Sanctus Real

It was either a fairly early morning or an especially early morning for Sanctus Real at 5am the other day…depending on whom you talk to.  I say “fairly” early because 3 (soon to be 4) of us are dads and I think that makes early mornings a common affair.  I say “especially” early though because we’re musicians in a rock band. Any story at 5am is supposed to be about the end of a long night of being crazy or playing video games, not the beginning of a long responsible day at work, right? Anyway, since I’m the one writing this blog and the only one that “fairly” doesn’t apply to, even though we don’t play many video games and aren’t very crazy, we’ll uphold the tradition and stick with: “It was an especially early morning at 5am…”

We worked with a video director from Atlanta named Nathan Corrona (TobyMac, Abandon Kansas).  He was a super cool guy, but for some reason thought it would be good to film outdoors… in the middle of February…before the sun came up.  To add a little Murphy’s Law to this frigid early morning, we forgot the keys to our trailer and couldn’t get to the gear.  We sat in the bus having our faces airbrushed by the makeup artist while the sun rose when finally the owner of the grounds showed up with some lock cutters.  Just in the knick of time, we got the trailer’s side door open, dug our way into roadcases for the needed gear (guitars, orchestra bells, and what-have-you), and hurried to set up before we missed the timing and position of God’s natural light.

It was a long day.  We worked for about 14 hours at 2 different locations.  We slept well when it was over.  Nathan and his team did a killer job of creating the sets and shooting it all.  The first location was in front of an Airstream camping trailer next to two salvaged pickup trucks where some sneaky varmint must have lived out the remainder of its days. Talk about rotten, decomposition stink.  If you see any gagging expressions in the video, this is definitely why.  The second location was a dingy old room full of books that looked very cool and smelled much better.

The whole day was great besides ol’ stinky jones the rodent and we think the video is going to turn out really well.  It has to be funny watching a music video being filmed.  Here are these 5 guys pretending to play a song sped up super fast while trying to act natural in some odd location. Oh ya, I always put my little amp on a stack of tires in a junkyard and rock out at double speed of the actual song.  Who doesn’t do that?

I should also mention, since I am (just) The Bass Player, the new Club bass guitar that Hofner sent me for the video.  To say I was happy to receive it would be a huge understatement.  If you’ve never heard of Hofner, I won’t hold it completely against you as long as know who Paul McCartney and the Beatles are.  He has made them famous by playing their iconic Violin Bass.

Anyway, more on that in days to come.