Artist: Matt Sweeney & Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy
Hometown: New York, New York (Matt Sweeney); Louisville, Kentucky (Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, a.k.a. Will Oldham)
Song: “Resist the Urge” (music video by skateboarders Kevin “Spanky” Long and Atiba Jefferson)
Album: Superwolves
Release Date: April 30, 2021
Label: Drag City
In Their Words: “Spanky and Atiba’s video rules. We try to make the listener feel insanely at home in a musical space. Atiba and Spanky have made us feel like we own a share of the skateable world. We got David Ferguson out from behind the board to play double-bass on this one. It needed the lift that only a Ferg could deliver.” — Will Oldham
“I always wanted to see a full video part with just one skater, and once I got asked to work on a video for this record, I knew that Kevin ‘Spanky’ Long was perfect — his way of cutting out, resizing, moving and manipulating photos and videos is amazing, but also he is an amazing pro skater. I asked a lot of Spanky: I wanted him to star, direct, edit, film and do all of the artwork! It was a tall ask, but I know his love for Matt and Will would shine thru. This video was made in the pandemic so it was just me and him going out and shooting together. We shot around LA for 14 days over 4 months. It was great to work so closely with Spanky’s vision but still have him in front of the camera. This collaboration of directing together was great because we are two different generations of skateboarders, but both coming from the pro skater’s perspective.” — Atiba Jefferson
“This was just a great excuse to make a skate video with a best friend for my favorite band. I ran the high def footage and super8 film into my iPhone where I painstakingly cut frame-by-frame, with relatively low-fi digital tools, to execute the stop-motion animation and digital collage elements. It was, in the end, the only way to achieve this look we were after. And we weaved in the layers of sea and sky to meet the big themes in ‘Resist the Urge.’ COVID restrictions made things tricky to get Matt and Will in there, but we revel in limitations.” – Kevin “Spanky” Long
Photo credit: Jonah Freeman & Justin Lowe
