I arrived at the shoot at 3pm and until that point I had never met or spoken to Connor. Within a few minutes of meeting him, he described to me his entire concept for the video. Connor had a strong vision for the video that really fit the nature of the song… a fun party song. Ken had arranged for other videographers, from a company called Visual Rhythm, to be at the show and had asked me to direct their crew as well. We shot the band on stage a few times with multiple cameras before the show so that I could cut between it and the live material in editing and have plenty of good shots to work with. The real issue that night came with the dynamic of shooting a live show. I was running the jib in the back of the room and as soon as the band started playing “3 Times”, a drunk guy walked full force into my jib, disconnecting the monitor and loosening the camera. I hurried to fix the issue but after I had resolved the problem I had already missed 45 seconds of the song. There was another serious issue I knew was going to need to be addressed in editing. During the earlier performances only the 5-member band was on stage. But being the party song that “3 Times” is, members of the opening acts joined the band on stage during the song! For continuity’s sake, my crew and I did our best to shoot around the people who weren’t there earlier but it was close to impossible. I knew I would just have to make it work in editing.

After the shoot, Connor said that he would give me a call when they had the budget to put together the rest of the video. A couple of months went by before I got a call back from Connor. We then talked out what the budget would be for this video, which was limited, but we had to make do with what we had. My first concern was the club scene. Right off the bat I knew that, with a tight budget, shooting in extremely low light would be difficult to get the shots we’d need. We also didn’t have the ability to bring in hundreds of extras. We could bring in a few; but not enough to fill a huge night club (Cowboy’s, in Kennessaw GA). This is important because it eliminated the possibility of us being able to shoot during the day behind closed doors. We needed people in the distant background, meaning that we’d have to deal with obstacles out of our control (drunk people) and we’d be shooting in club light. Knowing this was to be an issue, I knew I had to hire someone who was great with lighting and who would not charge me a fortune. I’m lucky enough to have a friend, Phillip Wages, who has grown up around large scale films and whose Dad is a successful Director of Photography. Phillip has worked on quite a few major projects (including Burn Notice) but has resisted the motion picture thing and likes working with still photography. I knew that ,with his photography experience, he would be a great choice at lighting; but having plenty of film experience as well, he was the one for this project to execute what we needed in a dark night club. The enthusiasm Philip brought to this project made all the difference in the world. I found it funny that after the project was over he told me that he’s “really starting to like these moving pictures..” and that it’s literally in his blood. After securing Phil for this project, I arranged for a handful of other assistants knowing that on most limited budget shoots I’ll run the camera myself to ensure I get the shots that I want.

I met with Connor at Caribou Coffee on the Wednesday of filming the story scenes to finalize the shots we needed before the shoot on the following Saturday. Connor knew the concept he wanted: the main male actor, his friend Jason Waller, was to interact in the night club with three very attractive women who were each taller than Jason. Ken Green had found a set of tall blond twins to star in this role and Connor had found the third leading lady. By Friday morning, we had lost our third actress. This basically ruined all the shots we had lined up. Rescheduling was out of the question. At this point what with coordinating the venue, cast and crew, and the tour slated to be at Cowboys at a specific time, we were running out of options. I spent some time sketching out how we could rework the shots with using just the twins and not the third woman; but some of the shots we had designed could not be executed in this way, so we’d have to come up with a couple of the shots on the fly at Cowboys. Knowing the unforeseen tasks that were now in front of me on the day of shooting, I realized that I would be better served by finding a good camera operator. My time would be better served doing other things. The one person who came to mind was Kent Maxey, with whom I’ve worked on live shoots for 99X. I knew the quality of his work – so I pulled him in on the project and thankfully he was eager to help. Being that I didn’t schedule him until the day before the shoot, I’d say I really lucked out.

