During the COVID-19 shelter-in-place of 2020, Scott Zuniga and director Garrett Gibbons invited friends across the globe to send footage of the empty streets of their city or town. It seemed fitting to collaborate globally to create a memoir of such a unique experience. Although apart, we made this together.
Read MoreHavana, Cuba
It's 5am and I wake to the sound of beating drums, whistles and cheers. I should keep sleeping but something epic is brewing outside and I can’t just lie in bed.
I run to my balcony overlooking Avenida 23 of Vedado and see an ocean of people gearing up for the annual march through La Plaza de la Revolución. I forget that I'm still dizzy with fatigue and run upstairs to wake up my mates, ”Guys you're gonna want to see this."
Soon we’re on the street pushing and stumbling our way through the half million people that make the march every year until we get to the bottom of the plaza. Loud speakers blast Fusil contra fusil as people sing along and cry. The sun comes up behind Che’s image on the Ministry of Interior building and the march begins.
We go with the flow and pretty soon I'm separated from my mates by at least a hundred people. I’m drifting, just one in half a million.
I've never been around this many people in my life. A smashing of this much flesh, on such a hot morning, can't be healthy. Our march probably resembles that of penguins more than humans. But I'm not thinking about that. I'm curious about all the people waving at us from the foot of the giant Jose Martí monument as we cross the center of the plaza. Obviously dignitaries and guests of the state. They wave flags of their respective countries and cheer for us in solidarity. I'm most excited by the Ikurriña flag of the Basque country.
On the highest row, above all of them, stand what look like generals and commanders dressed ready for combat. And in the middle of them is a man dressed in a white guayabera. Everyone around me seems to be waving to him. "¿Quién es? (Who's that?)" I ask the short girl next to me. She looks at me like I'm crazy then simply replies, "Raúl."
Bucharest, Romania
Transylvania Crush
Video:
Format: Digital
Director/Cinematographer/Editor: Ty Arnold
Producer: Scott Zuniga
Production Manager: Brooke McVey Chambers
Music:
Writer/Vocals/Guitar: Scott Zuniga
Vocals: Emilie Zuniga
Guitars: Matt Puckett
Violin/Viola: Maurice Chammah
Bass/Synthesizer: Christopher Cox
Drums/Percussion: Matthew Shepherd
Accordion: Tamir Kalifa
Engineer: Grant Johnson
Studio: Good Danny's, Austin, TX
Notes:
Last year Scott approached me to direct a music video for Transylvania Crush, a sort of vampire love song. The music was sad, dark, and very beautiful. He mentioned shooting it in Romania, and it piqued my interest; I'd been filming homeless kids on the streets of Bucharest over a period of 12 years, and I finally felt I had an emotional song to match the sobering footage I had collected. We did one more trip out filming, and the result is a haunting portrait of what it's like up close for these street kids, living in and around the sewers of Bucharest.
- Ty Arnold
Production Stills:
Mexico City, Mexico
Slow Motion
Video:
Format: Digital
Directors: Scott Zuniga & Emilie Zuniga
Music:
Writer/Guitar/Vocals: Scott Zuniga-Vocals
Vocals: Emilie Zuniga-Vocals
Vibraphone: Maurice Chammah
Engineer: Grant Johnson
Studio: Good Danny's, Austin, TX
Notes:
Emilie and I took a trip to Mexico City last April. On the way there we had the idea of shooting a music video for Slow Motion on my iPhone 6.
I loved the convenience of shooting with a tiny camera. Being able to edit without having to transfer footage from camera to computer allowed me to complete the video on the plane ride home, giving me by far the fastest turnaround time for any music or film project that I've ever worked on.
Another reason this was such a great project is because we didn't go to Mexico City for the purpose of shooting the video, we went there to enjoy ourselves, the music video was an afterthought that we just let happen. Because we had this approach, the video captures an authentic travel experience and not a group of staged shots. In other words, we shaped the video around our stay and not the other way around as has been the case with past projects.
