Last Single, First Video!
This one is hard to talk about for a totally different reason. Mainly that its meaning and my connection to it have changed so much over time. I could tell three different stories that could end with “and thats how I started writing the Labyrinth” and they’d all feel true but incomplete. In one, the catalyst is existential panic; “How have I gone so far astray from myself that nobody in my life today knows I used to be a songwriter?!” In another, I’m taking a long look at my own mental health and how its affected my passage through the world, how I’ve let it keep me disconnected from others by never properly addressing it. And in a third, the story isn’t about me at all, but about a terrible tragedy that preceded a mass reckoning on a national scale with the tangled web of our racial psychology and systemic oppression and how much action needs to be taken for any real healing to occur.
And though each of these stories would inform the sentiments expressed in the song, none of them speak to what it has come to mean in my life today. That part begins with a little collaboration, a lot of trust, and an open heart. When I started the long journey of recording Under the Chestnut Tree, I knew exactly two things I wanted for The Labyrinth. For one, I had this old love for “bonus hidden tracks” on vinyl and CD albums, when artists could get away with that sorta thing. The Labyrinth is definitely connected to the narrative of the whole album, but its sort of an open ended epilogue, it leaves a question mark hanging in the air that the rest of the album doesn’t try to answer. So I wanted it to float in at the end of everything else; a little promise in post-script that sends forward rather than settling down. The other thing I knew I wanted for the song was to not sing it alone. If Under the Chestnut Tree is about anything, it’s about learning not to be alone; the only way to drive that idea home was find another voice I could trust. Enter Margaret Clark.
Collaborator, colleague, confidant, dear friend, brilliant thoughtful artist, staggering intellect, big goofy goober Margaret Clark. Other than my then-fiance-now-wife and my producer, Mags was the first person I shared my vision of the Album with. Not only did she prove the perfect person to fill out the song, vocally, musically, AND poetically, but working on it sparked a burgeoning musical collaboration thats only just getting started. On top of that, the support of her, and her fiance, Tyler Prendergast, were and are a huge positive force for me regaining the self-confidence in my vision it took to finish the darn thing. Key to that has been their established ritual of “Salon Nights,” wherein, every couple months or so, a gaggle of artists and friends gather in their home to all share what they wish of any works-in-progress. It’s somewhere between an open mic, a workshop, and a campfire, with a generous spirit of mutual support and friendship backing it up. One particular tradition thats taken hold at these Salon Nights has been that each event concludes with Margaret and I performing The Labyrinth together live for everyone. It’s been going on long enough now, that everyone else has started joining in on the chorus. The first time that happened I could barely hold it together and started crying when the song was over. Here was this compact little nugget of fear and isolation that my friends drew out of me and made into an anthem for the in-between, a rallying cry for living in the work unfinished and carrying on anyway.
For a song that once felt like an indulgent expression of inner turmoil and self-imposed solitude, it has done more to make me feel connected to my brilliant friends and loved ones than I could have ever imagined. When shared in chorus, it becomes an exaltation of the angst of incompleteness, a revelation that simple joys and perpetual recommittment are the only ways through that angst, and at last a glorious celebration of just how confusing, weird, and beautiful the world can be.
And then, of course, after all that it became the centerpiece of another whole new collaboration; that being the official music video for the song. It began with Tyler Prendergast’s very clever concept for a thematic take on the idea of a “lyric video.” After much excited discussion of the idea and what it would take to achieve, we brought another dear friend of mine, Brent Ervin-Eickhoff, in on the project as well. Tyler, with a combination of elements they pulled from my sister-in-law Sawyer’s artwork for the album cover and their own original designs, created all of the digital art assets for the video. Brent has taken all of those designs and, through many iterations and giddy show-and-tell zoom meetings over the past few months, breathed life into everything with his blooming animation skills. The result of allllll the above is this beautiful, delightful, achingly cute audio/visual experience! I’m so crazy proud of and grateful to my friends for this thing we’ve all made together.