Matthew and his team have been so supportive and were great in setting this shoot up. Katie Costello had covered Matthew for the project with a heatbreakingly beautiful version of “Save You” back in April (Katie Costello » Matthew Perryman Jones). Katie’s manager David hooked us up with Mathew’s manager Christopher Moon and we got into an excited conversation about how we need to get the Nashville thing happening for TVP…it’s always been our hope to try and bridge across genres, styles and music communities – we’ve done a bit of that but been wanting to do more and have been hopefully waiting for a song chain to lead us to Nashville.

I was in London at the time but had seen a beautiful video that Becky Fluke had shot and loved her work so we got in touch and talked a bit about how we’ve been shooting these and she captured this beautiful episode.

I had heard once of the metaphysical concept encapsulated in the Spanish word “querencia” which describes “a place where one feels safe, a place from which one’s strength of character is drawn, a place where one feels at home.” The term comes from bullfighting, an area of the ring that a bull will stake out to make his stand, particular to each different bull, but the place where he feels strong and safe and which he will defend. We’ve been trying to capture people in that place, whether that’s actually their home or their home on the road or in this case this place that’s special to Matthew where he had done so much writing and as it turns out Patty Griffin had too, and it really struck me when he mentions “this little nook, this little corner.” We were really exited as we started to watch the footage for the first time, the natural light and the acoustics in there being just wonderful, and Matthew’s performance – the lyrics are incredible and I love the correlation he makes to using and fighting for one’s voice and how that comes across in the song, and just how the crescendo builds slowly from a start that says “there’s so much singing that’s never gonna be heard,” and then seems to come back to say it again but with something else, a triumph over resignation, a build that seems to say ‘but not today, today this voice, the ones that have been silenced, they will be heard.’ Thank you to Matthew for this, for using his voice, and to everybody involved so very much for making this one happen. — AG