Emilie makes her co-directing debut with this video. Special thanks to
Mark Powell for taking us on a photo tour of the city that produced most of these shots.
Additional Thanks:
Hector Bialostozky
Zachary Manning
Production stills:
Cairo, Egypt
Twilight in Cairo
One night in 2006, during my first visit to Cairo, Egypt, I had some free time so I went for a walk.
At the time, I had no phone or knowledge of the language. With just a few strange bills in my pocket and naiveté to protect me from whatever came my way, I weaved my way up the “calm” streets of the Doki neighborhood where I was staying . Along Al Mesaha street, using the McDonald’s as my landmark, I navigated my way to the Sheraton Hotel and then over El-Galla Bridge.
On Gezira Island I saw a group of well-dressed couples entering a colonial opera house whose beautiful structure arrogantly juxtaposed against the chaotic surroundings of the neighborhood it belonged to. I ignored a man trying to sell me something that resembled a giant pretzel and continued on, cutting through the thick, humid air and sucking up taxi exhaust. I snuck between two lion sentinels that guard the entrance of Qasr al-Nil Bridge, and then, in the middle of that bridge, time suddenly seemed to stop.
Alone, standing over the ancient Nile River, seeing the felucca boats criss cross until they disappeared into Giza, I felt like I had finally made it to some mythical place you only hear about but never really see. At twilight, Cairo and its Nile are horribly romantic, and that night I sipped on them both.
Rimming the calm flow of the Nile is a frantic, kinetic city that demands the same awareness and attention as a toddler holding an active firecracker. From the center of Qasr al-Nil Bridge, the city’s lights, sounds and smells assault incessantly from every direction.
It's impossible, to capture the entire cityscape in a single visual scoop. I had toured the city with a group the week previous, but now, alone, I was seeing the city for real and I felt completely absorbed in its pulse.
This was a grand moment for me. I can't describe the exact picture that I have stored in my mind, but most of the time I’m glad that I can’t. It's one of those personal, special life-moments I keep.
That moment gave my life a feeling of newness and of being completely lost in a culture and place so foreign to anything I had ever known. I felt so stimulated by it, like I knew it was something I would only taste once and then spend the rest of my life hunting for it.
I felt the same way in Istanbul, standing between the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque, and again, biking the dirt roads of Siwa, or exploring the narrow streets of the old city market in Damascus. And every time I have that feeling of self-discovery while travelling, I say to myself…”I wonder when and where I’ll feel this next.”
Dura Europos, Syria
R.I.P. Dura Europos
With the news this week of the looting and plundering of Dura Europos, an ancient city along the Euphrates River in Syria and home to the world’s oldest standing Christian church, I thought I’d post some photos by my good friend Ty Arnold, taken during the few hours we spent there.
Gone, but not forgotten, the sights, sounds and faces of the past live on in our thoughts and memories. They will always speak to us through the language of ghosts.
New Mexico, USA
Starboard
Video:
Format: Digital
Director: Scott Zuniga
Music:
Writer/Vocals/Guitar: Scott Zuniga
Vocals: Emilie Zuniga
Vibraphone:
Engineer: Grant Johnson
Studio: Good Danny's, Austin, TX
Notes:
Emilie and I finally took our long anticipated "Warriors of the Southwest" trip through Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. While in New Mexico, my birth state, we filmed a video for Starboard. New Mexico truly is a land of enchantment.
Production stills:
Baalbek, Lebanon
In Eastern Lebanon, close to Syria, is the ancient Roman city of Baalbek. Surrealist Jean Cocteau travelled here during his eastern explorations in the early sixties. I wonder if these temples and rubble inspired him somehow. A few of his sketchings still hang in the halls of the old Palmyra Hotel, a spooky auberge close to the ruins that has never closed a day since its doors first opened in 1874. We only spent the afternoon here, but some places stay with you, even if you only experience them in passing. Baalbek is one of those places for me.
