Tag: Video premiere

WATCH: Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters, “New York”

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Artist: Amanda Anne Platt & The Honeycutters
Hometown: Asheville, North Carolina
Song: “New York”
Label: Organic Records

In Their Words: “I always get ideas for videos when I’m listening to mixes in the car. My 20-month-old daughter really took a shine to this song one day while I was listening and started demanding it every time we got in the car… over and over and over. So I had a lot of time to visualize the story. It’s a song I wrote about leaving the house that I grew up in, and kind of saying goodbye to that younger version of myself. Our friend Gretchen Kauffman did such a great job as little Amanda! We had a really fun time.” — Amanda Anne Platt

Photo credit: Sandlin Gaither

WATCH: Gabriel Kelley, “Hard in America”

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Artist: Gabriel Kelley
Hometown: Nashville, Tennesee
Song: “Hard in America”
Release Date: July 2, 2021
Label: Epidemic Sound

In Their Words: “‘Hard in America’ was written as a reflection of the commonality between us all as Americans, both within our hardships and our joys. As we have spent the last almost two years dealing with an almost unmanageable amount of hardship and uncertainty, my goal with this song was to find some form of hope and solace in spaces that remind us we are all the same, all one family in unison. I sat down alone at the piano early one morning towards the end of quarantine with not even the slightest hint of an idea of a song. I just sat down to feel the keys for a little while… to discover what I was feeling underneath. Early mornings with instruments somehow always take me on that journey.

“After being off the road for so long, I had become less tied to my own rooted identity as this traveling/touring artist. This slower pace of life had almost forced me, in a way, to reconnect myself to a deeper aspect of who I was and still am. I went further and further into this common space of the simple human condition. We all need love, we all need hope, we all need a little grace. We all need a smile from time to time. This song fell out in about the time it took to play it down. That’s only happened a few times in my life and when they do they are special to me. It’s like it had been marinating in me without my knowing for the last year and a half and then just jumped out. It’s always been very easy for me to connect with my own material but something about this song made me feel connected to everyone in this beautiful and crooked country.” — Gabriel Kelley

Photo credit: Sunny Davis

WATCH: Rachel Sumner, “Lose My Love”

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Artist: Rachel Sumner
Hometown: Boston, Massachusetts
Song: “Lose My Love”

In Their Words: “A lot of the songs I write are carefully crafted over long stretches of weeks, months, and even years. ‘Lose My Love,’ however, was one of those songs that came to me fully formed in an instant. I was in the shower when I started singing the chorus and realized there was a little film noir playing in my mind underneath it. I rushed out, wrote it down, and let my imaginary movie guide the verses. At the time I was one of the writers and lead singers of the bluegrass band Twisted Pine, so we recorded and included it on our eponymous album released in 2017. After parting ways with the group in 2019, I decided to reclaim and rearrange this song for my live solo shows where it’s become a favorite of mine to play amid the trove of new songs that I’ve been working on for my debut LP — more on that soon, so stay tuned!!” — Rachel Sumner

Photo credit: Hannah Cohen

WATCH: Erik Shicotte, “Flint”

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Artist: Erik Shicotte
Hometown: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Song: “Flint”
Album: Miss’ry Pacific EP
Release Date: July 16, 2021
Label: Black Country Rock

In Their Words: “Sprawled along the medicine of a two-lane highway, ‘Flint’ came as the soundtrack to my own cinematic heartbreak and the wandering repercussions of ineffective escapism. Drawn over a steady stalwart 4/4 roll, the desperate defiance of a yearning heart plays out over a defining romance cut short, and the humming tires that follow. This is a song about hurtin’ and runnin’ out from under the inescapable and sometimes inexplicable wanting that often comes from the naiveté and hopefulness of a spark. The instrumentation is deafeningly present, and I even let myself chug out a simple pseudo-lead on the Telecaster. If ever there were to be a movie made about me being all sad and pissed off, this is the song that would accompany the southwestern sunrise and cigarette breath as I drive into the golden ether.” — Erik Shicotte

Photo credit: Destiny Frack

WATCH: J.M. Clifford, “Kick the Drum”

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Artist: J.M. Clifford
Hometown: Allendale, New Jersey
Song: “Kick the Drum”
Album: On a Saturday Night
Release Date: August 26, 2021

In Their Words: “’Here’s to the music that we make at night till we feel alright.’ I honestly don’t know what would have become of me if I hadn’t fallen in with the bluegrass community at Sunny’s Bar in Red Hook, Brooklyn in 2017. The music and the musicians got me through some very dark times. This is really a love song to that whole scene. This was the first tune I wrote for the record (although it went through about a hundred revisions). In fact, it’s the first thing I had written in a long, long time. Stylistically it was very different from anything I had done before. I integrated some of the prominent features of the old folk and bluegrass music I’d been immersing myself in with my singer-songwriter background and landed on something that felt fresh to me. That approach informed all of the songs that came after it.” — J.M. Clifford

