Memphis musician and father Jeff Hulett’s been on a roll lately. He’s been rolling out his pandemic output with new music videos. This one is dedicated to all the dads out there. “Scene by Scene” is about what it’s like to watch your kids grow up. Get ready, because the kids in this animated video are absolutely adorbs. Happy Father’s Day, everyone!
Music Video Monday is going to the fair.
Great Memphis music videos are pouring in to MVM World Headquarters, so we’re celebrating the abundance with another double-shot week. Restless Townies is a cross-country collaboration between Jeff Hulett, Melissa Goodwin Shepherd, and Adam Poor. Their 13-track album Miles Away is a collection of 2-minute dream pop gems, featuring Shepherd’s etherial vocals and swirling guitars.
In this video for “Chase the Sun”, Hulett collects some 50’s vintage footage of what looks like an awesome day of rollercoasters and Tilt-A-Whirls to set a bright, yet melancholy, mood.
If you’d like to see your music video on Music Video Monday — which at this rate could also mean Tuesday or Thursday — email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Hop on the Zoom call with Music Video Monday.
For many people, online videoconferencing has become the dominant form of human interaction during the pandemic. Jeff Hulett’s new video for “Pints & Quarts” was created by director Noah Glenn. The song is from the album Safe@Home, which Hulett and Jacob Church recorded remotely during the quarantine lockdown of March and April. The video captures the spirit of being alone together, connected by images and voices on the internet.
Music Video Monday: Jeff Hulett
If you’d like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com
Just about everyone is working from home these days — even musicians. Today marks the release of Safe @ Home, an album made by two musicians sheltering in place in separate locations. Multi-instrumentalists Jeff Hulett and Jacob Church recorded the songs — in pieces — from their respective Midtown homes, and all proceeds from the sale of the album will benefit Music Export Memphis (MEM) and their COVID-19 Fund for musicians.
Jacob Edwards
“We made this album all in quarantine over the past six weeks,” Hulett says. He used GarageBand and his smartphone to record acoustic guitar, vocals, drums, and keyboard sounds. Hulett then sent his tracks to Church, who used Pro Tools to record electric guitar, bass, drums and percussion, vocals, and more. Church mixed and mastered the album — with the exception of “N. Belvedere,” which was recorded and mixed by Andrew McCalla.
Samilia Colar
Safe @ Home is suffused with a longing that speaks to the loneliness of life under lockdown. It’s a loneliness cut with sweetness, though — these are songs about friendship and love. Their sweetness and the wonderfully lo-fi pop production call to mind youthful friendships and long summer days when hours stretched, thick as honeysuckle-scented August air. In some ways the album feels like being grounded on a summer day in middle school — it’s the frustration of FOMO mingled with the satisfying certainty that, when this is over, the reunions will be twice as sweet. “Watch Out,” the album closer, is a stand-out track on an album that, except for the immediacy of the emotional content of the songs, does not feel as though it were only six weeks in the making.
Amanda McKnight
Andrew Costen
Further underlining the themes of collaboration and togetherness in spite of separation, each track on the seven-song album has a corresponding piece of art by a Memphis-based or formerly Memphis-based visual artist. “I’m an extrovert by nature so I’m always eager to collaborate and be in community with people,” Hulett says. “The biggest honor for me on this album was bringing as many people together as possible. From artists, to musicians to graphic designers to videographers this thing — all done in isolation — has brought so many people together.”
Between them, Church and Hulett have played with a multitude of noteworthy Memphis bands (think Snowglobe, The Ammunition, Me & Leah, and more), and the Memphis connections show. There are shades of Snowglobe, Chris Bell, and, at least to this listener’s ears, Shannon McNally’s pitch-perfect cover of Jim Dickinson’s “The Outlaw” from The Wandering. In all, Safe @ Home is an album that embraces both the bittersweet sadness of separation and the comfort of connection.
Jeff Hulett and Jacob Church’s Safe @ Home is available via Bandcamp. All proceeds benefit Music Export Memphis.
Earlier this winter, bushfires devastated much of Australia’s mainland, killing one-third of New South Wales’ koalas and burning 14.6 million acres of land.
“We have a bushfire season pretty much every year,” says Damien Klingberg, an expat of South Australia who now lives in Memphis. “But this is the worst there’s ever been — on record, anyway. And there are fires affecting all areas in all six of the mainland states.”
Klingberg moved to the States in 1994 and has since made a life here in Memphis working as a beertender at Memphis Made Brewing Co. When he heard of the fires in Australia and the devastation that came along with them, including damage to his family’s entire cherry orchard, he and his fellow Australian mate Nick Van De Velde decided they needed to contribute to the relief efforts by organizing a benefit concert at Memphis Made.
