KATHY BATES MOTEL – ‘Where do u go?’ – Out Today
Kathy Bates Motel is led by Joe Lonie (Supergroove) with a lot of help from his friends; singer & bassist Morgan Leary (Cindy), guitarist Jolyon Mulholland (Mulholland) and drummer Milan Borich (Pluto). The new single, ‘Where do u go?’ is a wry and bittersweet duet with an extra boost of bitter. Kathy Bates Motel describes it as “a Christmas carol gone wrong”.
Of the single, Joe says “This is a bent love song about dealing with heartbreak by joking about it. It’s about accepting flaws and failings within yourself and others and finding some humour and humanity in there. Where do u go? is about licking your wounds and healing, not by kidding yourself, but by looking at your pain for what it is and putting it into perspective, cutting it down to size. Even when you’re down, if you’re able to make fun of yourself, you know you’re getting better”.
The ‘Where do u go?‘ video is about a lonely cat stuck in a recording studio during lockdown. With no one to feed or cuddle him, “Heads” the forlorn cat wanders the spooky, abandoned studio in the vain hope of finding company. The only sounds are the sad, sardonic song and the text alerts of a phone that was left behind in the rush to clear the studio out for lockdown. The video also features a subplot involving an intense one-way text conversation concerning a lost TV remote. It was shot at Earwig Studios in Birkenhead.
Joe – “Because the song is about someone not being there I thought it would be fun to run with the idea of absence for the video. The plan was to shoot a performance video in the tried and true style of a typical performance video, but with no performers. This was something I hadn’t seen before and it fit with the themes of the song, but we needed more than that. We were in the studio when one of the snap lockdowns was called and it was like “tools down, go home, see you later”. I thought about that in relation to this song and got the idea of a beloved pet that was accidentally left behind. It reminded me of one of my favourite lyrics ever, from the Tom Waits song, ‘Town With No Cheer’ when he sings “there’s a hummingbird trapped in a closed-down shoe store”.
WATCH ‘Where do u go?’
The ‘Where do u go?’ video began as a lockdown time-killer for Joe & family (& family pet!). Joe’s son Nathan and Nathan’s partner Quanah Lawrence-McNeill are recent graduates from South Seas Film School and the video gave them a good opportunity to put their learning into practice.
Joe – “My son’s partner, Quanah, is the producer and my son is steadily working his way up the ladder in the camera department. We’d like to get Nate shooting the next one. We have a lot of fun and it’s a good way to gain experience in film making and add to our skill sets. I’m learning new tricks too and finally getting over my techno-fear and general lack of computer skills and doing the editing. As a director, I’ve always been a frustrated editor anyway, so it’s a skill I’d like to keep developing. It’s mostly about shutting yourself in a quiet, dark room and fussing over tiny, barely perceptible details, so it suits my personality down to a T”.
No animals were harmed during the shoot, but one was annoyed quite a bit. He took his revenge by peeing on the director’s shoes. The track was recorded by Jol Mulholland at The Lab and The Oven and mixed by Nick Abbott at North-Western Recorders.
Joe Lonie
As well as being a musician, Joe Lonie is an award-winning director and screenwriter. Some of his notable works include the Goodshirt “one-shot” music videos and the short films Shout at the Ground and Honk If You’re Horny.
KATHY BATES MOTEL ONLINE:
