Jamie makes his farmer's debut in James Rabbit's latest hit video! Watch the video and learn the secrets of Jamie's constant enthusiasm as well as James Rabbit's hidden agenda.
James Rabbit is not a person, but a band that comes from the Crystal Palace, 107 Blackburn Street Santa Cruz California. Go there and they will make you tea! Jamie has performed with them for many years, bringing spirit, noises, dancing and sometimes lighting or software! But if ever James Rabbit could be one person it is John Tyler Martin! He started the band when he was in high-school, playing and recording with his brother in a room at his mom's house in Fresno California! Conner Martin is an amazing drummer and is Tyler's married brother! He's super strong and when he's playing the drums he's like a very precise animal with powerful empathy and excellent nutritional advice! At times James Rabbit is like a music school with 18 performers. Good thing they have Max Bennett-Parker who can lead everyone in vocal warmups around the kitchen island before we play a house show! His strong and beautiful voice charms audiences when he acts in musicals and is A Whole New World at karaoke! Plus he can play those keys! Drew Stoeckel, aka Young Pasta is the mastermind who directed this video! He also plays the bass, engineers and masters the sound and has a visual association with auditory sensation. Dylan McKeever, Michael Rekevics, Spencer Owen, Dorota, Richard... ... ... There are so many more people in the James Rabbit Band it calls for ellipses of ellipses of ellipsis!
Even with James Rabbit in California and Jamie in New York, there is a way that James Rabbit songs make ideas come true, and the whole United States becomes a trans-continental home town with couches in every city, every state for us to sleep on. I very much enjoyed last year's tour and look forward to another one this summer! Coast to Coast and Heart to Heart.
Woah, cool. Here's a music video I made in 2003 with Spencer Owen for his song Scinematica. This is from when it first became normal to me that people in my life spend so much time in their bedrooms recording pop music on multi-track tape machines!
I was really interested in Spencer's process which I tried to reflect in how we made the video. As I understood it, his approach to composition was rooted in a kind of real-time feedback recording practice, as though he was improvising in ensemble with himself through the tape machine.
So for the video I configured three multi-media environments for Spencer to discover and utilize. He entered each space and the song began to play. I imagined this event as the visual extension of his multi-tracking process. The video is a simple cross cutting between the first-take in each space.
And yeah, it's been a while since I've made a music video. This one is from my first year out of high-school. For the last while I've forgone the camera when making this kind of experience with a person. But this ability to keep and share the work with lovely and non-present people like you makes the camera a temptation again!
If you have any photos, media or diary-entries about projects and activities we've done together email them to jamie@kc.rr.com. Thanks!