"Tiny Moses" is the single off our new record, We Made Ourselves a Home When We Didn't Know and we dropped it into the Earth's river of ears yesterday-- that's to say, the Internet. And to accompany it, on the coldest day of February this year, we gathered our most fool hardy friends (or, at least the most able to sustain freezing temperatures for extended periods of time) and asked them to volunteer the skill sets and talents they've honed. And, weirdly enough, they said yes. Which is how we ended up with pretty hairdos and fairy-like, well behaved children and, yup, a balloon dress, in our newest music video!
We've attached the video here in this blog, for those of you who haven't seen it. But if you're interested in streaming just the single (or purchasing it because you just can't wait for the record in February), you can head to our Bandcamp site here to download it.
Filmed in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Black Mountain, North Carolina, we took the loose concept of letting someone go down the river without hope or fear of where they may end up next, and fit it into a narrative we wrote for the video. Our friends, Steve & Amanda Carter, twisted and tied balloons for hours to complete the balloon dress Steve designed over the previous weeks. They showed up bright and early with little sleep and both of their children, Zeke and Zoe, whom they wrangled in 24 degrees to be the charming, mythical beings you see here. Our friends, Matt & Jessica Langston, let us use their house as a crash pad, Matt helping co-direct and film, and Jessica being on site the entire day, running balloons and children and jackets and blankets where they needed to be. And Noelle Crowe, Jessica's sister and our friend, even came around the time the sun was rising to get Mallory to brush her hair and fix it pretty. We feel pretty lucky to have the friends we do, and pretty amazed with seeing what happens when everyone pitches in. Ryan Camp of Northman Creative in Nashville drove out to put all of our weird, specific, storytelling images onto tape (not actual tape) and edited it beautifully.
The song itself was constructed a couple of years ago, almost a year before we moved from a house to a camper. It was a late night when our roommate Mike was out on tour, and we had the house to ourselves. Mallory sat at badly painted white upright piano-- the one that she was sad to play for the keys being real ivory (back then, she started every sit down at this piano with a little ditty that beganThe ivories make me cry...). She had been working through her relatively recent divorce at a slow, plodding pace, asking the kinds of questions people might ask when you have someone around, and then you don't.
Who's gonna carry you to your bed?
Who's gonna sing the song you always said
You'd write for me-- but you don't write to me again.
Scott approached carefully with his guitar. Mallory was a bit more skiddish at the time. And then, we slowly unpacked the what-if's and what-were's and what-is-now's as they let go.
We've had folks find consolation in this song, too. We were surprised how compassionate it seemed as we lost a good friend to suicide. And now, we find it comforting with the loss of Butter. Losing someone is losing someone, and even if you don't have any answers, it's part of the process to ask the questions to help us get on with the letting go.
This video is just the beginning as we head into the new year. We really can't wait to show you the rest. But for now, we will glide gently down this river with you, being patient, and hoping we all end up together at the end.
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