Tag: Video premiere

WATCH: Alright Alright, “Missouri Calling”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Alright Alright (husband and wife Seth and China Kent)
Hometown: Denver, Colorado
Song: “Missouri Calling”
Album: Crucible
Release Date: October 23, 2020

In Their Words: “‘Missouri Calling’ is an empathetic, compassionate vignette of a woman who leaves Missouri after being kicked out of her unhappy home. She heads to Denver with marijuana-tinted dollar signs in her eyes, and eventually finds herself out on the streets. After working with homeless women at a shelter for several years, Seth and I heard enough stories to understand that people find themselves without homes for countless reasons, and we are all closer to that line between shelter and no shelter than we would like to believe.

“This summer, the reliable network of church-led homeless shelters shut down due to COVID, and as a result, countless homeless camps began popping up all around Denver. Huge city parks and lots were filled with tents and makeshift shelters, laundry hanging on chain link fences, as pop-up bike repair stations appeared on random street corners. I wanted to capture footage of these homeless camps around the city to bring the plight of the unhoused to light in the age of COVID. Our 13-year-old son, Fender, and I took a trip to the capitol building where the largest of these camps was located, and equipped with only a GoPro and iPhones, we walked around and captured the footage that is now in the video.

“After editing the footage together, I wondered if, perhaps, the video would be made stronger by the addition of fact-based context. If, perhaps, we could find out some statistics about homelessness in Denver and maybe understand a little more about why the unhoused were so visible all of a sudden. Our kids attend an amazing school whose mission is to provide students with a racially and economically diverse educational environment, so we asked the social justice teacher at our kids’ school to help. Mx. Saleh was so excited about the prospect that they jumped right on it, and Fender’s 8th grade class researched and wrote all of the facts presented in the video.” — China Kent, Alright Alright

Photo credit: Made Shop

WATCH: Rock Hearts, “Don’t Let Smokey Mountain Smoke Get in Your Eyes”

Posted on by Editor

Artist: Rock Hearts
Hometown: New England area
Song: “Don’t Let Smokey Mountain Smoke Get in Your Eyes”
Album: Starry Southern Nights (Produced by Ned Luberecki)
Release Date: October 30, 2020

In Their Words: “The first time Rock Hearts played ‘Don’t Let Smokey Mountain Smoke Get In Your Eyes,’ we knew we’d stumbled onto something special. It immediately drew each of us decades back to a time when we were falling in love with bluegrass. We each remember being younger and hearing this tune by major influences in our bluegrass lives, the Osborne Brothers. So, we wanted to include it on this album and reintroduce folks to the song as no one was covering it. Mainly, we wanted to include it to pay homage to a couple of our bluegrass heroes, Sonny and Bobby!” — Alex MacLeod, Rock Hearts

Photo credit: Alex MacLeod

WATCH: Josh Shilling, “(Go to Hell) 2020”

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Artist: Josh Shilling
Hometown: Martinsville, Virginia
Song: “(Go to Hell) 2020”
Release Date: October 9, 2020
Label: Josh Shilling Music

In Their Words: “This song wrote itself. It fell out one morning while waiting for a Skype writing session to start with another songwriter. It felt like a personal and heavy conversation with an old confidant. I was positive this would impact people. Each verse is something I’ve faced personally since spring regarding the pandemic: societal unrest, facing loss and grief, and relationship tension throughout 2020. The chorus provides hope and belief that life will get better and ‘someday soon we’ll be free and this will be in the rear view.’ The song is where I am; it’s where I think we all are right now. No tricks, no big production, this was a live take, three chords and the truth … the truth for everyone, I think.” — Josh Shilling

Photo credit: Sebastian Smith

WATCH: Suzi Ragsdale, “The Ending”

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Artist: Suzi Ragsdale
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “The Ending”
Album: Ghost Town
Release Date: October 9, 2020
Label: CabaRay Records

In Their Words: “Can anyone accurately predict the future? Of course not. Not even the chief meteorologists get it right. With the exception of fictional books and films when you might, like my ex-husband in this song, skip to the last chapter to get answers, we’re all kinda just wingin’ it. More and more I’m becoming a fan of focusing on the present moment unfolding instead of pinning anything on the final result. ‘The Ending’ is a four-minute musing on how my life might have been different had I known the outcomes of life’s loves, dramas and situations … and how ultimately, I’m happier not knowing and having the world of possibilities remain open to me and to everyone else.” — Suzi Ragsdale

Photo credit: Joshua Black Wilkins

WATCH: Bonnie Whitmore, “Time to Shoot”

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Artist: Bonnie Whitmore
Hometown: Austin, Texas
Song: “Time to Shoot”
Album: Last Will and Testament
Release Date: October 2, 2020

In Their Words: “When I wrote ‘Time to Shoot,’ it was after the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando. It was the largest death count of any mass shooting and was in the summer of 2016. Remember 2016? That year of a thousand losses that started with David Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen on Election Day, and Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia) right at the end? I was reflecting back on the earliest mass shootings that I could recall and I remembered it was Columbine in 1999. It struck me that it has been 20 years, and nothing has changed. Twenty years of making mass shootings normalized. The potential of becoming someone’s target practice is no longer how, but which large gathering.