Linares, Spain
Naples, Italy
Witness Protection Program
Video:
Format: Digital
Director/Cinematographer/Editor: Zach Taylor
Producer: Scott Zuniga
Music:
Writer/Vocals/Guitar: Scott Zuniga
Vocals: Emilie Zuniga
Bass: Chris Maresh-Bass
Percussion: Wayne Salzmann II
Pedal Steel: Evan Kaspar
Mandolin: Emily Burns McLeod
Engineers: Evan Kaspar, Brad Bell, Grant Johnson
Studios: Ohm Studios, Austin, TX/Public Hi-fi, Austin, TX/Good Danny's, Austin, TX
Notes:
In December of 2014, Emilie and I traveled to Naples, Italy with our dear friend
Zack Taylor. For an entire week we stuffed ourselves silly on pizza, pasta and gelato and somehow managed to make a music video in between meals. I think Zack's direction and camera work beautifully capture the natural essence of this enchanting old port town.
The song's story literally began with Emilie 'talking in Italian in the other room' one night while I was strumming my guitar. Since then, I've dreamt of making a music video for it in Naples. I had never visited the city before but based on the mood of the song and what I knew about the gritty character of Naples, I had a feeling that the two would go together well. For me, the song's story comes to a fulfilling, heartfelt close with this video and the time we spent in Naples making it.
Very special thanks go to my brother Nick Zuniga for helping make this video possible. Also, thanks to Alberto Landolfi and Arturo Castaldi for letting us film on their beautiful roof and for giving us great filming location suggestions. Forza Napoli!
Production stills:
Austin, Texas
Saxon Pub Sessions
Video:
Directors/Cinematographers/Editors: Arthur Kendrick, Paiam Alavi
Additional Photography: Jay Rojas, Jared Watson
Sound Engineer: Richard Vannoy
Producer: Scott Zuniga
Music:
Vocals/Guitar: Scott Zuniga
Vocals: Emilie Zuniga
Guitar/Synthesizer: Matt Puckett
Bass: Dusty Rhodes
Violin/Keys/Synthesizer: Maurice Chammah
Drums/Percussion: Paul Piñon
Sound Engineer: Richard Vannoy
Notes:
Ten videos from our Saxon Pub Sessions, recorded live during SXSW 2015. The videos play in order. Special thanks to everyone at The Saxon Pub
Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas - USA
Blood of a Poet
Video:
Format: Digital
Director/Cinematographer/Editor: Jason Cox
Producer: Scott Zuniga
Music:
Writer/Vocals/Guitar/Synthesizer: Scott Zuniga
Vocals: Emilie Zuniga
Violin: Maurice Chammah
Bass: Christopher Cox
Drums/Percussion: Wayne Salzmann II
Engineers: Brad Bell, Grant Johnson
Notes and production stills by Jason Cox:
“Blood of a Poet” is a song that takes place in those empty stretches of Americana where a man’s choices used to be dictated by, I dunno, his own gumption, his own satisfaction found in picking a point on the horizon and wondering what lay beyond. But now it’s a country where those choices are driven by desperation, need and winnowing opportunity; the desperation of slim chance that all too often leads to a rock and a very hard place.
Scott is a terrific songwriter, a natural talent, and when he presented me with his darkest and most folk-sounding, Johnny Cash-guitar-driven-like-a-freight-train-song, and asked me to film its story, it created a necessary moment for me. I had just left my own film community behind in a move to Iowa and was in a new state away from my own creative collaborative network, and to be honest, was feeling a little stuck, stranded and isolated without it. Not a good recipe for inspiration. I needed clarity to properly tell this song's visual story, and to find clarity, I needed to surrender to the twitch in my leg and hit the open road, armed with a little nicotine and bourbon if need be.
I laid out my plan to Christopher Wayne Grim, ultimately the video's protagonist (or antagonist, depending how you view it), and he agreed to ride co-pilot in a moment's notice. The next day we packed our bags, loaded our gear and were gone. Direction: Austin, TX.
Highway 169 from Story County, Iowa to Oklahoma City was our main road into Austin. It’s an old two-lane highway that cuts through the heartland of an America now lost to memory. It’s the sort of road that your grandparents took from here to there, a place that most of us only see by accident when we miss an exit. Chris and I knew this, so we decided to wander.
