Music videos are fun... aka... memories from Lookin' at Luckey

So, LAST WEEK I talked about my favorite memories from my the making of the MUSIC VIDEO FOR LET’S GO OUT TONIGHT. This week I’m going go over some fun memories from the making of the music video for Lookin’ at Luckey; which, for those who haven’t seen in it, here it is motherfuckers (but first, a quick, funny story. So, apparently I use the words “fuck” and “fucking” a lot in texts. For the first few months when I get a new phone, it constantly tries to auto-correct it to “duck” and “ducking” and I have to constantly change it back. After a while, it learns and stops. But, what I didn’t know is that now my phone tries to auto-correct “duck” into, yep, you guessed it “fuck.” Which normally is not an issue, but I was sending out a music business related email yesterday and was actually trying to use the word “duck” and almost pressed send before re-reading one last time. Luckily, I did not tell someone that I could “fuck in a little early before the show if you’re still around.”):

This video was also made by my very talented, and quite handsome, friend, Kevin Pietila. And, just like the Let’s Go Out Tonight video, he wrote, directed and edited this. He also did most, if not all, the camera work on this as someone had to back out last second. This was definitely a smaller video in terms of scope and crew versus the LGOT shoot. It still featured my wonderful and talented fake band, which in this video is just my buddy, Jon Fickes, on the guitar, and Kevin’s wife, Sara, who is a very talented songwriter, singer and piano player herself, on the piano. They, along with the addition of David Solomon on drums, were also the fake band in the Let’s Go Out Tonight music video. Oddly, no bass player in either video. Did eventually get to play an actual show with Jon and David once in Lebanon, OR. Good times…

A little bit of backstory. Kevin’s wife, Sara, and my wife, Brianne, initially became friends, first online and then in real life. I think I met Kevin only once when I decided I wanted to work with him. He’s just that charming. That, and he showed us a short film he had made, which was amazing. I knew we had to work together. I also knew I wanted someone with a strong creative vision. That was important since I have Asperger’s (essentially high-functioning autism, for those who don’t know), and one of the ways that affects me is that I have a very difficult time visualizing things that don’t exist. My brain works very literally at times. It’s why I struggle with fantasy or sci-fi movies, apart from Star Wars for some reason, but that’s pretty much the only one. I can’t do superhero movies, I struggle with period pieces, and shit like Lord of the Rings, forget about it. Because of this, I needed someone to create the concepts and write the stories for the videos. I gave Kevin a copy of the record and asked him to pick which song or songs he would like to do. He had complete creative control, within reason/budget. He immediately came back with the Let’s Go Out Tonight zombie story. I loved it. I was so excited and ready to go, but there was one problem: it was December. Can’t really do outdoor, overnight shoots when it’s 35 degrees and pissing rain all night (ahh, those Pacific Northwest winters. They’ll suck your soul away…).

We decided to do a second video and put the Let’s Go Out Tonight video on hold until summer rolled around. I asked Kevin what other song he would be interested in. He said Lookin’ at Luckey sort of reminded him of a relationship he once had. Perfect! We spent a few nights drinking and talking more in depth about the real-life relationships that went into that song. If you’re curious, it’s essentially two very real relationships cherry-picked to make one great song, if I may say so myself (and I may, as this is my fucking blog). He added in some of his own experiences and voila. A video was born. Now, for the memories, in no particular order. I could put them in some sort of order but that would imply that I plan these out and think about them and do actual editing on them. Nope, just a fucking random list.

