things you learn when directing a music video for that one friend's band

the magic of hanging with Louisville's Cowboy Preachers Club

Mike is maybe my best friend at this point. At least, he’s one of the ones that’s stuck with me the longest. The one I felt could crack my notebook to the day we met backstage at the theater showcase for “Parent’s Weekend,” my freshmen year of college, when I hadn’t really made any other friends yet. Yeah, it’s safe to say—he’s the first real friend I made in college.

And he’s in a band now. After a few fucked up years and a divorce and moving back in with his parents and then losing one of those parents and here he is, still making music. Still writing the songs. And they just keep getting better.

It’s a Bon Iver-type origin story, and he’s only one fifth of the equation.

There are four others like him, but I don’t know them. Not yet anyway.

But I can tell there’s something in the air, that first morning when I roll up to meet Stephen at his house (I’m borrowing his wife’s camera for the video). The sun is barely up and there’s that not quite Midwest-grey hanging over the highway on the way into town. Mike is on the way with McDonald’s breakfast and somehow that makes it okay. Stephen’s wife, Danielle, answers the front door wearing gym shorts and shows me how to assemble the camera and the gimbal we don’t wind up using. There’s an unspoken reluctance from her, I think. I’m a stranger and she’s protective of the band and what they’re doing. It doesn’t help that she has to work all day. She won’t be here to watch us shoot.

We start in the basement where the band rehearses and Stephen gives me a tour. Then we shoot some with Danielle’s chickens in the back yard. Danielle feeds them and Stephen watches. And it’s good—funny. Natural. It feels pretty real and I’ve got a little piece of it.

Then to Mike’s place (he drives), to pick up his bass and a few last-minute things. We shoot some of him cuddling his cat, looking at the shit on his walls. Shooting pool in the lounge of the apartment complex he manages. The best shit is him smiling with his bass strapped to his back, looking back over his shoulder a little, like a memory’s tapping him on the shoulder (or maybe following him with a camera).

From there, we stop for coffee and head to Bobo’s, but he’s not ready for us yet (still getting out of the shower), so we steer instead to Tate’s, who has this lovely green apartment with houseplants she painted all along the walls herself. She and the man she finally met kiss in the kitchen while they make breakfast, the sun through the window shades on their faces and it’s beautiful. She plucks a book from the shelf and reads on the couch for the camera, a cup of tea in one hand and the book split open in the other. Then we’re off again to Bobo’s, who’s finally ready to roll. He shows me the space where they record all the songs, the converted front bedroom and attached closet the doubles as the vocal booth. He pulls up files on the computer and types at the keyboard, but then he types at the piano in the front room and Mike dances, dead eye looking in the camera.

Finally, we meet Bethany at the salon where she works. She frizzes her boss’s hair for the camera and practices walking in and out of the salon, leather jacket slung over her shoulders and boots clacking on the asphalt. She’s cheeky, more Southern than I’d expected, rough around the edges, but the kind of rough that comes from knowing all too well what the world can do to you.

Then Churchill Downs. Mike drives. Bethany drives separate. We shamble across the parking lot and I shoot it all, because I have some preconceived notion about what this video should be. “It’s about Louisville and the Derby being a symbol of the slow decay of the city and its history,” I tell him. It’s the only reason Mike agrees to come here in the first place.

But the best parts are the parts I couldn’t plan for. Bethany and Mike hop the cement and metal parking protectors surrounding the entrance. Bethany tries to climb the statue of the horse out front. She and Mike take off, Hard Days Night-style and it’s everything.

From there, back to Stephen’s. The whole band has assembled and we’re shooting rehearsal in the basement. I’m nervous. This is my put-up-or-shut-up moment. I have to look like I know what I’m doing. I hang a few stage lights from the rafters, focus the pools of light, and assign each band member a color. Then they start the song through the PA system, playing and singing along. I drift around with my iPhone, snapping little frames here and there. And then we do it live. And I spin through the room as they play the song in a circle and I’m rolling the whole time, a floating eye-ball in the maelstrom that is the band I’ve been playing in the car with my windows down for the last six months. And it’s perfect.