There I was spitballing ideas with my friend, drinking, smoking and driving with long stretches of open road known only to me second-hand through the minstrels of middle America; Woody Guthrie, Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan. Filled with the type of characters I was only introduced to by Jack Kerouac and John Steinbeck.
These truly American images were too good to miss. The camera soon came out and my story began to reveal itself.
We passed through Winterset, Iowa where John Wayne was born and raised. Then St. Joseph, Missouri and the house where Jesse James was assassinated by Robert Ford, and Kansas City, Missouri, with its BBQ and Jazz.
We came upon a small ghost town outside of Coffeyville, Kansas, where Justin, a venerable old man, spends his days keeping up the fences of the forgotten town for himself and one other resident.
Coffeyville itself is where the Dalton Gang were notoriously gunned down by the townsfolk while trying to rob two banks in a row. This was also the town of a man named Rat who wanted Chris and me to follow him to a farm house outside of town so we could jam with him and his pals; he’d supply the booze and drugs. Tempting just on a purely adventurous notion, but we both kind of worried that Coffeyville might be where our trail went cold and no one hears from us again. We continued on.
We filmed just outside of Oklahoma City where a rusted steel bridge crossed historic Route 66. We made it just in time to see the magic hour light over Lake Overholster cast by a perfect sunset to our backs. We broke into the cemetery that housed the graves of Clyde and Buck Barrow, just outside of Dallas, Texas and visited the Clyde family filling station as well as the more public grave of one Ms. Bonnie Parker.
Then we rolled into Austin, TX where Scott greeted us with tacos and giant donuts. I've learned this is a normal greeting in Austin.
We spent the next couple of days catching up as old friends and storyboarding the sequences that had amalgamated in my head with each stop along the road. Soon we were filming scenes.
In the end it was the journey that helped create the music video for “Blood of a Poet." There was something about all that open country and what laid beyond that influenced the final version of the video, a video about redemption and the price it costs. As we rolled through these wide-open swaths of the American underbelly and saw its man-made landmarks it came clear that life hasn’t changed much since our country's early days. Desperate people did desperate things in small dark places just as they do when lit by big city lights. People try to keep order around them like our fence mending pal in Coffeyville, as well as give way to the kind of self-decay and riot that presented itself with Rat. We shot and we shot, some scenes made it into the video's final cut and some didn’t. We let the journey dictate our story and bring “Blood of a Poet” to life.
Big Bend, Texas
I'm a Southwestern boy. I was born in a small desert town and it's in the Southwestern desert that I feel the most affinity to earth. Emilie and I escaped to Big Bend National Park earlier this year to disconnect, decompress and let go for a bit. This is my kind of reset button.
Illustrations
I carry a notebook with me when I travel to sketch certain things that catch my eye. Sometimes I color those sketches in Photoshop to make them come alive a little more. Illustration is one of those careers I’ve been curious of off and on throughout my life but don’t think I’d have the patience to get to a pro-level or to do client work. It’s strictly a stress reliever for me. I’d love to do a graphic novel at some point in my life though.
Here are a few of my favorite personal sketches along with a brief description of the illustration process:
Eunice
This is a portrait of my friend Eunice, a Chinese ex-pat who was living in Syria at the same time as us. I drew it in secret and then showed her after the fact. It might be a little invasive but it’s better to get a natural performance from people when they don’t know you’re drawing them. This was scanned and colored in Photoshop.
Winter Sisters
I drew this quite some time ago without a subject as a visual reference, meaning, everything was from the imagination, no model. The color and the snowflakes were added after the fact in Photoshop and I think they complete the illustration.
Muhajiba
Again, this one was drawn without the aid of a visual reference. Patterns and lines are a reoccurring theme in my illustrations. In this instance I drew the illustration in my notebook then scanned the page and cleaned up any blemishes in photoshop to give it a really clean look.
Booza (Ice Cream)
Drawn without any visual reference. No coloring, no touch-up, just a raw representation of my pure love and obsession for this tasty dairy delight.