(Editor’s note: we’ll see how this list goes as I’m really pissed right now. I just found out someone hit my car while it was parked in my apartment’s parking lot. The right front bumper was popped out a little and there’s fucking red paint that was scraped on. I’m also pissed since I have no idea when it happened as I so rarely leave the house these days. So, someone hit it hard enough to pop the bumper out of place, which luckily I was able to pop back into place, and leave paint behind. Fuck. Oh, and Portland, OR is charging me for an Arts Tax even though I moved away last year. I don’t mind supporting the arts but I don’t even fucking live there anymore. One last parting “fuck you” from my least favorite city in America. Well, fuck you too, Portland. Fuck you too…)

• The drinking fake wine but smoking real cigarettes on the roof scene - One thing they rarely tell you about making any type of art is how long it can take. Making an album, a TV show, a painting, whatever, it always takes longer than you think. So, to combat this for a scene involving drinking we poured out the wine in the bottle and refilled with water. But, we should have rinsed out the bottle a few times before refilling with good ol’ H2O. What we were left with was a bottle of wine flavored water, which is not the tastiest concoction. But, it was funny as Sonora (the female lead), out of habit, would take pulls of between takes. It’s just what you do when you have a bottle of wine in your hand. Plus, it’s what you do when you are a little lightheaded from chain smoking American Spirits like it’s fucking 1963 again. I’m sure they make prop cigarettes but those in the video are most certainly not. When I stood up to go back inside, I thought I might fall off the roof. Luckily (pun intended?), neither of us fell off the roof, which would have put a big damper on the shoot.

• The pretending to be asleep scene - This is where my true acting skills really shined. I can, and I don’t want to brag too much, pretend to be asleep fairly convincingly. I’m not going to say I’m the Leonardo DiCaprio of slumberland, but it’s probably the best acting I’ve done in any video to date. OK, maybe I was actually pretty good at being a zombie in the Let’s Go Out Tonight video. But, I still think I’m a better pretend sleeper. Probably because for a few takes I actually did start to nod off. When you’re laying in a comfortable Air BnB bed and your direction from the man behind the camera is just to lie still and don’t move, it’s hard not to. Maybe I’m just method, I don’t know. Oscars, here I come.

• The fake performance scenes - OK, so this might be my favorite memory from the Luckey shoot. We did some really fun stuff and I credit Kevin for making these shoots so enjoyable. He really knew how to take care of his cast and crew. So, let me set the scene. We started this night doing the mingling intro scene and then the me singing to the frozen Luckey scene (up next). There was a couple other things to shoot (and I think I forgot to bring something so I had to run home quick) which backed up the shoot a bit, which always run a bit behind anyways. So, it was already around 11pm when we started the band performance shots. The Air BnB had a noise cutoff around then so we had to be super quiet. Usually for performance shots, you crank up the music so you can actually play/sing and it looks real. But, being too late for that, we had to keep volume super low. Here we are, almost no sound to play to and we had to (very quietly) rock the fuck out in the kitchen of this Air BnB. Not exactly the most Rock ‘n’ Roll thing but it looks great in the video. Jon and Sara both actually learned the chords/parts for the song so they could play it accurately. They’re such pros. But, my favorite part of this whole thing was how into the performance Sara got. She had already worked a full day teaching voice/piano before coming so she was already and understandably a little tired when she got there. By 11pm, she was teetering on the verge of exhaustion. But, she gave great performances take after take and was rocking out so hard she started to hurt her fingers because she kept trying to actually get sound out of the unplugged keyboard. But, as soon as Kevin once again said “action,” she was right back into it without missing a beat. Lots of hard work goes into these things and I’m grateful to people like Sara and Nate and everyone who sacrificed and pulled double duty to make these videos happen.

• The me singing to frozen “Luckey” scene - This was just fun to be a part of. Performing is my favorite part of music, even if it is fake and just for a music video. But, watching Sonora sit perfectly still for take after take was mesmerizing. I can’t say enough how wonderful a job she did in this video and this scene is the epitome of that. Being there, it almost looked like we faked it somehow. She was so good in the video she actually made me look good too. Not an easy task.

