Ruthie Purves Smith – “Captain Kirk”
Ruthie Purves Smith has a new video for her song “Captain Kirk.” “Captain Kirk” appeared on her recently released album Piano In The Field. The album was produced by Derek Pulliam and Jonathan Lagore; and recorded at Dog in the Window Studio in Calgary, Alberta.
The musicians on this song include Corbett Frasz on drums, Lisa Jacobs on bass, Jonathan Lagore on guitar and banjo, Mitch Jay on dobro, Ruthie Purves Smith on lead vocals, and Sydney Zadravec on background vocals.
Captain Kirk is such an iconic character, and although he’s from Star Trek, Ruthie juxtaposes him with Data Vader of Star Wars in her mashup song about heroes and the hero within us all. Ruthie recounts some of the background for the writing of the song: “When the spring of 2020 rolled around, it felt like the world was imploding. Things on earth had been getting more and more dire, and then we were all in a crisis. We needed strong, dynamic, compassionate leaders – like Captain Kirk, but it seemed like we got the memo for the wrong Star Show. We found ourselves in the Evil Empire, not The Glorious Federation…Darth Vader and the Storm Troopers were everywhere. I wrote Captain Kirk mostly in response to my impression of our failure to get our archetypes right. I thought maybe, if we could see the contrast, we might align ourselves with a Force for Love. It really is up to us. The Captain can’t save us this time!”
And of the video shoot, Ruthie says: “Making the video was a journey in itself. Here in Alberta, Canada, we have a little town called Vulcan. It has dedicated itself to all things Star Trek, with a replica of the Enterprise suspended over the highway, and a Star Trek museum. There are Star Trek murals and street lights that look like little spaceships. It took a couple trips to Vulcan to make it happen. The first time a number of friends and my old buddy Cliver McGiver went down there and shot a few scenes of everyone dressed up in Star Trek, Star Wars, and various costumes. We got some footage under the Enterprise, but there was a malfunction with Cliver’s camera, and that was all we had – not enough for a video. I already had the musicians from the album playing their parts, and just needed a little more quality footage to put something together. My best friend since we were 8 years old, Greta Kraft & I took The Moose, an antique motorhome that took me to Texas and back three times, back down to Vulcan. She played the ‘guy in the red shirt’, and we wandered around Vulcan. I had a storm trooper suit, and some of the felted jackets I made, so we shot a number of scenes in and around the town with cinematographer, Joel Varjassy. The story was to show a bohemian storm trooper joining forces with a red shirt guy to find ‘The Captain,’ eventually giving up and driving off into the distance with a like-minded being, leaving the Empire behind. When I got the footage back from Joel, The Moose was in the background of EVERY scene. It became the metaphor of how we can transport ourselves to greater things…always there for when we are ready to be the love we seek.”
The final editing stages were supported by a Twitch connection. According to Ruthie, “A young friend I met on Twitch, Chris’s ‘Sixx’ Wilson, had the task of putting all the parts together to create the video. It is his first ever music video!”
The video footage was filmed by Joel Varjassy, with stunning backdrops of spacecraft filmed on location in Vulcan, Alberta – a town full of replicas – the Star Ship Enterprise – and memorabilia from Star Trek. The video is a collage of homages to an amalgam of our Sci Fi heroes from Star Trek and Star Wars. The video features Ruthie in a space suit, storm troopers, and a getaway motorhome, as we’re “waiting for the captain, and it ain’t gonna happen.” The song is a rallying cry of a unique sort, to “see where the force in you resides.”
Find more details here on Ruthie’s website: https://ruthpurvessmith.com
Enjoy our previous coverage here: REVIEWS: Ruthie Purves Smith “Piano In the Field”