Istanbul, Turkey
No city in the world has inspired me more than Istanbul. When you are there, it feels like you are visiting three cities in one. It's the only place that I know of where the worlds of East and West so effortlessly come together in a circus of food, architecture and culture.
While visiting Istanbul in December of 2009, I read Orhan Pamuk's classic novel My Name is Red. The presence of the Ottoman times that the novel describes are still felt as you walk the streets, mosques, and markets of that ancient city and smell the same thousand-year-old scents.The 19th chapter of the book is titled 'I Am a Gold Coin' and is narrated by a small gold coin who describes his part in the drama. To me, the idea of an inanimate object taking a central role in a narrative was amazingly creative and inspired my song 'I Am a Coin.'
I don’t understand all these names you gave me / Or the little games you invent to save me / While I hide out in your safe / Night and daytime you come borrow me
I plant a little seed so you get discouraged / I can make a man feel like his hurt is all he’ll feel in this world / And there’s so many men in this world
I’m the root of all this city’s evil / And the one who’s feeding all your people / While I fall down and inflate / And when you are sleeping I stay awake
And people curse my name/ For all they’ve got is not all they want / People bite my face and place their bets on my tails or head
I’m the little coin that sends you working / Sweat along your brow until you’ve fallen / And you lay down in the earth When you’ve quit talking / I’m still alive!
In everyday life, I'll often catch my mind wandering back to Istanbul and wondering when I will be able to return there for an extended stay. Here are a few pictures of our very brief but memorable time there, taken by our good friend and photographer Ketan Gajria.
Southwest, USA
Where I come from.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of my great grandparents’ arrival in the Salt Lake Valley from Mexico. In commemoration of Jose and Juana Zuniga, I decided to post this photo on my blog to pay tribute to them and show a little gratitude for the sacrifices that they made to create opportunities for future kin that they would never meet, at least not in this life.
When you look back at the US census of the time you see my great grandfather’s occupation listed as janitor. From what I know about him, he was an extremely hard worker, and so was my great grandmother. This picture shows them with their daughters and sons, one of which is my grandpa Joe (second from left). What touched me the most about this photo was seeing one of my great aunts holding a guitar as she looks straight into the camera, as if to say, “We came here, so you could have this.”
My aunt gave me this photo of my grandma and grandpa somewhere in New Mexico or Texas. If you had to imagine their story from this photo alone, you might think my grandpa was some sort of bandito, or perhaps a ranch farmer. Who knows, maybe he was a little of both. But what I’m sure of was that he spent years working for railroad companies across the southwest performing hard labor and saving money to buy land to build a number of properties with his siblings across Texas, New Mexico and Mexico. His entrepreneurial ambitions led him to create a successful trailer park that still exists in Southern New Mexico to this day.
Because of that hard work, their children and grandchildren have all received the blessings of education and carry titles today such as teacher, manager, chemist, artist, musician, mother and father among others. But more important than the titles that we carry individually is the story that we carry collectively as a family. A story that started long before any of us were alive but that in no small way dictates who we are today and the opportunities that we now enjoy.
Damascus, Syria
Shababland – Memories of a Birthday in Damascus, Syria
Twenty-nine, not an age you look forward to or even think about really, at least I never did. Still, my twenty-ninth birthday is one I’ll never forget.
The day started with my oldest birthday tradition… rain. It always rains on my b-day, always has, probably always will. The funny thing is, it rains no matter where I am, it must follow me around. Utah, France, Texas and now Damascus, Syria. It drizzled all morning long, but by late afternoon the sky had cleared and the clouds that remained scattered beautiful orange sunlight onto the crooked grey houses and shops of the old city.
In the morning Emilie and I took a stroll through the market. The usual aggressive hustle and bustle of the market was gone due to it being the end of Ramadan, a celebration known as Eid (عيد) . No open shops, no honking cars, no shouting merchants, just long, empty market hallways. It was like watching a bat sleep.
