It really was a beautiful day in New York. I love heading over to these shoots on days like this, and most of the time not really knowing what to expect when the door opens. Sometimes with these there’s a good bit of prep to do, if someone’s coming through town or on tour in between shows or just other moving parts to manage, and other times like this, you just grab the camera and head across town to someone’s flat. That always was idea, nothing too highfalutin, just to try and do these videos with as little artifice as possible, to see an artist in their home environment where they would, say, be hanging out with their cat and play a song or two. It’s not at all that we have anything against a bit of pomp, large venues, or produced productions, they have their special place in our hearts for sure, but there’s so much of it out there to see (as well as the vérité-ish yet just as carefully planned/produced stuff) that it’s sometimes easy to forget where songs and music so often start, without any of that….just at home in small rooms, tapped or plucked away on a little guitar or keyboard, maybe calling to someone in the next room to give a quick listen. I like that vibe. Serendipitous blackboard scrawlings are always nice too. One thing we definitely didn’t plan on though was the project being sort of a new music discovery engine for us, but as it’s turned out having friends cover friends has been a way to get to see different music scenes and their interconnections from the vantage point of the people in them. Sydney is friends with Katie Costello and Greg Holden and a bunch of other folks we’ve shot around Brooklyn town, and Caveman is a band we’ve been hearing rumblings about around the neighborhood, and her soulful take on “Decide” felt like a personal introduction to them. Funny too her bringing up What is the What, I remember Hunter and I having some late night talks about the book when we first started planning these sessions, the similarities and interconnectedness of the struggle just to the north in Sudan, the first hand stories I had heard from Emmanuel Jal about being a child soldier in the SPLA. It brought me back to a quick thought about Emmanuel, about how he’s a such a person filled with life and joy, but having seen the things he’s seen you could so easily imagine that maybe a person would never be able to smile or laugh again. But often it’s not like that, and though the past doesn’t always leave us be, it also doesn’t have to dominate. We humans are a resilient kind, and I took the glow of that thought and this new tune humming in my head with me as I made my way back across town. — AG