The Musicianer

I've long loved telling the stories of artists, musicians and figures in history. I get great satisfaction from illuminating life stories and examining the details of what makes an individual tick, what drives a person to create and strive.

When the dust had settled on my last film project - a feature documentary called The Winding Stream about the musical Carter and Cash family and its role in the development of country music – I felt compelled to take the underlying themes of that story and apply them to a new project.

I also have to admit that I didn’t want to walk away from the research I’d amassed making that project. Nor did I want to lose the audience I’d built with it. The film attracted the “flesh and blood” fans from over 30 festivals, two major art consortium tours, and nationwide theatrical screenings. It now has thousands of fans from social media platforms, multiple crowd funding efforts, as well as from Netflix, Amazon, iTunes and other digital distribution efforts.

So building something new from the lumber of the last project seemed like a good idea.

In this time I’d also had the good fortune to meet and work with a Canadian roots music singer by the name of Petunia, who proposed the idea of a film collaboration. Petunia is a musician of impressive musical talent, charisma and deep professional dedication. He also exudes an organic, mannerly, old-time vibe that fans and critics alike comment on and that lends an air of uncalculated mystery to everything he does. With Petunia’s persona as a jumping off point, we began batting around ideas. The notion of a musician from the past being stuck in the present moment intrigued us, and so The Musicianer was born.

Though the aim of the series is to tell an entertaining tale of a man who’s made a deal with the devil, it will also explore some big themes - the nature of ambition, the power of an artistic legacy, the obscured contributions of marginalized artists, the conflicted historic role of the creative person in American culture, and our fundamental struggle for a place, for recognition in life.

The Musicianer also operates as a metaphor for our times. Our title character is living in the “now” without full understanding why, while also being mired in a past he can’t seem to resolve. I know I am not alone in feeling that the sort of amnesia that seems to have overtaken us as a people in our country is affecting our ability to confront and solve our biggest problems. The amnesia exhibited by the Musicianer in this series has everything to do with him not being willing to face his past.

My films inevitably cause me to explore my own beliefs, values and circumstances. Like the characters in The Musicianer I keep going down my own rabbit hole of art vs. ambition never quite sure what I will find.