This time, it wasn’t just Mark’s pants that were on fire to do another video…

Our Mississippi Rising video did so well on YouTube, we thought it was time to try it again. Sure, we’d done lyric videos for all of our other releases using stock footage, but this time we wanted to “up our game” and do something more “cinematic” that would include footage of the band as actors and performers. 

So once again, we rang up Friend/Filmmaker/Musician, Paul Crowder, (The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years, Pavarotti, Amazing Journey: The Story of The Who, Last Play at Shea,) who directed and edited Mississippi Rising. We felt that one of the songs was already very cinematic in its mood, so we pitched the idea to Paul to create a 4 minute movie based on the story in the song.

Upon hearing the song Paul loved the idea and the direction we wanted to go and thought the first step would be to storyboard the song to see how many shots we could actually afford! He brought longtime friend, storyboard artist Paul S. Power (Robocop, Predator, who is also a graphic novelist/artist East Meets West) to sketch out the look of the video. Well, it looked absolutely amazing, but to get some of the shots proposed by the story boards was going to cost a small fortune, so it was literally back to the drawing board…

Since a great many milestones appear to come in threes, Paul Crowder questioned us about our plans for doing videos over the next year and after thinking about it for a minute, comes up with, “Well, if you want to be economical and save money, instead of shooting just ONE video three times, let’s shoot THREE videos all at once! We fly Tommy out for a week, line up all the gear and the crew and we shoot them all.” Eureka! Possibly an insane undertaking but there was a very appealing frugality to the craziness…We were in.

So, marching forward: Paul would direct. Mark would produce, since he’d been producing events for years and had a decade of experience producing live multi-media shows for hall of fame songwriter, Allee Willis (September, Theme from Friends, The Color Purple) Plus we got him real cheap. Mark and Paul began making arrangements for locations, equipment rental, crew, drone camera, catering, the color of the M&Ms, etc. all while refining the concepts of the three videos.

In November 2021 when schedules allowed, Tommy traveled out Hollywood way, the home of all things cinema. Paul & Mark had scouted three perfect locations to shoot the three videos. The first day of shooting was at The Foxtail Ranch, (owner Arne Haaland spent many years in the film industry with Green Set, Inc.) He and significant other, Deb Day were very supportive making our first day shooting so relaxed and fun…

For such a “serious” video, Bren Holmes, the only real actor on our three day journey into our own private Twilight Zone, kept us in stitches. Such a talented man, (founding member of LA’s “The Young Dubliners,” as well as a professional photographer,) We’re still not sure how he kept a straight face when the cameras were rolling…

Day two found us in South Pasadena at Jeff Peters’ Studio F. Jeff has a long list of credentials as a player, singer, composer, engineer, producer et al., (The Beach Boys, Joan Jett, Brian Setzer, and Timothy B. Schmit.) Jeff welcomed us with open arms and fell right in with the vibe we were creating. He turned out to be a pretty good actor once the cameras were rolling. Hopefully he won’t end up on the cutting room floor! Jeff as you may have read, has become our secret weapon, making our recordings sound like records. He should insure his ears for at least a million dollars!

Day three was outside once again, this time it was a daytime shoot. We had found the ideal background (the loading dock at Mission Tile West) to shoot against and were welcomed by Tisa Adamson (who, in addition to the tile business, is a musician/songwriter with a long history in the SoCal music scene.) 

Coffee was the order of the day with Director Paul sending out for a gallon of Starbucks and a gallon of hot water for tea! Our concept of this video was to pay respect to the very first music video, while still conveying the message of our song. At least that’s where we started. Director Paul was in his element concocting shots with green screen concepts to make this “homage” video very unique and entertaining. Must’ve been the 10 cups of tea!

We came out of day three exhausted but feeling like a family. We felt lucky to have had three days of working “in the trenches” with such talented and gracious people. It’s very easy to see how a crew can become so tight knit. Everyone involved with this undertaking have now adopted each other. Even with such a crazy production schedule, we all actually had fun and wouldn’t change a second of it. How often can you say that?