As we got closer to Souq El Hamidyye (the main market) and the Umayyad Mosque life suddenly appeared. An ocean of little boys filled the Umayyad square. Hundreds of rascals running everywhere shooting plastic bee bees from toy guns they received as gifts for Eid. The best way for me to describe what I saw is to relate it to the scene in Pinocchio where all the boys go to the island and turn into donkeys. It felt like we were standing in the pumping heart of a carnival in a world ruled by little boys.
I got shot several times in the face with the little plastic bee bees but I felt worse for the pigeons who were the boys’ main target. The girls brave enough to walk through the plaza didn’t seem to stay very long. There was an overdose of visual activity full of motion, color, energy and aggression wherever you looked. I’ve never felt or seen anything like it.
God blessed me on my b-day with the most beautiful evening we’d seen since arriving in Syria. The weather was cool, the clouds had cleared and there was no wind. There were even 30 seconds of fireworks over the Umayyad Mosque to mark Eid.
We were excited about our new house in the ancient Shaghoor quarters of Old Damascus so we invited all of our friends to celebrate chez nous. It would have been impossible to feed everyone so we went the pot-luck route. There was quite the eclectic spread of dishes. Everything from Indian food, to Arabic food, to French food and even a little pizza. The ice cream cakes were the highlight though. If you ever get the chance to have an ice cream fruit cake in Syria, don’t miss it. Slices of every type of fruit imaginable, cram-packed onto a layer of fruit cocktail sherbet. Pretty mind-blowing.
There we were, on a rooftop in Old City Damascus, eating and enjoying each other’s company, just happy to be alive. It was a perfect day, and definitely one of the most memorable birthdays of my life.
Pacific Northwest, USA
Isla's Promise
Video:
Format: Digital
Director/Cinematographer/Editor: Garrett Gibbons
Producer: Scott Zuniga
Music:
Writer/Vocals/Guitar: Scott Zuniga
Vocals/Chimes: Emilie Zuniga
Bass: Christopher Cox
Drums/Percussion: Wayne Salzmann II
Piano: Maurice Chammah
Bagpipes: Doug Slauson
Cello: Tony Rogers
Violin: Emily McLeod
Tympani: Evan Kaspar
Engineers: Brad Bell, Grant Johnson
Studios: Public Hi-fi, Austin, TX / Good Danny's, Austin, TX
Notes and production stills:
This is Part 2 of a blog series on the recording of Isla’s Promise and the making of the music video. Click here for Part 1. This week, to celebrate the video’s release, we’ll discuss the making-of.
Garrett Gibbons is a filmmaker and music video director whom I have known for a number of years. He and I came up of with the concept for the video over a series of video calls. We decided that a chase sequence would keep things interesting throughout the duration of the video.
The song has a sort of celtic, mystical feel, so we decided to represent the muse as a water siren/selkie. In the video, Emilie, as in life, would be the muse that I was chasing.
We got some great hair and makeup pointers from our good friend Eliza Ogzewalla, then went to Lucy In Disguise, a massive costume shop in Austin, and picked some things out that we thought would work. The dress she wears was originally long, but it looked too much like Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones, so we pinned it up at the front to make it look more fairy-like.
This was guerilla filmmaking at its best so I had to wear many hats, including makeup duty. My first attempt at doing Emilie’s makeup made her look more like a burnt mime than a siren, so we decided to go with a minimal, pale look instead.
I wanted to shoot the video in Scotland but didn’t have the budget to get there so we did the next best thing and headed Northwest to Seattle and Bainbridge Island. My family used to go there when I was a kid because my mom said it reminded her of Scotland, her home. I still tried to incorporate Scottish themes whenever we could. You might be able to spot a few.
We shot the video over three days. Garrett is from the Seattle area, so he was working on his home turf. He found an underwater camera operator named Jon LaFollette, who was a total pro and did an amazing job. Garrett also rented a local swimming pool after hours to film all the underwater shots. We were able to turn off the pool lights and use our own to make everything feel more dramatic.
