Interview: Crow Follow comes knockin’ with ‘Indiana Line’ single & video
Massachusetts urban cabaret and velvet shaman swamp rock project discuss its striking new visual, now playing on YouTube
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Photo Credit: Kelly Davidson Studio
OUT NOW: Watch the ‘Indiana Line’ video
Crow Follow release debut album ‘Red Velvet Radio’ on September 30
BOSTON, MA [August 3, 2022] – America’s roadsides and highways are littered with reflections. Their soundtrack is constructed out of the force and mechanical purr of a revved engine, and inspired by the tender nature of a beating heart powered by yearning and desire. A labyrinth of corridors emphasizes the journey over the destination. An asphalt maze of heavy trucking and weightier longing reveal a quest to reclaim love and new growth amidst decay.
Now Crow Follow comes knocking with a growl and a howl, as the Boston-based urban cabaret and velvet shaman swamp rock brigade unleashed its “Indiana Line” video, the next chapter leading to the release of debut album Red Velvet Radio on September 30. It’s a grungy jaunt through the band’s hypnotic cocktail of art-rock, low-rock, and post-punk over its four minutes, seeking the glow of love beyond societal destruction – and no one needs to leave the house to ride along.
We caught up with Crow Follow co-founders and provocateurs Tim Sprague and Agent Judy to get the scoop on both the track and its magnetic video.
publi*sist: Right off the jump, what is “Indiana Line” all about?
Tim Sprague: “Indiana Line” has a few layers. On one level, it’s a road trip song made of little scenes seen out the window as you drive through the wreckage of American family farming and the post- Apocalyptic shell of American industrial culture. “Indiana Line” is also, more deeply, a song about the immortality of love in the face of death and wrecked dreams.
Agent Judy: It’s about a truck driver on his way home. It’s about an industrial wasteland and a journey that always returns to love. Despite the travails of our times and the heartbreaking stories all around us, we maintain our ferocity and our determination to keep loving and to keep on keepin on. Images of destruction and the remains of life flash by as the driver heads home. I’m gonna see my baby tonight.
How did it come together and what was the creative songwriting process like? What inspired the track’s sound?
Sprague: “Indiana Line” wrote itself really fast, in pieces. Our drummer, Ramona, who “doesn’t play guitar” in the conventional sense, showed me a neck-clamp rhythm on the acoustic that reminded us both of John Hovorka’s (Turbines, 2x4’s) angular style. I was looking to write a super simple song so I took that pulse and dropped it into an Em vamp that just hung in like a diesel on a long upgrade. Once the truck vibed in for the first verse, I knew we were on a “Radar Love” vein. I ad-libbed the front end poem – kind of inspired by Lou Reed’s “Street Hassle” to set up the vibe – and after that it was all trucks on the night road, Zombie passions, and oil drum fires.
The vocal counterpunch spoken by Ruby Viens was inspired by the whisper poem buried in the tail of Robin Trower’s “Bridge of Sighs” and the “Big Boys Don’t Cry” earworm lyric in the otherwise conventional 10CC song “I’m not in Love.” I wanted to quote the Stones’ song “Can you hear me Knockin’” because it’s so cool, and the gender twist of putting that toughness to a female voice just makes it better all around. As the song came together with Crow Follow in practice all the wails and sleep talk phrases grew in organically. Agent Judy’s double rattle take on the zombie drag race vibe was pure inspiration on her part.
Judy: Ask Tim and Ramona. I was in the room, but they started it. We each brought a unique and substantial part to the final version. Tim wrote all the words, and gave it his most expressive gravel tone. I added the crazy flex tones parts and harmonies. The drums are like a train roaring down the tracks, and that bass part. Damn. The insistence of the horn is a honking driving push. Ruby brought her saucy recitations in the studio, and has since done it live with us at O’Briens. She may pop up on stage again one of these days.
“Indiana Line” was a turning point in our creativity as a band. A train roaring down a track at full speed. Relentlessness. Determination. The fever of love at any cost. Reflecting the imagery.
How does Indiana Line set the tone for the forthcoming Album? How does it fit in or stick out? How does it represent where Crow Follow is as a band in 2022?
Sprague: Indiana Line kicks off Red Velvet Radio and sets the vibe for a kind of “take no prisoners” shaman vision vibe. Indiana Line is one of our newer, looser songs and benefits from a lot of invention within the band on textures and vocal layers. Like “Doom Buggy” (with Linnea’s Garden) it’s energy is ramped up by collaborating with guest Ruby Viens.
Agent Judy and I share songwriting in Crow Follow. We have different approaches. Her songs tend to have a slow build like ruined castles rising out of a misty surf on the tide, while mine tend to rattle down the road, dropping rusty parts along the way. Red Velvet Radio reflects both these vibes. I feel that our styles complement and enhance each other.
Crow Follow was founded on the idea of performing songs that come from a deep place that feels a little dangerous to articulate from. “Indiana Line” sits on that map with a red pin holding the cliff notes for stories of both love and fear.
Judy: We’re coming out of/still in a pandemic. We’ve been privileged enough to have the bandwidth to keep making art. We’ve kept it up. We are surrounded by things in deterioration and by new growth. Art is the greenery emerging from wreckage, fueled by the underlying force of love. The fuel, the hope. The drive to create. My baby cries, open up your heart. When I try to describe Indiana Line the word that comes to mind is relentless. It barrels down the road. It tickles the edges of your ears and makes your heart thump harder. It’s a reminder to keep on keeping on, that art is always possible, regardless of conditions. To stop and then start again. My baby’s love is never dead.