• The dancing around and singing in the town square scene - The scene where Jon, Sonora and I danced and sang in the little town square thing was shot at Portland’s Pioneer Square. Which, for those who don’t live in Portland, is a touristy spot during the day, but is just a hangout for the homeless at night. Yes, the scene looks great and it was fun to sing and dance around, but it was what happened right before that I remember vividly. Obviously surprised to see a group of young, good-looking people being filmed, everyone wanted to stop over to see what we were doing. After telling them it was for a music video, one lady decided she needed to tell us, and then sing it to prove her point, how many times Bill Withers says “I know” in the third verse “Ain’t No Sunshine.” “26 times,” she said. And then we got the full-throated rendition while she counted on her fingers. I’ll be damned, she was right and wasn’t too bad at carrying a tune.

• The car scenes - That Thunderbird, which is owned and was graciously made available for the music video by Kevin’s dad, is, by far, the nicest car I’ve ever had the pleasure of sitting in and pretending to drive. It’s even the exact color I would choose if I won the lottery and someone sold me a massive 3D printer that can print Thunderbirds and somehow manufacture their combustion engines and exhaust systems and recreate era-specific details with precision. Besides that, it was fun to see how scenes like this come together. Having not done any real acting in my life (and based on the videos, you can probably see why), I was unaware of the magic of Hollywood in regards to driving scenes. So, this was my lesson. Nate, who was helping us out with a little bit of everything on the shoot, got behind and starting gently rocking the car up and down. My wife, Brianne and Kevin’s wife, Sara, were on the lights. They stood on boxes and held them up as high as they could and, upon Kevin’s instruction, would swoop them around to simulate going past street lights. All while I alternated between pretending to sing and pretending to look forlorn, which is essentially just my standard Bruce-Springsteen-from-the-Darkness-on-the-Edge-of-Town-album-cover look. Sitting in a beautiful car (that wasn’t mine) with a beautiful girl (who was only pretending to be with me) with a beautiful song playing in the background (hey! I actually get this one!), what more could a guy ask for…

• The empty wine bottle - Again, here is the photo of my mementos from the music videos. The Thriller jacket and the fake gun were from the Let’s Go Out Tonight video. The wine bottle is from this shoot for Lookin’ at Luckey. When doing the pre-shoot shopping at Target, I was just grabbing things that I thought would look good on camera. The bottle had a pretty shape and a nice label so I grabbed it. The rose inside was fine, nothing special, but I mainly just wanted it for the look. It’s featured in a intro/outro scene. But, apparently I’m a lot smarter in my subconscious mind than in real life. I missed a detail that really would’ve sold it. Sonora picked up on it during the shoot. The name on the bottle: Sofia. Damn! Totally missed an opportunity to look smart, which doesn’t come around very often for me. People thought I was thinking these things out for a minute until I was like “wait, what?” Moment over. Back to being a dumb musician…

So, those are my favorite memories from the Lookin’ at Luckey music video shoot. If you have any questions about this or anything related to the video, feel free to leave a comment below. Otherwise, tune in next week to get my thoughts on the Friday Night is for the Drinkers video.

Look how fucking cool I look… Just kidding, the car is way cooler.

Music videos are fun... aka... memories from Let's Go Out Tonight...

A week from Christmas and I have a riddle for you: what does a Thriller jacket, an empty bottle of wine, a flask and a toy gun have in common?

OK, fine. That’s not really some fancy riddle. But, the answer is: memories. Specifically, memories from the making of my music videos.

I love making music videos. I can’t wait to do more, though, without shows going, it’s a little tough to save up the money to make them. Making a music video is probably my favorite part of the whole creative process when putting out an album. Long since finished are all the tough decisions about parts and tempos and song selection and mixes and track sequencing and album art and publicity companies and t-shirt logos, etc. It’s finally time to do something creative that I don’t have to think about 24 hours a day. And yes, it is 24 hours. I dream and have fucking nightmares about making albums. It’s so stressful. It doesn’t have to be. I know plenty of people who love recording. Some even prefer it to playing live. I don’t understand them, but I do appreciate where they are coming from. No, I make it stressful upon myself. I do that with a lot of things, but especially with recording albums. It’s the legacy I will leave when I’m gone. Yes, people will have memories of me, but my music is the best of me. Yes, it’s still flawed just like I’m flawed, but it’s the purest form of me as a human being. Those songs contain everything I have. So many people compare them to children and I used to think it was dumb. But, I get it now. You do birth them, shape them in your image, give them everything you can, then release them into the world to do whatever it is they are going to do and you have little control over when they do good, bad or whatever. Songs are also meant to be commoditized and generate income for me, so I guess that’s where the analogy falls off. But, the first part works.