The shooting of the story went pretty smoothly. We started with the tour bus shot and not knowing what extras we’d have, we hadn’t really mapped out what to shoot here in the background as Connor played.  There’s a lot of implied humor in these tour bus segments, with people going on and off the bus behind Connor. Connor said he wanted it to be “Scoobie doo-ish.” As he explained the idea, I was kind of thinking along the lines of Benny Hill… not so much on the lines of the look, but the intrinsic humor in the skits themselves. We had lots of female extras show up but only one male. So to have an additional male actor I had my PA, George Goodman, step in. I love the dynamic that these shots add to the video. The actors then had their make up applied by the amazing Leslie Hines and we moved inside the night club to shoot. It went more smoothly than anticipated, considering we were dealing with an open club. The patrons showed a lot of patience and respected our space, especially given that Cowboys teaches line dancing on Saturday nights.

The editing had to be done very quickly as we shot on April 17th and Connor had scheduled his official video release party on May 6th at Peachtree Tavern in Atlanta, GA. I spent the majority of my time adding filters and effects to make the club scenes look as good as possible since they were shot in such low light. After I was happy with the way those shots looked, the big task in front of me was to make the pre-show footage shot at Smith’s work with the shots from the show itself that night. It took some work since we were shooting around the additional people on stage; but in the end I was impressed with how smoothly it came together. I think it does a convincing job given that it was all shot during a live show. When I showed Connor my first cut I really wasn’t sure what he’d think, since it was done so quickly on a limited budget. From the beginning, he was very happy with it. He only had a couple of thoughts to make the video better. Both Connor and I feel very good about this video, especially given the time and budget we had to work with.

See the “3 Times” video HERE.

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by Hank “Hitman” Hart

This Friday, May 7^th, Connor Christian & Southern Gothic, as well as Leroy Powell of the Shooter Jennings Band will be appearing at The Peach Tree Tavern in Atlanta. Thanks to Val King, a mutual friend, for setting this interview up. I just got off the phone with Connor and it was fun and enlightening.

Hitman: Thanks so much for the time, we will do what we can here at Southern Fried to get this posted before this Friday’s gig to give you and the band as well as Leroy some “pub.”

Connor: Thanks, I really appreciate it.Hitman: I always ask this of all musicians, and that is, who influenced you musically while growing up?

Connor: Well, my answer is not going to be what many people will tell you. It was really bizarre growing up. I lived all over, South Korea, Singapore, Belgium, so the music I was exposed to, this weird stuff, was not your typical music that American kids grew up listening to. Then by the time I was in middle school, you know junior high, that’s when I got into music like for example my first concert being Megadeath, Slayer and Anthrax. When I got to high school I heard Elton John’s album, “Madman Across the Water” and went and listened to all his early stuff, like “Tumbleweed Connection”, loved that stuff, the feel of it, all his stuff up until the 80’s. That’s when I realized that other music I had been listening to when I was younger was all wrong! From Elton John I got into The Band and some of that California country rock stuff like The Flying Burrito Brothers.

Hitman: And what was it that brought you to those countries? I have been to South Korea myself, only Uncle Sam sent me there as well as spending almost a total of two years in the Orient and South East Asia.

Connor: My Dad was a consultant for the Department of Defense, helping with security for the Olympics. In 84’ we were in L.A., in 88 the Olympics were in Seoul, South Korea, so that’s why all the traveling.

Hitman: So when was it that you said, “That’s what I want to do with my life, play and make music?”

Connor: Well, that’s funny, because I was at the point….you know the saying, “What do I want to be when I grow up?” Right after I had gotten married my Mom had put together all this stuff from my childhood, and she handed me this piece of construction paper from something I did in first grade for my teacher Miss Lombardi. It was a drawing of me holding a microphone and I had written “I want to be a singer like Michael Jackson.”

Hitman: Well, look at that! And now you and the band, Southern Gothic have two CDs out, the second release from last year being “90 Proof Lullabies.” You’ve gotten some good exposure on CMT, and there are a good number of videos on You Tube of the band. When will you start work on the third release?

Connor: Well, we’ve demo’ed about 14 tracks and in 3 weeks we’re going to do another 8 tracks. In June we plan on going into the studio and get it finished. We’d love to have it out for Christmas, hopefully October, November.

Hitman: I took a look at your upcoming tour schedule and see you have some gigs planned in North and South Carolina, Georgia. Any hopes to hook on with somebody and go a little more national?

Connor: We’d like to. Last year we were all over the place with the band Drivin’ and Cryin’. We may do some shows with Collective Soul. That should be interesting, a bit different music, not sure if their fans will get us!