The album opens with the beginning of a new phase. Albums take a while to make. This one got set back by covid. I love this album. Indiana Line set us on a new sonic trajectory that the next album will probably continue.
What is the creative storyline of the video?
Sprague: Rather than vamp majorly off of a performance video vibe, “Indiana Line” sketches the dream vibe of mystic road, desperate farmland, eternal love using lo fi animations, black light lip synch and slow motion dance moves. While arty in the brain, it stays gritty in the execution.
Judy: The pursuit of love never ending. Things may decay, but we stay loving, we stay fierce, we make art and life from whatever surrounds us. We run down the trail by the marsh and we glow in the dark. We are still alive. Barreling down the highway past torn up farmland in flames, wandering coyotes, and dusty skeletons with red hot hearts. Dystopia may dominate the landscape but we are headed home, we are still in love. We are making the future.
How did the video come to fruition? How was it filmed, directed, all that, etc.?
Sprague: When Ruby Viens came into the studio, I was struck by her intensity and unique sense of style and visual power. I knew I wanted to use that intensity as the skeleton to hang the video for what was turning out to be a freaking wild song! I invited her to come do greenscreen lip syncs, and we went out on location to get some motion/ emotion dance footage. This inspired me to bring in the rest of the band out for slo mo spins and jumps. Finally Agent Judy and I collaborated on getting her black light lip sync shots while we were up in a motel on the Cape, and some shaman dance footage down in East Boston. I had been drawing little lo fi animation bits to illustrate the song. I glued it all together to make a mosaic rocket to ride this crazy song into orbit. Each piece was crafted with a faith that it would lock together in post.
Judy: Tim had been drawing and animating and shooting clips for a while. I could see he wanted certain things, like the spins on the beach. We also had some videos of the band from shows. We went down to the marsh to shoot again for some of it also, the spins under the bridge, with Tim directing. He also shot Ruby down there. I shot Tim’s parting dance down by the river. We did a super fun shoot with an ultraviolet lamp and glow in the dark face paint in a motel room in front of a motel painting of an oyster. He applied his artistic process and just kept collecting the pieces he wanted or saw on an impulse. Then we were about to begin getting ready to release the album, starting with Indiana Line and its new video. So the deadline became the day the publicity project was scheduled to begin. A few days before that, Tim went into his office and put it all together. He’s like that. It’s pretty amazing.
What was the overall vision and goal of the video?
Sprague: The goal was to let the song push the vibe, and let the visuals enhance that. I had definite ideas of what kind of imagery I wanted to see, but in the end I let the song pick the pace and vibe of the editing. The band as a whole is pretty amazed at how Indiana Line has turned out, and it feels like an inspiration for a new level of writing in the band.
Judy: You’d really have to ask Timmy. In my head, it illustrates elements mentioned in the lyrics; the burning hearts, the skeletons, Coyote, the truck on the highway, the girl running under the bridge. The glow of love. It also echoes the relentlessness of the music with cycling imagery cut to a tight beat. Color, light, and action packed with rugged suburban landscapes that are easy to imagine in a not too distant dystopian life woven with frequent reminders of devotion and, of course, love.
What else should the people know?
Judy: I love the way the instruments define the sensations of that pounding highway drive, the heart wrenching reminders of hope. It seems to be saying, “Go! Go! Go! Home is right around the next bend.” We grind through the grit; we do not stop til we get there. Of course, the destination is an illusion. There is no “there” there when you get there. (Tx to G.Stein) It’s all about the journey. The creative process defines itself. The product and the process are inseparable. Both are never ending and essential to a life of meaning. The product becomes evidence of the past. It’s the process that is in the now. The glory of music is that performing and listening bring the creative act back to the now, over and over again.
“Indiana Line” is out now. Media Contact: Please direct all press inquiries to Crow Follow at crowfollowmusic@gmail.com or Michael Marotta at michael@publisist.co.
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Crow Follow short bio:
Crow Follow brings a glowing brightness to the darkest tunes. Risen from the vibe of a diverse and energetic music scene in Boston MA, Crow Follow celebrates and transcends it. Their DNA is from the art-rock, low-rock, and post-punk scenes of the late 20th century, filtered through the usual smoldering warehouses and sketchy sugar shacks of the American Hinterland.
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‘Indiana Line’ single artwork:
Art Credit: Tim Sprague
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‘Indiana Line’ production credits:
Video Credits
Cast: Ruby Viens
Crow Follow: Agent Judy, L. Ramona Herboldsheimer, Carolyn Jean Corella, John Keegan, Tim Sprague
Videography: Tim Sprague
Additional camera: Agent Judy
Song Credits
“Indiana Line” written by Tim Sprague
Produced by Tim Sprague and Crow Follow
Recorded and Mixed at New Alliance Audio, Somerville MA
Engineered by Ethan Dussault
Mastered by Pete Weiss
Arranged by Crow Follow:
John Keegan – Baritone Sax
Carolyn Jean Corella – Bass
L. Ramona Herboldsheimer – Drums, vocals
Agent Judy – Vocals, percussion
Tim Sprague – Vocals, guitars
Ruby Viens – Guest vocal counterpunch
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Press Contact: michael@publisist.co or crowfollowmusic@gmail.com
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