JD McPherson , 'A Gentle Awakening' -- Video of the Day

Artist: JD McPherson
Video: 'A Gentle Awakening'
Highlight: "'A Gentle Awakening' is a pretty dark song, and I remember having this really heavy feeling of dread at the time. Something must've been bothering me, but nothing specific that I can remember," McPherson tells Spinner. "I've thought about it a lot since then, and I will say, it's about producing through adversity. We shot that video on the same ranch where I grew up in southeast Oklahoma. My parents still operate the ranch, raising registered Brangus cattle. The idea was that Jimmy was bringing his mobile recording unit down to capture some stuff, sort of like the Lomax field recordings -- he has this great old Ampex portable recorder. On top of that, we just wanted to capture a lot of the landscape down there. We were watching things like Terrence Malick's 'Days of Heaven' for inspiration -- one of my top five favorite films of all time.