But, making music videos is amazing. Someone else is in charge. I just have to show up and do my part; which also doesn’t require learning lines, which I would be terrible at, I think. I just have to show up, look good and sing my own songs, which I presumably know the lines to already. Someone else tells me what to wear, where to stand, where to look, what to do with my hands; you know, everything. So, in honor of that, I want to go chronologically backwards and talk about my favorite memories from the making of each video. This week I’ll do my latest video which was for Let’s Go Out Tonight.

So, the genius behind the video for Let’s Go Out Tonight was my friend and super-talented director Kevin Pietila. If you haven’t seen the video yet:

A) What the fuck?!

B) You’re in for a treat

I think I wrote about my favorite memories from this video shoot once but I couldn’t find it relatively quickly so I gave up and here’s my new list:

• Night shoots. Turns out if you want to make a movie that takes place at night, you have to shoot at night. That meant showing up to set (set being an Airbnb in SW Washington state for the house/interior shots, the home of a very generous friend of Kevin’s for the graveyard shots, a movie theater and the music venue Holocene in Portland, OR for the performance shots) around 5:30 or 6pm to start setting up/getting into makeup. Starting to shoot around 8pm and wrapping around 4:30 or 5am. Getting makeup taken off/packing up and leaving around 6:30 or 7am. And that was three nights in a row. It was so much fun though. Especially when you get late into the next morning and people start getting loopy. Things get really funny really easily. I think I did my shitty version of the Thriller dance in the abandoned barn like 25 times in a row. It was like 3am and I’m pretty sure Kevin just needed a laugh to keep his energy going. I’ve never been more exhausted at 7am before this shoot and the only thing that would keep me energized for the drive home was blasting Kanye West’s song Waves (from Life of Pablo) and singing along at full throat. I probably listened to that song 100 times in those three days.

• Digging my own grave. Turns out the soil in the Pacific Northwest fucking sucks to dig in. It may be great for growing wine grapes but that clay-filled, rocky bullshit is a royal pain in the ass to try and dig a 4’L x3’D x 3W’ hole into. I just remember how bad the space between my thumb and forefinger hurt afterwards. I’m not joking when I say I’m pretty sure it took Kevin and I about 5-6 hours to do. But, we needed it for the the shot and Kevin’s supremely generous and amazing friend allowed us to dig it on his property and then even helped us with the shoot later that week. I’m sure he had better things to do than to run lights or the smoke machine from 9pm-2am, but I’m extremely grateful to him. I swear I’ve never tasted a better Coors than the one I had after those 5-6 hours of picking and digging up that clay.

• Being stuck in my own grave. Of course, once I dropped down into the grave, crouched into position, the plastic was draped over the top of the grave, the dirt piled on top of that…that’s the exact moment when the generator died. No generator means no lights, no smoke, no nothing. So, I was stuck in there. It was only gonna be few minutes to get it back online so I figured it was a waste to re-dig me back out, rip out the plastic roof, etc. only for me to go right back in. So, we decided I would just hang for a few until we were back online. Well, a few minutes turned into a few more and a few more and it was starting to get a little harder to breathe since I was mostly sealed up in there. My foot fell asleep and my leg cramped up. But, it was only gonna be a few more minutes. I could wait it out. Plus, the asleep foot would probably make my zombie walk more realistic and my cramped legs would make my grave rise more haggard and believable, which maybe it did. Or, I was just trying to convince myself that I was actually any good at this acting thing. Who knows? Anyways, after like 15 or so minutes (or 2 hours; at least that’s how it felt to me) everything kicked back on and we got the shot. Worth it.