Brandon Dill
Memphis Made Brewing Co.
“Nick pulled me aside and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got to do this,’ and I said, ‘You’re right, we do,'” says Klingberg. “And it kind of started from there. We approached the fantastic management and ownership of Memphis Made and said, ‘Hey, this is what we want to do. Can we do it?’ And they have been super supportive.”
For a suggested $5 donation toward relief funds, guests will enjoy the music of two of Klingberg’s bands, Piper Down and Solar Powered Love, as well as other local acts Jeff Hulett, The Switchblade Kid, and DJ Zach Ives. Memphis Made will also donate $1 from each beer sale to organizations picked out by Klingberg and Van De Velde: WIRES Australian Wildlife Rescue, Wildlife Victoria, Wildlife Rescue Queensland, SA Bushfire Appeal, and Wildlife Recovery Fund.
Beers for Beasts, Memphis Made Brewing Co., 768 S. Cooper, Saturday, February 15th, suggested $5 donation.
Shannon Walton in Sweet Knives video for ‘I Don’t Wanna Die’
You’re going to be hard pressed to see everything great on Indie Memphis Sunday, so some triage is in order. We’re here to help.
First thing in the morning is the Hometowner Rising Filmmaker Shorts bloc (11:00 a.m., Ballet Memphis), where you can see the latest in new Memphis talent, including “Ritual” by Juliet Mace and Maddie Dean, which features perhaps the most brutal audition process ever.
Indie Memphis Day 5: High Art, Music Videos, and Penny Hardaway
The retrospective of producer/director Sara Driver’s work continues with her new documentary Boom For Real: The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Micheal Basquiat (1:30 p.m., Studio on the Square). Driver was there in the early 80s when Basquiat was a rising star in the New York art scene, and she’s produced this look at the kid on his way to becoming a legend.
Indie Memphis Day 5: High Art, Music Videos, and Penny Hardaway (2)
The companion piece to Driver’s latest is Downtown 81 (4:00 p.m., Hattiloo Theatre). Edo Bertoglio’s documentary gives a real-time look at the art and music scene built from the ashes of 70s New York that would go on to conquer the world. Look for a cameo from Memphis punk legend Tav Falco.
Indie Memphis Day 5: High Art, Music Videos, and Penny Hardaway (4)
You can see another Memphis legend in action in William Friedkin’s 1994 Blue Chips (4:00 p.m., Studio on the Square). Penny Hardaway, then a star recruit for the Memphis Tigers, appears as a star recruit for volatile college basketball coach Pete Bell, played by Nick Nolte. It’s the current University of Memphis Tigers basketball coach’s only big screen appearance to date, until someone makes a documentary about this hometown hero’s eventful life.
Indie Memphis Day 5: High Art, Music Videos, and Penny Hardaway (5)
The Ballet Memphis venue hosts two selections of Memphis filmmakers screening out of the competition at 1:50 and 7:00 p.m., continuing the unprecedentedly awesome run of Hometowner shorts this year. There are a lot of gems to be found here, such as Clint Till’s nursing home comedy “Hangry” and Garrett Atkinson and Dalton Sides’ “Interview With A Dead Man.” To give you a taste of the good stuff, here’s Munirah Safiyah Jones’ instant classic viral hit “Fuckboy Defense 101.”
Indie Memphis Day 5: High Art, Music Videos, and Penny Hardaway (3)
At 9:00 p.m., the festivities move over to Black Lodge in Crosstown for the Music Video Party. 44 music videos from all over the world will be featured on the Lodge’s three screens, including works by Memphis groups KadyRoxz, A Weirdo From Memphis, Al Kapone, Nick Black, Uriah Mitchell, Louise Page, Joe Restivo, Jana Jana, Javi, NOTS, Mark Edgar Stuart, Jeff Hulett, Stephen Chopek, and Impala. Director and editor Laura Jean Hocking has the most videos in the festival this year, with works for John Kilzer, Bruce Newman, and this one for Sweet Knives.
Indie Memphis Day 5: High Art, Music Videos, and Penny Hardaway (6)
If experimental horror and sci fi is more your speed, check out the Hometowner After Dark Shorts (9:30 p.m., Playhouse on the Square), which features Isaac M. Erickson’s paranoid thriller “Home Video 1997.”
Indie Memphis Day 5: High Art, Music Videos, and Penny Hardaway (7)
Today’s Music Video Monday goes walkabout.