Garrett was the perfect director for this video, always in the water directing as we filmed. You can’t tell but Emilie’s costume weighed a thousand pounds when wet. She’s a solid swimmer so her underwater shots look great. I’m only a decent swimmer but that worked well for the video and I’m proud of how those scenes turned out.
We filmed all of the outdoor water scenes on the same day, the day I consider the coldest of my life. I didn’t have a change of costume so the scene where I jump into the lake had to be captured in one take because there wasn’t enough time to dry my clothes and do it again. We filmed at Lake Crescent at a great spot called The Devil’s Punchbowl, which is a narrow, deep inlet of the lake that required about a mile of hiking to access. I mentally rehearsed jumping in several times before taking the plunge. I didn’t want to trip on a rock and ruin the shot or break my skull open. In the end it’s not the most graceful dive but it works well for the video and plus come on, I jumped into nearly-freezing water, how cool is that!
Once I was in the water I knew I only had a few moments before I froze. It didn’t truly get cold until I was back on land. Once I got out of the water, my skin started to react and it felt like there were thousands of little pins pricking me everywhere. We brought plenty of towels and blankets so I stripped to my skivvies and dried off before things got too serious. Emilie took plenty of pics of me in my lowly state that I hope never surface. Once I was dry I actually felt really refreshed.
It was about a three-hour drive to the next location at the beach in La Push (where they filmed scenes from Twilight) so we hung my clothes from the windows of the car to dry along the way. By the time we got there the clothes were drier, but still very damp. The temperature was low and the wind was blowing at least 45-55mph, so putting wet clothes back on was torture. But I fought through it.
Garrett was willing to get his feet wet in the ocean so I took advantage of it and went all the way in. The waves were huge so I knew it would look dramatic when I stumbled out of them.
To synch the singing up with the song I had to sing along with the actual recording. The wind was too loud and fierce to play the song on a speaker from the beach and there was no way we could cheat out a headphone in my ear from the shot, so Emilie stood far away on the beach and literally screamed the words as loud as possible as she listened to them on my phone. I sang along to her screams.
We basically filmed until our bodies couldn’t handle the cold anymore. When we were done we changed quickly and pumped the car heater up to its max to thaw out. We were exhausted, cold and hungry. Luckily there was a smoke shack next to the beach so we bought a few pieces of smoked salmon and devoured them like wolves.
The final day we filmed around the cool parts of Seattle. The bike scenes and Pike Place Market scenes were a blast because people kept stopping and asking what we were filming. Their excitement got me excited. I learned that I should carry download cards around when I do that kind of thing for promotion purposes. One of my favorite shots of the video is when I run off the bike and then jump into the water. That above-the-water/under-the-water shot combo cuts together perfectly.
In the end, Isla’s Promise was probably the biggest artistic collaboration I have ever worked on. It’s crazy how the song started so small and then grew into such a huge production. When I think of how many people worked together to make it come alive, I realize how truly blessed I am to have such great friends. What an amazing experience. Thanks to all who helped!
- Scott
Special thanks to:
Lucy In Disguise
Dutch Bike Co. Seattle
Jill Gibbons
Denise Gibbons
Tamsin & Conrad Mahnken
Bainbridge Aquatic Center
Tatro family guitar
Jon LaFollette
Shea & Jess Stott
Eliza Ogzewalla
City of Seattle
All of my Kickstarter donors who helped make this video possible
Pacific Northwest, USA - Part 1
Isla's Promise - Part 1
In preparation for next week's release of the Isla's Promise music video, this is the first installment of a two-part blog post about the recording of the song and the making of the video. This week we'll focus on the writing and recording of the song.
In case you haven't heard Isla's Promise, here it is:
The story of how I came up with Isla's Promise is explained in this short video I made for a Kickstarter campaign a little while back.
Early drafts of this song were a lot different from the final product, they were more indie and experimental. I love the final draft, but it’s always fun to go back and hear a song when it’s raw and undeveloped. You find something that feels more pure and organic that you don’t get from the studio version.
