Grand Canyon – “Chariot”
Americana Highways brings you this video premiere of Grand Canyon’s song “Chariot” from their newly available album Forevermore (released on October 7th). The album was produced, recorded, engineered by its songwriters Joe Guese and Casey Shea with additional production and engineering by Adam Popick and John Morrical. It was mixed by Casey Shea and mastered by Fred Kevorkian.
“Chariot” is Casey Shea on vocals, electric guitars, synths and additional percussion; Joseph Guese on 6 and 12 string acoustic and electric guitars, and organ; and Adam Popick on drums and bass.
The video is courtesy of the Carrescia brothers (Reid and Allen). The video stars Searra Sawka and
Max Schuster, and involves a whole backstory as told here by Casey:
Chariot is an ode to my wife, the girl I met in high school when we were kids “in the library hall.” There’s a lot of fairytale imagery, cause we have two girls who spend about 90% of their lives in princess dresses…it sort of gave me the idea of trying to write a bit of a fairytale love story.
We were going for that classic hero with the Springsteen bravado…this guy making and seemingly not delivering on big promises through the years. Can he deliver this time? Only time will tell. It’s the sort of story where you’re not sure whether you should be rooting for him or feeling sorry for her.
After DIY-ing the first couple videos for this album, we thought it might be a good idea to leave it to professionals this time. We gave full creative control over to our good friends the Carrescia brothers (Reid and Allen). We just told them to make a mini movie…our only two directions were we didn’t want it to have any Southern California imagery and we didn’t want to be in it.
They came back to us with a story of a couple on the verge of breaking up who goes to see a drive-in as a last ditch effort to save the relationship. They end up seeing scenes from their past on the screen, which in turn leads to happily ever after.
Unfortunately, they inserted the band into the storyline and somehow convinced us that we needed to be in the video.
Which I guess is a good segue to what we were trying to convey with this video. In the wise words of a young British invader, you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need.
I happened to be in New York one weekend while they were shooting and was able to shoot my bits at about 8am on a rooftop in Brooklyn. Reid was shooting the bulk of the video in Pennsylvania that weekend, so he was watching via FaceTime. He had a shot in his mind he wanted to get where I threw the mic with one hand and caught it with the other. I did a few practice runs then we went to shoot it. I slung it in the air and the mic flew off the cord. It missed the camera by about 6 inches and then missed crashing through a skylight behind it by about a foot. Needless to say, the shot didn’t make the cut. — Casey Shea
Couples fight but sometimes the drama is just part of the bigger picture where they can still salvage it all and set each other’s souls on fire. This song by Grand Canyon is soaring heartland rock with a feel good message about times when you can still trust the word of your lover after the dust settles.
Find more information and music at their website here: http://grandcanyonband.com/music/