“I was in high school when Columbine happened and I remember the immediate fear and repression that came afterwards, and for more than half of my life I’ve watched systemic violence being tolerated by my country and its people. I can see a pattern of unaddressed mental health issues and the ease of accessibility to these military-style weapons, and also the toxic masculinity and fear and shame that’s at its core, but each time it happens nothing changes. Nothing but more fear and ‘thoughts and prayers.’ I cannot accept that this is the only way. I know this is not an easy topic to discuss, but it is worth discussing over and over because we have to find a solution. It’s time we collectively shed some light in those dark places and do the work to get through this, because if the desire is to build towards a better future, then there is a lot that’s got to change for the better.” — Bonnie Whitmore

Photo credit: Eryn Brooke; Video: Ryan Doty

WATCH: Justin Wade Tam, “Paradise”

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Artist: Justin Wade Tam
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee, via San Diego, California
Song: “Paradise”
Release Date: July 24, 2020
Label: Soundly Music

In Their Words: “I wrote this song with my friend Daniel Ellsworth about the subjectivity of paradise. We often get caught up in staring at idealized photographs on social media and forget that there can be beauty in the everyday, no matter where we are. Maybe paradise is more a state of mind than an actual physical location. So when Luke Harvey (Moss Flower Pictures) and I set out to make the music video, we wanted to convey that people all over the world have their own versions of paradise, and that is lovely: so many people and so many paradises. To help with the concept, friends from Chile, France, Iran, and Russia translated the lyrics into their respective languages. I’ve met each of these friends through music and touring over the years, and it’s wonderful to have their friendship reflected in this project. Luke set the translated subtitles and music to old film vignettes, capturing and challenging our perceptions of paradise.” — Justin Wade Tam

Photo credit: Annelise Loughead

WATCH: Malin Pettersen, “Queen of the Meadow”

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Artist: Malin Pettersen
Hometown: Oslo, Norway
Song: “Queen of the Meadow”
Album: Wild Horse
Release Date: October 16, 2020
Label: Die With Your Boots On Records

In Their Words: “My grandmother, my father’s mother, died a few years ago. She lived on this tiny island and she is buried in the graveyard by the small island church. There is a kind of flower that grows out there called Queen of the Meadow (Mjødurt) and it has the sweetest most distinct smell. It makes me feel a quiet kind of happiness that is so pure and whole. After my grandmother died I tried writing her a song, but I just couldn’t find the words that could express how I felt about her. Words can only express so much — emotions are much more complex and textured. It ended up being a song about my own funeral. I hope I can be buried at the same graveyard, and I hope it’ll all align with the bloom of Mjødurt — because it holds everything I could ever dream of being remembered by.” — Malin Pettersen

Photo credit: Jonathan Vivaas Kise

WATCH: Handsome Ghost, “Weeds”

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Artist: Handsome Ghost
Hometown: Worcester County, Massachusetts
Song: “Weeds”
Album: Some Still Morning
Release Date: September 18, 2020
Label: Photo Finish Records

In Their Words: “‘Weeds’ may be the brightest song on our record. The melody, the production — and the lyrics too. It’s about anticipating the inevitable end of a relationship (sounds sad, I know), but recognizing that you’re both going to move on and find your own way, independent of one another. In the simplest terms, it’s: ‘I’ll be here, you’ll be there — but I’m still going to care about you and I hope you think about me too sometimes.’ The song comes from a good place, a steady state of mind.

Nick Noyes has worked on all of our music videos for Some Still Morning and ‘Weeds’ is his latest creation. Typically the three of us will build up a visual concept together — but ‘Weeds’ is all Nick. He had a vision and we trust him and basically said, ‘Go for it, brother.’ Nick and I didn’t speak about the meaning of the song beforehand — and I’m glad we didn’t — because he interpreted it completely differently. To Nick, the song is about memory. About longing for a moment in time that is no longer there. The visual focuses on that feeling and explores it further…without explicitly referencing memory or flashbacks or anything of the like. I love how the video turned out, I find it very powerful and strange at times. And I mean that as a compliment.

“I also love that listeners, in this case someone extremely close to the band, can interpret a song completely differently than it was intended. That’s the best part about music, in my opinion. Once you put a song out there, it’s any listener’s right to make it their own and define what it means to them.” — Tim Noyes and Eddie Byun, Handsome Ghost

Photo credit: Mitchell Wojcik

WATCH: Alan Bibey & Grasstowne, “Hitchhiking to California”

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Artist: Alan Bibey & Grasstowne
Hometown: Walnut Cove, North Carolina
Song: “Hitchhiking to California”
Album: Hitchhiking To California (set for release January 2021)
Label: Billy Blue Records

In Their Words: “When I was 16 years old, I got the opportunity to play in a regional band that included a musician named Wes Golding, and the seeds of a lifelong friendship were sown. A few years later, I began playing professionally with the New Quicksilver, and we recorded the original version of a song Wes wrote called ‘Hitchhiking to California.’ That was back in 1985. So when we started to record this new project for Billy Blue Records, I had the idea to redo the song, and Jerry Salley and I both agreed we’d love a third verse, which was not included in the original version. With Wes Golding’s blessing, Jerry and I wrote a new verse and reworked a few other things in the song for its new release.” — Alan Bibey

Photo credit: Tina Farmer
Video by Solid Rock Studios, Point Pleasant, WV

WATCH: Jeremy Ivey, “Things Could Get Much Worse”

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Artist: Jeremy Ivey
Hometown: Nashville, Tennessee
Song: “Things Could Get Much Worse”
Album: Waiting Out The Storm
Release Date: October 9, 2020
Label: ANTI-

In Their Words: “I don’t write a whole lot of positive songs, but I try to have one per record at least. So this my positive message for the world. These are the good old days no matter how bad they seem. Just remember, life could suck a lot more. This song was written in about ten minutes, this is our first take in the studio and the video was shot in a couple hours. All in the moment and off the cuff, the way it should be! Also, watch out for Elon, I don’t trust that guy.” — Jeremy Ivey

Photo credit: Alysse Gafkjen