Videos by American Songwriter
We fell in love with this haunting performance piece from The Wooden Sky, a Canadian indie rock band out of Toronto. In the video, part two of an ongoing series, the band records their song “Child Of The Valley” in a nearby church as a storm gathers outside.
Director Scott Cudmore sets the scene:
“After ‘Documentary in Pieces’ I knew that I didn’t want to do the whole stripped-down performance type of thing again, and talking to [singer] Gavin [Gardiner], the band didn’t really want to do that sort of thing again either. Not that we didn’t feel good about that project, but I felt like after shooting in canoes in the mountains and gondolas and sunflower fields that we couldn’t really take that approach any further. Plus, everybody and their dog is doing those kind of ‘Take Away Show’ performances now and though they’re valuable, they’re not quite as special as they once were.”
“So we decided to go the other direction and try to make something that was very cinematic,” says Cudmore. “We wanted to make a movie – kind of a short film, with a narrative running through it. The idea was the make something episodic that would develop as it progressed and in that way the narrative context would give a different dimension to the songs – exactly like in a movie where the drama gives a different context to the song used on the soundtrack, only in this project the songs are the centerpiece and are performed live while the narrative is the backdrop instead of the other way around.”
The song is from the band’s latest album Every Child a Daughter, Every Moon a Sun, out now Black Box Recordings. Watch “Grace On A Hill Pt. 1” here.
The Wooden Sky – Grace On A Hill Pt2 – Child Of The Valley from Black Box Vimeo on Vimeo.