Hitman: I took a look at some of the videos on YouTube, as well as my daughter. Some great music there, she liked “Waiting for Princess.” I liked it also, very much. I was thinking, “let me put my finger on this”, and I was saying Marc Cohn, Bruce Hornsby, then it hit me, Elton, from “Tumble Weed Connection!”

Connor: Yeah, like “Country Comfort?”

Hitman: Yes! I got that feel as well as also “Burn Down the Mission.”

Connor: Oh man, thanks! That’s it, that’s the feel.

Hitman: One thing I’ve read and heard from others is that your fans are VERY passionate about you. They are not there at the club to just see a band, they are there to see YOU guys.

Connor: Yes! It’s funny, we’ve played some places where there were maybe thirty people, and I’m thinking, “how’s this going to work out”, and then they are all singing, singing loud, knowing all the words. It’s great!

Hitman: You know, for me, being older than you, it was The Allmans, Skynyrd, Tucker, Outlaws in the mid 70s, to early 80s. Then it all seemed to go away, no more new bands playing that for quite some time.

Connor: Yeah, then a little again in the 90’s.

Hitman: Yes, and then the second coming with Drive By Truckers, people now like Blackberry Smoke, bands such as yourself. But to some extent, the music has evolved to some degree, how would you characterize yourselves?

Connor: Well yes, it’s a little bit of a mix with country, pop, some southern rock, some soul all mixed in. You know that Black Crowes feel to some of it. But we can play, at times we can go into reggae or even classical.

Hitman: Yes I got that Black Crowes feel from “It’s Alright.”

Connor: Yes, we’ve got a great band, I think we are one of the best live bands out there in the country, at least in this genre. We got really kick ass with our bringing on a fifth member.

Hitman: And that member is?

Connor: Jeff Spirko. We had gone through numerous fiddle players, and Jeff would fill in with us. I kept on asking him if he wanted to join. Then he asked does that mean Elena (Elena Martin) would be out, because he didn’t want that to happen. “No” I told him. Jeff slides over onto guitar, mandolin, keyboards and at times we will have two fiddles going at it. Yeah, we are really a great live band.

Hitman: No matter what type of music a band plays now, or what part of the country they are from, do you think it’s a big advantage nowadays with the technology the way it is, with the exposure, say good or bad of things like “American Idol?”

Connor: American Idol, nah, not good, but the other stuff, the MP3s, the Internet, it’s all good. Hey, we’re not selling ten million records so if somebody wants to share my music, download off the internet, share some MP3 files, I’m cool with that. There are countless cell phone videos of us I’ve seen! As long as it’s quality. You know when I was in 6^th, 7^th grade a friend of mine and myself were already making tape mixes up. We were the guys people would come to and ask, “so who’s the next big thing”, we were so into making the music, sharing it, you know we were listening to Pearl Jam live before others would. We were sort of the authorities. I think it’s great.

Hitman: You have a great head on your shoulders, got yourself a degree in journalism, and learned some production work at Georgia State. You directed your video, “3 Times.” When I read what it was about, I had to laugh. It’s about “doing it” three times, right? Man oh man, a guy my age, I’m lucky if I can do it for three minutes!

Connor: (Laughing) Yeah, well, I’m thirty now, I did that years ago, so for me too, 3 times in a night now is a stretch!

Hitman: So being the level headed guy you are, a good sense of direction, where do you guys want to be a year from now, five years from now?

Connor: Well, like I said, hopefully the new album when it comes out will sell well. Instead of 5,000 CDs maybe it will sell a quarter of a million. We’ve done our research, learning how to market it, who to sell to.

Hitman: Yes, all that is important, word of mouth though is still one of the biggest ways a band gets help. Being a great live band surely helps. I always use the Outlaws as an example. In the heyday of FM radio where DJ’s would play anything ..

Connor: Yeah, when they were allowed to do that!

Hitman: Yeah, besides just the one hit on the album, all the stuff would be played, but certain groups, especially The Outlaws, man they just blew people away with their live show and the word kept spreading.