Photo credit: Nicole Mago

WATCH: Leon Creek, “Call It A Day”

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Artist: Leon Creek
Hometown: Los Angeles, California
Song: “Call It A Day”
Album: Far From Broken
Release Date: September 21, 2021

In Their Words: “An element of grain is a part of the Leon Creek records, so working with the photographer and videographer Chase Hart, who only shoots on film and Super 8, has been a great fit for us. We were excited by the Super 8 footage Chase got during our first shoot in Santa Barbara, so we wanted to round out the video with some clips from L.A., where we met and started making music together. Bobby Womack’s BW Goes C&W was an inspiration in making our record, so we aspired to have an element of ’70s country western sprinkled throughout the video. Enter Chicago-based editor and animator Jordan Rundle. Jordan added animation and moving graphics, along with some analog visual effects to his final cut of ‘Call It a Day.'” — Leon Creek (Chris Pierce, Matthew Stevens, and Erik Janson)

Photo courtesy of Tell All Your Friends PR

WATCH: Maya de Vitry, “Working Man”

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Artist: Maya de Vitry
Hometown: Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Song: “Working Man”
Release Date: January 8, 2021
Label: Mad Maker Studio

In Their Words: “When I was writing this song last summer I was thinking about the creation of the railroads in the United States, imagining the distance between the hands that physically laid the tracks and the statues and wealth and legacy of the men we remember as having ‘built’ the railroads. I was reflecting on the respect and dignity and security we all long for, the satisfaction of doing a job well done, the pride of being part of something greater than ourselves. The pandemic has elevated and made more visible some of the more underpaid and overworked people in our society, and it’s also made us face the instability of work in general. I was thinking about how so often the blood, sweat, tears, and sacrifice of so many benefit the super-comfort of so few. How can we reimagine our society, and reimagine work, with the empathy and perspective we’ve gained from this last year?” — Maya de Vitry

Photo credit: Kaitlyn Raitz

WATCH: Rory Feek, “Time Won’t Tell”

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Artist: Rory Feek
Hometown: Columbia, Tennessee
Song: “Time Won’t Tell” (written by Harlan Howard and Beth Nielsen Chapman)
Album: Gentle Man
Release Date: June 18, 2021
Label: Gaither Music Group

In Their Words: “I first heard this song in the mid-’90s when I was writing for Harlan Howard, and he and Beth wrote it. I’ve always loved it and my wife Joey and I even had it on a shortlist to record for her to sing one day. All these years later, the lyric is even more special to me. It’s been five years since Joey passed, and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t wonder what life might be like if she was still here. If it was her tucking our little girl Indiana in bed at night and not just me. What the song says is so true… sometimes, ‘time won’t tell.'” — Rory Feek

Photo credit: Michael Hayes

WATCH: Timothy Howls, “The Rubble”

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Artist: Timothy Howls
Hometown: Austin, Texas, by way of Santa Barbara, California
Song: “The Rubble”
Album: The Rubble EP
Release Date: May 21, 2021

In Their Words: “‘The Rubble’ is a broken-hearted love song about a relationship hanging by a thread. It was an introspective outpouring about my own inability to commit fully to someone else and realizing how that was hurting the woman I was with. I wrote it at a low point and thankfully we fought through and came out stronger on the other side. The video was shot in a desolate mining town called Terlingua, Texas, with more scenic shots from Marfa. The dilapidated landscapes perfectly fall in line with the sentiment I was attempting to convey in the lyrics. Thanks for checking it out!” — Timothy Howls

Photo credit: Garrett Porter

WATCH: Wilson Banjo Co., “When the Crow Comes Down”

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Artist: Wilson Banjo Co.
Hometowns: Steve Wilson: Spencer, N.Y., and lives in Westminster, S.C.; Sarah Logan: Gorham, Maine, and lives in Johnson City, Tenn.
Song: “When the Crow Comes Down”
Album: Six Degrees of Separation
Release Date: June 4, 2021
Label: Pinecastle Records

In Their Words: “’When The Crow Comes Down’ is a really well-written story song that was co-written by a tremendous Nashville singer-songwriter, Jordan Rainer. We fell in love with the spooky theme and the imagery she created. The Appalachian tone and timbre of Sarah’s unique vocal was perfect for the delivery. Creating the mood for this song through arrangement was exciting, but it was the artists who all truly captured my vision. Richard Bennett and I work together a lot in the studio and his distinctive guitar picking constantly blows my mind. I was so honored when he agreed to be such a huge part of this project! And Deanie Richardson’s fiddle was the perfect fit for this song! She’s able to perfectly capture each emotion in the story; she is truly outstanding. Everyone’s contributions came together to create such an amazing final recording for this song! A video was a must! And who doesn’t enjoy a good scary movie? Bonfire Music Group did a great job with the production and we all had fun watching Sarah get creepy! We hope you enjoy it!”– Steve Wilson, Wilson Banjo Co.

Photo credit: Pinecastle Records