Isla's Promise - Early Demo:
We had started recording Witness Protection Program way back in 2011 with Evan Kasper at Ohm studio, but Isla’s Promise was the first song that we recorded specifically for the Language of Ghosts sessions at Public HiFi in Austin with Brad Bell. We finished it at Good Danny’s with Grant Johnson in November 2013.
I wasn’t sure what direction the recording would take but I knew that I wanted the song to live up to its full potential, whatever that meant. Because it was my first time in the studio I think I got trigger happy at times and thought, “Let’s add this instrument, and that one there. Oh, and wouldn’t it be cool to have this…” So we ended up with over a hundred tracks of instruments, vocals and harmonies.
Subconsciously, I think I just wanted to get all of my ideas out of my system. I’ve got to give a lot of credit to my production team Grant, Maurice and Matt for helping edit the song down to the most essential elements. For good or bad, every second of this song, and the emotion it should evoke, was thought through.
The recorded version was originally 5:21, but we chopped out an entire verse to bring it to four minutes even, and I think it was an editing decision that really helped the song. It helped the video as well, because it makes things move a lot faster.
I felt the song's style lent itself to bagpipes. I wanted to communicate how traveling in Scotland inspired the melody and nothing screams Scotland like bagpipes. I also think the rarity of the instrument in pop music made me excited to use it. Before the song was recorded I used to sing it and tell people, “And this is where the bagpipes will go.” It got good laughs, but I was actually serious.
I searched online and found Doug Slauson, a real Texas cowboy who also happens to be a world-class bagpiper and Pipe Master of
Silver Thistle Pipes and Drums of Austin
. The first morning of the session, Doug walked into the studio and started tuning his pipes at full force. I remember how their volume made the studio swell. I think my engineer Brad Bell realized at that point that I was serious about the bagpipes. He kind of paused for a second then looked at me and said, “Welp, let’s record some expletive bagpipes!”
Next week we'll premier the Isla's Promise music video and tell you how we made it!
-Scott
Ogden, Utah
Paperboy
I was six and sitting on the sandstone steps in front of our home on Eccles Ave, no shoes, just socks, when Richard the paperboy passed by. I asked what it took to become a paperboy and he said "nothing, come along." So I went.
Two hours later I returned home, socks filthy, proud of a hard day’s work. My mom stood on the porch with a face that looked like she had seen a ghost. She screamed at me, “Bloody hell, where have you been?! I called the police looking for you!”
She took me inside, spanked me, then sent me to bed. I lied alone and cried for a while until she came back in to console me. She explained that she was mad because she was afraid. I looked her in the eyes and said with a sweet Spanky-from-Little-Rascals voice, “I just wanted to be a paperboy!” All was forgiven. I still use this technique, it works.
A couple of years later my dream came true. My brother and I were hired as paperboys to take over for Richard who had turned sixteen and got a real job. Two days in I realized how much the job sucked. I had to get up at 5am on weekends and deliver heavy newspapers in the freezing winter cold and I only got paid at the end of the month once I had personally collected the subscription fees from customers. The internet does all that now.
I'd like to hope that I learned some good life and business lessons from my first job, but I was a pretty lousy paperboy. I would sleep in on most of those cold weekends and then beg my dad to drive me around to deliver the papers from the warm comfort of our Chrysler minivan. All in all, I only lasted about six months on the job.
Despite all of this, I somehow managed to win the Paper Carrier of the Month Award. I didn't even know the award existed until I won it. It turns out the lady who lived across the street from us was pleased that my brother and I always delivered to her first, so she wrote to the newspaper to praise us for our stellar performance. All you needed was one customer recommendation to qualify for the award.
For our prize they picked us up in a creepy white, windowless van and took us to the newspaper headquarters for a tour, and then lunch at Dominoes Pizza. We also got our picture in the paper with our last name spelled wrong.
For one day I got to rub shoulders with guys like Mark Polhman and Bret Anglesey (see photo), who probably deserved the award. I'm still jealous of Bret for going to Space Camp.
I kept this picture on my bedroom wall for years as a reminder of what you can achieve with a little hard work, persistence and determination, or in my case, just by showing up.