Connor: Yeah, here’s an interesting fact we learned. We’ve gotten all this exposure from CMT, but we learned that 50% of people who watch CMT don’t have Internet access! And those that do, half of them never even use it! For us, like I said, we hope this next album which we feel is really going to be good sells well, gets us on Billboard charts. Now it’s a steady paying gig, but that’s through all the shows, the sale of T shirts, merchandise, etc. We want to get to do the amphitheatre shows, you know the bigger shows, get to where Zac Brown is at. His record is still up there after a year. In five years, well by then we should be selling plenty of records, if not, oh well, I may be doing something else, I wouldn’t want to be a bar band in five years from now.

Hitman: Connor, thanks for the time, let me see if I can get this turned around quick enough for this Friday’s gig, at The Peach Tree Tavern in Atlanta.

Connor: No, thank you, let’s stay in touch, and hey, I’ve got to talk to Charlie of Blackberry Smoke, maybe he can get us some of those gigs with The Outlaws that you’ve told me he’s been doing with them!!

Connor Christian and Southern Gothic is:

Connor Christian – Vocals, Piano, Guitar, Harmonica
Joe Abramson – Bass, Vocals
Shawn Thacker – Drums, Vocals
Jeff Spirko – Guitar, Fiddle, Banjo, Piano, Mandolin, Vocals
Elena Martin – Fiddle, Keys, Mandolin, Vocals

Read the full article HERE.

CMT has added the “Sunday Suit” video to rotation on it’s “CMT Pure Country” channel! This is the all-video all-the-time TV channel. They’ll be playing us at least once a day, so be on the lookout.  CMT Pure country is available on most cable carriers, but not  isn’t available on satellite right now.  We’re so excited to get our music in front of such a large TV audience, and we’ve got you guys to thank for getting the word out about CCSG and our songs.  Now, we need to ask for your help. Every week, they have a Sunday night countdown of the top 12 videos on CMT Pure Country, called “the 12 pack”,  and we want to be on it!  The more votes we get and the higher we move up the chart help them move us into heavy rotation, and move onto CMT, as well as possibly even  VH1 and MTV. Send the link out to the troops, your friends, family, and anyone else you can think of~ ask them to vote.  You can vote as many times as you want, so please vote often!

Of course, the video is available to be seen on ConnorChristian.com (and CMT.com HERE) for free, and will soon be available for download at iTunes.

Special message just for our GA friends:

If you just can’t wait til it comes out on iTunes to get the ‘”Sunday Suit” video on your MP3 player, we’ve got a deal for you:
As you may or may not know, we’ll be doing a BIG show in Atlanta Friday, February 19th with our friend Jeff Spirko’s band, Sundown (Jeff is featured as our banjo/fiddle player in the Sunday Suit video) at Smith’s Olde Bar (more details about the show in a moment).  We’re giving away a free download of the Sunday Suit video to anyone who purchases their tickets to the show by Feb 1st.  Just stop by the shop at www.ConnorChristian.com for details.

More about the show:  This is gonna be a BIG show, I mean HUGE.  We’re bringing a carnival of roots music to Smith’s Olde Bar!  Early in the evening,(8:30pm) check out a great new Atlanta band, ‘Faithless Town’.  Up next is one of my favorite bands out there, Birmingham AL’s Back Row Baptists.  Many of you know that I recently produced a record by these guys, coming out on Vintage Earth Records this Spring.  After the Back Row Baptists, get ready.  We’re gonna put on the craziest show ever with our good friends, Sundown. Neither band is the headlining act, we both are,  We’ll be back and forth, doing songs with one another’s bands, mixing up the songs and the set, so you’ll just never guess what’s coming next.  This is gonna be the best show Atlanta has seen in a long, long time.  Now, with 4 bands, we wanna make sure that CCSG’s people are in the house and the other bands’ fans don’t get all the tickets first so PLEASE pick yours up today.

We’re looking forward to all the things that 2010 has in store for the band, and you, our family of friends, and hope that you’ll be on this journey with us for years to come.  So look out for the video, and pass it, as well as the CMT link around, and vote, vote, vote!!!!  We can’t, and wouldn’t want to, do it without you. Looking forward to seeing you all this year, and hearing from you today!!!

All our love-

CCSG-
Connor Christian
Shawn Thacker
Joe Abramson
Elena Martin

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