And it continues to be perfect for the next two hours. I whirl and twist and they keep playing, again and again and again. But along to the track through the PA, because we’re making a music video, after all.

Bethany and Tate sit and stand and then sit in different places and then stand again and give it to the imaginary crowd once, and then it’s obvious everyone is running out of steam.

We go upstairs. Stephen prepped empanadas for everyone and I had the idea to catch everyone cooking together. Bethany and Bobo kneed dough. Mike talks and Tate fixes a snagged thread in his sweater with one of her hooped earrings. Before long, we’re all gathering around the table. I sit beside Tate. I confess how lonely I’ve been, what it’s like to move through the world believing there isn’t anybody out there for you. And she says she used to feel that way too (she’s been writing songs about it), but then he showed up finally. I even start to believe her when she says it can happen, even when you least expect it.

And this is only one conversation happening around this table. The point is, we’re all there together and we eat and drink and laugh and talk and you can tell this is what family is supposed to feel like.

Bobo ducks out early. There’s a family emergency afoot and he proudly proclaims, “I’d rather not be in the end of this video and look back and remember it meant I was there for my family.” And he’s right, of course. We all understand.

From there, to the Tyler Park, where we descend wooden stairs from the road. Mike and Bethany attack the jungle-gym and Stephen takes to the swings and so does Tate. I catch a few takes of Bethany on the slide, and then Mike on the slide. Bethany finds an abandoned scooter meant for a toddler (she crashes face-first on the pavement). And then everyone gathers at the swings and they float in synchronicity and I’m filming the whole time, but a lot of it’s too dark to use in the video. Then, one final shot of Mike and Bethany and Tate and Stephen walking through the tunnel beneath the bridge, a shot that’s existed in my head in some form since first hearing the song. This is what we’ll use to for the final fade to black, the last picture of the band with their backs to the camera, shambling out into the world together.

I ride with Tate to the bar and she tells me all about her parents while I film the disco ball hung from her rearview mirror. And we pull into a parking space near the bar and we’ve both seemed to reach the agreement that every one of us is really a miracle all our own, and then we roll into Seidenfaden’s, still decked out with Christmas lights.

They serve a drink here called an Iceberg, because I guess the bartender really loves the Titanic and we talk about this because I wrote a play about the Titanic once. And I catch footage of Stephen drinking his drink, and the whole band talking down the bar.

I’ve gotten footage of everyone in their car, except Bethany. So she leads me out to the street and I follow with the camera and she apologizes for the luggage in the back seat, but she makes room. I shove in with the camera pointed towards the steering wheel. And she puts on Hozier with the volume all the way up and I film from the back seat as she careers through the streets and I know this is a moment I’ll remember the rest of my life.

We go back to the bar. It’s wrap for the day. I’ve got all the footage I need. There are hugs on the sidewalk. I won’t see Bethany or Tate again.

Stephen drives us back to his place, where my mom’s car is parked in the driveway. We talk about people Mike and I used to know on the drive back and Stephen already knows the whole story. He’s been friends with Mike longer than I have, but it’s a different kind of friendship. I know that, see that. Respect it.

Before I go though (there’s a two-hour drive ahead of me), we sit at Stephen’s kitchen table and sip whiskey. We talk about the future like it’s something to look forward to. Then Stephen tells me his story. About a degree at a college he hated in a town where he didn’t belong, a town he wrote a song about once. The song for the video we just finished shooting.

He talks about coming home. He talks about starting over. He talks about his wedding, and that’s right when Danielle comes home from her double shift at the warehouse. She asks how the shoot went and we all say fantastic, but really there aren’t words we have to convince her how magical it all really was.

But she gets it weeks later, when I send the first cut via DropBox. I’m back on the other side of the country then. But I know we made something special. I know because I get a text from Danielle one day as I’m standing in line buy groceries.

“The video is beautiful.”