Coole
Hometown: Toronto, Ontario
Song: “My Name Is Lie”
Release Date: August 13, 2021

In Their Words: “I guess this song is a banjo-y meditation on the post-truth era we seem so hopelessly bogged down in. It’s sung from the perspective of the lie itself. I was inspired by the Dock Boggs song, ‘A Conversation With Death’ or ‘O Death,’ where death is given a voice. So, if a lie could talk, ‘My Name Is Lie’ is what I imagine it might be saying in today’s world. I’m not sure how obvious it is, but the last two verses deal with the Pandora’s box that is social media and how it has allowed lies to access ‘light speed’ so to speak.” — Chris Coole

Photo credit: Tyler Knight

WATCH: Tim Easton, “Speed Limit”

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Artist: Tim Easton
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Speed Limit”
Album: You Don’t Really Know Me
Release Date: Aug 27, 2021
Label: Black Mesa Records

In Their Words: “My friend Tree Butcher said the opening line in a sentence and I just wrote it down. It became a song very quickly and it’s the first tune where my daughter helped sort out some lyrics as well. Both my mother and father make an appearance in this one, so the family theme is established further. This is a healing song that is played with a lot of energy to remind you to slow down. The chorus lyric ‘when the pain of staying the same outweighs the strain of making changes’ is an inner rhyme sequence of pain, stay, same, weigh, strain, make, and change — seven rhymes in just 13 words. This is something I learned from listening to hip-hop, or something I was reminded of by listening to hip-hop. ‘The worst enemy I ever had is the one inside my head’ is a notion I got from the poet Gregory Corso who said that the worst critic he ever had was himself.” — Tim Easton

Photo credit: Robby Kline

WATCH: Sean Devine, “Clay Bluffs”

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Artist: Sean Devine
Hometown: Livingston, Montana
Song: “Clay Bluffs”
Album: Here For It All
Release Date: September 3, 2021
Label: Crazy Mountain

In Their Words: “The young woman in this story has some hard choices to make. She already knew that, and then they got harder. This story is not unique to eastern Wyoming; that’s just where I happened to overhear part of it, at a gas station Burger King on a cold January night. I didn’t know these young people, but then again I do. They have been my family and I have been them myself. That’s how I know this girl is going to be ok.” — Sean Devine

Photo credit: John Zumpano

WATCH: Alexa Wildish, “The Well”

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Artist: Alexa Wildish
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “The Well”
Album: Alexa Wildish

In Their Words: “‘The Well’ was originally written years ago, then released in 2020 on my eponymous EP, and it was not until this year that I fully lived its meaning. This video was filmed in Lake Atitlán, Guatemala. The pristine beauty and undeniably loud earth presence helped me to see myself more lucidly than ever before. It seems as if the surrounding volcanic energy erupted from me all that I was unwilling and too afraid to see, and then the water offered me grace in return in its loving reflection. The footage was captured over a few days of adventuring and playing with the elements. We collected video during a torrential downpour, parts of it at 5 in the morning when no one was on the lake other than a few local fishers, and the rest tucked away in the deep parts of the forest. My gratitude for this land and the way it brought me back home to myself will forever be imprinted on my heart.” — Alexa Wildish

Photo credit: Jacob Blumberg

WATCH: Del Barber, “Nothing Left to Find”

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Artist: Del Barber
Hometown: Inglis, Manitoba
Song: “Nothing Left to Find”
Album: Stray Dogs: Collected B-Sides Volume One
Release Date: August 20, 2021
Label: acronym Records

In Their Words: “Stray Dogs is a result of over 10 years of writing and recording music. When the pandemic began I was lost, scared about the future and in the depths of an unprecedented creative slump. I built a studio out of an old shed on my farm in an attempt to force myself to try and write songs. Every day I’d go out there in the mornings and struggle to get one line that I liked or one chord progression that was inspired. I wasn’t getting anywhere and it was my first taste of the fabled ‘writer’s block.’ Instead of writing new material like I had intended, I began to delight in the process of looking back. ‘Nothing Left To Find’ was one song I kept coming back to. I had so many versions of it in my files, it begged to be finished. After cutting a dozen of the verses I had written, it’s now a short and sweet song that really ties the tonal landscape of Stray Dogs together.” — Del Barber

Photo credit: Haylan Jackson

WATCH: Jesse Lynn Madera, “Revel”

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Artist: Jesse Lynn Madera
Hometown: LA and Nashville
Song: “Revel”
Release Date: July 23, 2021

In Their Words: “Writing ‘Revel’ changed the way I approach songwriting. It made me understand more about the opportunity we have as artists to positively impact a person’s day. I’ve written a lot of sad, emotional songs, and I’ve seen that those can be therapeutic. Knowing someone is getting cheered up, cheered on, inspired, by listening to one of my songs is pretty mind-blowing. I try to be a source of light for the people close to me, and this is the first time I’ve really been able to tap into that with my songwriting. ‘Revel’ was written around the holidays in 2020, in a living room that was still vibrating with all the good times we’ve had. I needed ‘Revel.’ I needed a reminder of all the light that follows darkness. Being human is rollercoaster enough without a pandemic to further complicate the experience. We’ve all suffered through our share, and hopefully we’ve all experienced the sun coming up over the horizon of despair. This will be no exception. The glow shall return, and we’ll all be reveling in it.” — Jesse Lynn Madera

Photo credit: Alysse Gafkjen