Category: Video

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Stick Out Your Tongue Video

Making the Stick Out Your Tongue Video

In my previous blog post, I shared the story of the writing of Stick Out Your Tongue.  From that story you should be able to tell that a music video was always part of the idea for the song.  I went back and forth on exactly what the video should look like, but I finally decided on videos of people dancing both with and without them sticking out their tongues.  I sent a notification to my followers on social media along with my email subscribers.  There were a handful of people that I reached out to that I thought would contribute creative ideas.  They did not disappoint.

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Elvis Week Graceland Video

2019 Elvis Week Video

Earlier this fall, I posted about this year’s trip to Graceland for the Candlelight Vigil.  I had several pictures and videos that I wanted to share along with telling some of the stories from the blog post.  Here is a video that I put together from this year’s trip.

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Speaking In Tongues Album Video Wrestle With The Angels

Wrestle With The Angels Video

I wanted to try something new with my video for Wrestle With the Angels. If you have watched it, you will see that I am singing the song in front of a television that is shows a professional wrestling program.  You might notice that the video on the television looks like it is sped up.  My movements might also seem a little odd.  

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Neighbor Speaking In Tongues Album Video

Neighbor Video

My song Neighbor is one of the most complex projects from my album Speaking in Tongues.  It has five vocal parts that I overdubbed 4 times each during the recording.  I wanted to put together a video for this song that would feature me singing each of the parts. I searched for easy to use software that would allow me to put this together.  After a few tries with other software, I settled on iMovie on my iPhone. I did put together some practice videos to make sure that my face would be centered in the views.  In the practice video, I just used one video and I put it in multiple frames to discover that stacking them first worked better than putting them side by side.  The video in the center shot was the most difficult to decide how to position.

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Elvis Week Album Kids Travel Vacation Video

Making the Video for Just Say You Don’t Love Me

On June 2, 2016, my son turned 21.  I decided to take him on a trip to the Kentucky Bourbon Trail to celebrate his birthday. At the time, The Kentucky Bourbon Trail included visits to the facilities of 8 bourbon manufacturers in Kentucky. Three of the manufacturers had two facilities that you can visit so a complete tour included 11 stops.  There are tours and tastings at all of these stops. We did everything at all of the stops except for the Jim Beam facility in downtown Louisville. The main thing that they had going on at that stop were just tastings. We arrived there late on our first day of the trip with plans to eat a meal and celebrate my son’s birthday in the 4th Street district in downtown Louisville where this facility is located.  We moved to the celebration after walking through that shop.

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Cosmetic School Graduation Elvis Week Album Song Writing Video

Writing Cosmetic School Graduation

While many of my songs are based directly on specific incidents, Cosmetic School Graduation is an exception. I have never fallen in love with anyone that cut my hair and I’ve never gone to a cosmetic school for a cheap haircut.  I’ve had several real life experiences that were inspiration for this song. This is the story behind the song.

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Arkansas Album Electric Jesus Video

Making the Electric Jesus Video

When I decided to do a promotional video for Electric Jesus, I wanted to wait until the Christmas season to get footage of yards decorated with blow molded nativity scenes.  I also decided I might like to purchase my own Electric Jesus to feature in the video.  Jackson, Tennessee has a lot of shopping options so I thought would be able to easily find a nativity scene.  This wasn’t as easy as I thought.  Many retailers don’t carry any of these items anymore because I guess they don’t sell as many.  I saw some on-line but I didn’t want to wait for them to ship.  I decided to make a road trip to Memphis with my family to see what we could find there.  We found a store there that had cartons and cartons of Electric Jesus.  They didn’t have as many of the other pieces of the nativity scene.  We took video of this shopping trip that we used for the early part of the video.

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Arkansas Album Electric Jesus Song Writing Video

Writing Electric Jesus

It was the Christmas season and I was driving through in my neighborhood with some of my kids on the way to church.  I saw an old blow molded nativity scene in one of the yards and the phrase came to me:  “Shine on Electric Jesus! Shine on!”  This was the start of writing this song. 

I decided to do a slow reveal for the first verse of the song.  The first line set the tone for the song.  “Your head and your body are made out of plastic”.  When I perform this live for people that have never heard it before, I tell them that I’m going to sing a Christmas song.  This first line doesn’t sound anything like what you would expect from the typical Christmas song.  It’s not “dashing through the snow” or “sleigh bells ring, are you listening”.  The word plastic is abrupt, almost industrial and isn’t going to rhyme with anything fun.  The verse is written as a puzzle to get the listener to try and figure out what I’m singing about.   I describe properties of the Electric Jesus that you usually don’t think about.  You might be able to figure it out by the time I’m talking about using it to decorate the lawn.  The final reveal is the chorus.

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It's Gonna Rain Six Minutes After Seven Album Video

It’s Gonna Rain Video Notes

I have talked about writing It’s Gonna Rain in a previous blog post.  When I decided to do a video for this song, I turned to my son for help.  He was in charge of filming and editing all of my live action videos including the ones for Arkansas and Electric Jesus.  I decided to replicate the construction on a very small scale with footage of making a paper boat.  We needed to test the boat so I decided the best test would be in a large tub that we normally use at parties to ice down drinks.  One of the challenges for any video shoot that involves rain is getting it to show up.  We included footage of an actual rain shower at our house and I was impressed that it showed up so well.  We hoped to get some shots of it “raining” on the boat.  The rain would be water from a hose.  The rain effect didn’t work.  It destroyed one of the boats that we made for the shoot.  We decided to just so the boat swirling around as the tub was filled with water.

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4-H 4-H Chicken Shack Song Writing Video

4-H Chicken Shack Notes and Video


I have written in a previous blog post about one of my 4-H experiences.  For a couple of years in high school, I participated in 4-H as a member of a crop judging team.  I spent a lot of time learning how to identify different types of seeds.  I spent very little time learning how to evaluate hay which seemed to be the more important part of the competition.  Anyway, I learned a little about crops and had a great time.  We would go to competitions at the Mid-South Fair in Memphis. But the one that really counted was at the West Tennessee State Fair in Jackson.  This was also my first exposure to the 4-H Chicken Shack.

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