Part One: SOLID.
In case you want to watch the video first, here's the link to SOLID, https://youtu.be/-ZAVzeEo3vA, written by me, Jamey Clark and Andrea Wittgens, with animation by Joe Fournier.
It was about that time of night. It had been a full day, the moon was on the rise, and the bed was looking good. So why, when I peeked into my room, did something tell me I shouldn't call it a day just yet?
“What should we do?” I said to my reflection in the bathroom mirror. I may have been brushing my teeth, just to get it out of the way. Or maybe reminding myself to brush my teeth. But really, I was thinking about why I knew I couldn’t just go to bed. Well, I could. But if I did, I knew I would be missing something good. So what was it?
And there in the bathroom, it started coming back to me. Slowly at first, then in a torrent. I remembered all the songs I had written in the bathroom. When I was little. And as an adult. Most recently, “Words,” at Lamb’s Retreat for Songwriters, was written in the bathroom, as my "roomie" Robin Bienemann was writing in our hotel room. And at Steel Bridge Song Fest, a collaborative songwriting event we participated in for the better part of a decade, too many songs to count started in the bathroom.
So what is it about the bathroom? The acoustics? The privacy? The unguardedness? The soap, the shampoo, everything that takes the grit off you? The potions that help heal and soothe where the grit was? Whatever it is, everybody knows there is something about the bathroom.
And there it was. I was struck with an idea. It probably helped that Robin was walking up the stairs at that very moment.
“Hey!” I said. “How about helping me make a tribute video for An Online Celebration of Steel Bridge Songfest?” “oh NO,” he said with his eyes, his foot falling heavily on the top stop, looking down, the way he does when he knows, he knows, we are about to leave the safe harbors of almost going to sleep to do something I have decided will be REALLY. FUN.
The truth is though, Robin is fun. So when I told him my idea, he went back down those same stairs (albeit with a lighter step) and went to a fair amount of trouble to get the right guitar for the bit. You’ll see.
And then, we took many, many, many, many, many, many extemporaneous takes before we got to what you’re about to see.
Like most creative endeavors, it would be hard to give you a sense of how much time, effort and energy goes into making the thing that you’ll experience for just a moment.
If we do it right, you feel like you're part of the the fun we had in making it. Because in truth, we were thinking about sharing it with you, while we were making it. And also, just having fun, late at night.
In an upcoming collaboration blog, we’ll hear from the other incredible artists that brought SOLID to life. For now, enjoy SOLID: https://youtu.be/-ZAVzeEo3vA