• Finally, being a zombie. When Kevin came to me and said he had this crazy idea for a “zombie love story,” I asked him, “do I get to wear a Thriller jacket?” He said “yes” and I was in. Then, I got nervous as I’m definitely not an actor and this concept would require I play a believable zombie. In my other two videos, I mainly just had to look good and sing my songs, but with this one I actually had to kind of do some acting. Turns out, it was really fun. Can’t say I found a new calling in life but it was quite enjoyable. It’s funny actually, I was talking with another musician not too long ago and he too said acting in his music video was his favorite thing to do. Weird how we all want to do what others are doing… Another fun memory about being a zombie was injuring my hand while practicing being a zombie and rehearsing those Thriller moves for the video. An injury as a good memory? Why yes. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was in my shitty, little apartment in Portland, OR. It was a tiny two-bedroom that was basically a one bedroom apartment where they chopped the living room in half to make another tiny bedroom. So, there wasn’t a lot of space in either of the bedrooms. I was in the “office” bedroom, the smaller of the two, and I had the Thriller video up on the computer while I tried to emulate a few moves. I finally picked two of the easiest ones, as you can see in the video around the 1:50-2:20 mark, and started practicing. I got really into trying to do the dance moves like a zombie might and didn’t realize I was a little too close to my printer and slammed my hand into its sharp, plastic corner. I tore off a pretty sizeable chunk of skin. In the video, if you look really close, you can very briefly see a band-aid on my left hand. Coming out of the grave and getting dirt in a very fresh and very much still wide open wound wasn’t fun, but again, worth it... My final good memory about being a zombie was the two hours into and the hour spent getting out of makeup. Being an Aspie (Asperger’s/”Aspie” refers to someone on the autism spectrum that is generally still high-functioning), the thought of someone touching my face and head for an extended period of time was not something I was looking forward to (haircuts are a nightmare for me. Luckily, because of Covid, my wife now has that responsibility which makes it less stressful on me), but the person who did it made it such a great experience. It’s always fun for me to watch people who are passionate about what they do. The only part that was rough was the last day when we were shooting the on-stage performance scenes. Normally, to remove the makeup, it was a slow, steady process of using makeup remover wipes and some alcohol for the tough spots since the makeup was alcohol-based. We used alcohol-based so it wouldn’t need to constantly be retouched as I sweated or crawled through the dirt. But, on that day, we were in kind of a time crunch, in part because I had locked my self out of my apartment that morning and in part because shoots are just always on the edge time-wise, so we had to move even faster. We started with the makeup on for the zombie performance shots then had to get it off as quickly as possible. But, since it was alcohol-based makeup, “as quickly as possible” meant we had to basically drench my face in rubbing alcohol and scrub. Needless to say, my face was on fire when I went back up for the “normal” Bradley shots. But, again, totally worth it.

So, the jacket and fake gun are from Let’s Go Out Tonight (the venerable Jon Fickes had the distinct pleasure of ending this zombie’s life). I hope you maybe learned something fun about the behind the scenes. If you have any questions about the video you’d like my thoughts on, feel free to leave a comment. Next week we’ll talk about Lookin’ at Luckey and a funny story about a wine bottle. I’ll see you then.

Here’s to hoping I never have to dig a grave in the Pacific Northwest ever again…

NEW MUSIC VIDEO AND VIDEO RELEASE PARTY!!

AHHHH, REAL MONSTERS (anyone love that show as much as I do?)! Why do I say that?? You’ll find out if you check out the WORLD PREMIERE OF “LET’S GO OUT TONIGHT” THE MUSIC VIDEO AT SURVIVING THE GOLDEN AGE BY CLICKING HERE OR ON THE PICTURE:

Also, our music video release party will be held at the Lake Theater in Lake Oswego, OR Friday, November 9th. Music from Sara Morris, Brianne Kathleen and Bradley Wik will start at 8pm followed by commentary from director/writer of said videos, Kevin Pietila, before we show both “Lookin’ at Luckey” and “Let’s Go Out Tonight” on the BIG SCREEN!!! Fun is guaranteed to be had by all. Music, booze, amazing music videos, what else do you need?! Oh, a sexy host, you might say. Well, don’t you worry, Bradley will be there and may or may not take his pants off… Just sayin’…

It's here! It's finally here!! aka... "Lookin' at Luckey," the video...

