John kept playing combinations of “dinn-dinn-dunn” on the bass
and I kept saying “uh huh” after every iteration. This was 2018, when he and I
first started adding words to music, in my old apartment up the hill, in Adams
Morgan, D.C., where you could see the Washington Monument from the living room
windows. The amp was thumping; the neighbors must’ve been going crazy. Were
there bottles of stout? Why, yes there were. “dunn-dinn-dunn!” // “uh huh!”
I said “uh huh” because I dug the bass line, but it became a
regular part of the song’s opening cycle, and eventually the title, too. A
change in the lyrics would appear after one of the song’s thumping, electrified
transformations. There, the words would speculate on the unknowable: the songs
not for the dead but of the dead. Ultimately, “Uh Huh” is an anti-gun
anthem. In it, we challenge murderers to atone, by returning the bodies (of
those they murdered) to the earth.
Importantly, other hands touched the song. Chris Olsen would
add the metrical necessity of drums. Anna Meadors added both dirgeful and
enraged saxophones; she also devised the refrain (the little loop of singing) at
the outro; she engineered the entire recording. In the fullness of time, Mark
Isaac and Gabriela Bulisova interpreted the song visually, through a combination
of thermal, rippling water, video game, marching, and corporeal imagery. It
seems quite accurate.
Even as Covid-19 has prevented us from performing, the video
has been gaining traction at several international film festivals. A special thanks
to our friends at the Oregon Short Film Festival, London Rocks Film Festival, L.A.
Rocks Film Festival, Brussels Independent Film Festival, Hollywood Verge Film
Awards, and Rome Independent Prisma Awards. Yo! With a dozen more submissions yet
to go! We didn’t have ginormous resources for a big push, thus the level of
interest has been especially surprising.
If you are inclined, travel to YouTube and give us a thumb’s
up. Give us an “uh huh.” Thanks.
this post is part of a
double-issue focused on joy on fire music videos. for behind the scenes at the “thunderdome”
video shoot, click [here].
2 comments:
“uh huh”!
we thank you for your "uh huh" and we say "uh huh" to you, my friend. --b.a.
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