I’m not talking about Nicholas Roeg’s 1971 film about Australian childhood, which Indie Memphis and filmmaker Lynn Sachs will present on February 20th. I’m talking about walking. “Bones”, Jeff Hulett’s second video from his Around These Parts album, was created with the help of the singer/songwriter’s far flung friends. Folks from all over the country sent Hulett videos of themselves (and others) walking. The result is a short, fun, engaging video. Check it out:
Music Video Monday: Jeff Hulett
If you’d like to see your music video on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
You might think the song “Neutral Milk Hotel” on Jeff Hulett’s new solo album Around These Parts is about the seminal ’90s indie band, but you would be wrong — or at least half wrong.
“Back in the day, we were all obsessed with Neutral Milk Hotel,” says Hulett. When they were kids, he and his music-obsessed friends searched the internet for any snippets of music from the band, who only recorded two albums. “One of us found the song on Napster, and thought it was by Neutral Milk Hotel, because the title of the song is ‘Neutral Milk Hotel.’ But it’s not. It’s this band called the Gifted Children.”
Despite that bit of pioneering search engine optimization, the Gifted Children never approached the level of popularity of either Neutral Milk Hotel or Snowglobe, the band Hulett founded with his friends. But Hulett never forgot the song, so when he was looking for material for his first solo album, he dusted off the old mp3 and sang the refrain, “Let us sooth your open wound/And dry your crying eyes.”
Hulett will reunite with Snowglobe for the band’s annual holiday show at Railgarten on December 23rd, but before that, he’s got business of his own. He’s always been a team player — with Snowglobe, Jeffrey James and the Haul, Glorie, and, most recently, as the “me” with Leah Keys in the folk duo Me & Leah. But now he’s stepping into the spotlight with Around These Parts.
The nine-song collection showcases Hulett’s songwriting, and he likes to make them succinct, well-crafted, and meaningful. “It’s one of those records that people will like, because it’s a quick get. It’s fun, and it’s over before you know it. I’ve been very pleased with it.”
The road to Around These Parts started while Hulett was playing bass in Glorie, Jason Paxton’s instrumental band, which uses an array of orchestral tools like vibraphone to create lush soundscapes. It was a natural fit for Hulett’s talents.
Hulett convinced Paxton to produce a solo album.”I kinda took over his life,” he says. “He was still figuring out the equipment, so I was a guinea pig … It was a labor of love, really. He’s got a kid, so he’s busy, and I’ve got two kids. But it was this project that just kept going.
“I knew the songs I wanted to be on it. But some of them weren’t done. So it took some time to flesh those out. I wouldn’t say it was a concept album, but I do think there’s a general theme. My youngest child was born at the beginning of this recording process. So it’s about change. I was changing careers throughout, and having children, and people who I know and love were dying, and other children being born … the usual stuff, life and death.”
Paxton and Hulett called on old friends, like Jeffrey James and the Haul rhythm section Dave Schulter and Daniel Farris, and Snowglobe’s brass player Nahshon Benford, as well as new collaborators like violinist Jessie Munson, singer Kate Ryan, and multi-instrumentalist John Schallert.
“It’s about knowing my limitations,” says Hulett. “I can probably do a guitar solo to go on a song, and it’ll be serviceable. But if you can get Luke White to do it, you get Luke White. I’d rather it sound good than be territorial about it.”
The album’s theme of change and the passage of time bubbles to the surface halfway through, when “Tape” emerges from “Shoes All Muddy” with an Abby Road-esque segue, and Hulett sings “I don’t know what’s on this tape.” It’s a discovery, and re-discovery, of the stuff that matters most.
Hulett and his band will celebrate Around These Parts at Memphis Made Brewing on Saturday, December 15th, with a record release party starting at 4 p.m.
Music Video Monday is going solo!
Jeff Hulett has been in a lot of bands: The long-running Memphis orchestral pop Snowglobe, the rocking Jeffery James and the Haul, and the folky duo Me & Leah. But for his new album, Around These Parts, Hulett has decided to go his own way.
You can read about Hulett’s road to Around These Parts in this Thursday’s issue of the Memphis Flyer. Meanwhile, here’s the first video from the record, “This is the Life”, directed by Noah Glenn.
This is the Life from Perpetual Motion on Vimeo.
Music Video Monday: Jeff Hulett
If you’d like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com
Slow down for Music Video Monday.
Jeff Hulett, familiar to Memphis music audiences from Snowglobe and his solo appearances, and Leah Keys, organizer of the ultimate audience participation storytelling show, Spillit, have been strumming partners for a minute. With Hulett on the guitar and Keys on the banjo, the duo frequently pop up for shows in Midtown. Now they have completed their first album and are ready to unveil it this Friday with a party at Amurica.
Hulett produced their first video, “Moving So Fast”, by cutting together 8 mm film of his family’s home movies. The place is upstate New York, the year is 1948, and the kid is Hulett’s father, age 4.
Music Video Monday: Me & Leah
If you would like to see your music video appear on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com