As promised, here it is fuckers:

This brings back wonderful memories of:

- How perfectly Sonora embodied "Luckey" for those three days of shooting.  I felt as if I was back with the real "Luckey" the whole time

- Brianne and Sara shining lights past the Thunderbird while Nate rocked it up and down, over and over and over...

- Sonora sitting perfectly still, take after take, for those shots in the living room of me rocking out

- Sara hitting her (not plugged in) keyboard so hard it made her fingers hurt trying to get noise out of it

- Sharing those wonderful bottles of water-wine on the roof

- The lady in the park who repeatedly demonstrated how many times Bill Withers says "I know" in "Ain't No Sunshine"

- Those Fucking Jibs

- The wonderfully weird boat parade on the Willamette River that night

- How much Kelly's Olympian didn't give a fuck

- How smoking way too many cigarettes in a row feels

- How many times someone commented on how I look like Ryan Adams

- How I loved it every time someone commented on how I look like Ryan Adams (one of my favorite artists ever)

- Getting to sit in an actual Thunderbird and how unworthy I was

- Thinking of how many fucking talented people were in that apartment that night

I could never thank Kevin Pietila enough for taking my Asperger's, non-visual memories of Luckey and somehow creating this.  It is beyond my comprehension how talented he is.

I am so grateful to all the talented people involved:  Kevin Pietila, Sara Morris, Brianne Kathleen, Jon Fickes, Sonora Mindwerl, Nate Ernst, Colby and, of course, me (just kidding, kind of).  They say it takes a village, but we did it with less people, more hard work and more skill.  But most of all, we did it...

"Lookin' at Luckey" the live-action version aka... music videos are awesome

"Lookin' at Luckey" comes alive!

 

(editors note:  this was supposed to go up Tuesday.  Not sure why it didn't.  Fucking computers and internet things...)

GREEN BAY PACKERS WEEKLY UPDATE:

Unfortunately, I was unable to watch a single second of the Packers game as I was busy doing this:

"What does making funny faces in bars have to do with not watching the Packers?" you may ask.  And you'd be right, if I wasn't being filmed doing it.  Because then it's cool and it's called a music video...

THIS WEEK IN MUSIC:

I was shooting a music video for "Lookin' at Luckey" this past weekend which was a fucking blast.  I got to work with some amazing people including the absurdly brilliant writer/director, KEVIN PIETILA, and the beyond beautiful and wonderfully-talented lead actress, SONORA MINDWERL.  And that's not including my other ridiculously awesome friends SARA MORRIS, BRIANNE KATHLEEN and A VIEW OF EARTH FROM THE MOON'S VERY OWN (JUST LIKE) JON FICKES.  It was truly a blessing to have so much artistic energy in the room(s) when making this fucker.  I had such a fun time despite learning that I am not quite as brilliant an actor as I assumed I once was.  That honor goes to Sonora and Jon Fickes, who were wonderful when "action" was called.  Give me a guitar, mic and a crowd and I'm in my element.  Give me words to say and a camera in my face and... not my element so much.  Although, I used to do a fantastic Jack Black/Tenacious D-type impression given the right audience.  I passed my high school speech class with a Bob Marley song ("Redemption Song") and Jack Black inspired improvised speech/performance.  I was tasked with performing this improvised speech in front of my whole graduating class later on, which I guess means it was pretty good.  So, I have that going for me, which is nice...

We did a lot of amazing things during the video but perhaps my favorite was this:

What a beautiful car that I am so undeserving to even sit in...  This Thunderbird was amazing.  It's lucky you can't see below the waist on these shots.  Boners upon boners...

Anyways, more updates for you soon... So tired... Who knew video shoots were more draining than recording sessions?