Griffin House is out on tour to sell his new exceptionally anticipated album Rising Star and is delighted to be journeying Minneapolis this week on the Cedar Cultural Center on May 2. I had a threat to discuss his task and the impending documentary film about his track career.
MIM: So, your new album Rising Star is coming out quickly. Tell me approximately that adventure. It has a first-rate variety of favor. How did that turn out to be the identify?
GH: The first identity changed into “Imaginary Friend.” I became quite sure I changed into going to go together with that, however when we had the concept to do a video of me dressed in drag for “Natural Man.” We shot the video however it’s now not out but. So, the quilt became then going to be me in drag with the album name Natural Man.
Although I favored a majority of these ideas, something modified after I re-recorded the song “Rising Star.” It’s simply an acoustic model from my kitchen and it opens the whole album. That sort of pressure to me to re-order the complete album and it simply felt exclusive after that, and the Natural Man title with the drag picture didn’t experience quite right anymore.
We had this lovely photo of a merry cross round at night time all through Christmas time in my fatherland of Springfield, Ohio that we picked for the album cowl and Rising Star simply regarded to in shape higher with the image and with it now being the outlet music. Rising Star is likewise the name of the film/track documentary we simply made in an effort to also be out this 12 months.
MIM: What’s the story right here, and how did this grow to be an undertaking you decided to commit to?
GH: The film happened in an as an alternative serendipitous way. I wasn’t trying to make a film. However, I had the concept of doing a musical theatre production for my new report. When I investigated that possibility, it didn’t seem very possible each logistically and financially. But then I got a name to do that film offering numerous the new track and telling a tale about the remaining 15 years of my existence as a musician and that became even higher.
The movie maker’s call is Shane Drake. We met in LA a couple of years in the past via threat through my high school pal Ben Poston who is a reporter for the LA Times. Shane and I had one of these on the spot connections that don’t manifest very regularly. The day we met, he texted me and told me that he didn’t put and two collectively at the time however that he knew my track and turned into a fan.
He had sold Lost and Found at Amoeba records in LA whilst it got here out, however, he usually concept that Griffin House turned into a band. It dawned on him after meeting me that Griffin House was no longer a band, however a man that he had just met. He became inquisitive about doing a track video for me (that’s what his major gig is) and the more new tune I despatched him, the extra he started out thinking larger than a track video. He called me with the concept of doing a film.
It becomes like the answer I’d been searching out, no longer a play or musical, but a movie. We were very fortunate that I best needed to make one smartphone call to a guy I knew in St Louis, John Lynch, who I concept just is probably inquisitive about partnering with Shane and myself and imparting finances for us to make the movie. I knew as him and became 5 minutes into my pitch and he said: “I’m in.”
MIM: Congratulations! That sounds remarkable. Drake is top shelf in the music video international, having a number of A-list projects below his belt.
GH: Yeah. So Shane got here on the street with me weeks later and we started out shooting. We filmed 13 shows and did giant interviews with pals and family and shot 90 hours of photos. Two months later Shane edited it all collectively and made this superb movie known as Rising Star.
