Americana Highways brings you this video premiere of Josiah Johnson’s song “Hello, Hello on Fire,” which was written and produced by Josiah Johnson (formerly of the Head and the Heart); co-produced with Scott McDowell and M’Gilvry Allen; and engineered and mixed by Scott McDowell at Wally’s Hyde Out; then mastered by Jonathan Kirchner.
Musicians on the song are Andrew Laubacher on drums; David Lizmi on bass; Derek Sup on piano;
Josiah Johnson on vocals, guitars, drum programming, and synthesizers; and M’Gilvry Allen on violin and vocals.
The video was directed by Pete Lee, with executive producer Sean Gillane, Capsaicinco and producer Reina Lam. The director of photography was Joshua Pausanos. Further credits are listen below the video.
This video is heavy and invites a confrontation with the darkest side of human nature, which is the song’s intention as well. Can people evolve? Is everyone a mixture of violent impulses and purest heart? Step into the twisted daydream of this song and mull it over. Josiah Johnson’s songwriting is an abyss of depth.
Writing “Hello, Hello on Fire!”, I was thinking about the legacies that I carry in me. Are they real? Do they come from what happened, or from how I tell the story of it? Sometimes it seems like my history is physical and sometimes it is in my head. And is there a difference between those two things? How do I release myself from a history I don’t want to keep reliving? It can get tangled and overgrown unless I live in reality. Put down the backpack full of rocks.
We wanted to see physically all these spiritual bodies, the ghosts we carry from our pasts, the unhealed traumas, the stories, and the fears of other people underneath all of that. Those are the seeds that grew and transformed, aided by a mighty, creative team from the Bay Area film community, into this video. — Josiah Johnson
Order here: https://josiahjohnson.ffm.to/hello
Choreographer: Natasha Adorlee
Assistant Director: Caroline Byrd
Hair Makeup & Special Effects Artist: Emily Rose Jones
Production Assistants: Gracie Brakeman, Camille Creighton
Post Production Editor: Pete Lee
Colorist: Ayumi Ashley
Title Designer: Helen Shewolfe Tseng
Sound Engineer: Scott McDowell
Visual Effects: Beast VFX
Supervisor: Darren Orr
FX Artist: Evan Ryan
Compositor: Michael Lester