A little over a year ago, I went to Memphis with my buddy, Todd Snider. What could possibly go wrong? He was there to play a benefit show for WEVL and was hoping to reconnect with some old dear friends. I documented the whole wonderful week and made a film about it.
That film debuted one year ago today.
That’s the short story. The longer version goes something like this. Todd and I had been talking about busking as an ideology. Not just standing on a street corner, but using it as a metaphor and applying it to our day to day artistic lives. This is one of the lessons of Woody Guthrie and Joe Hill before him and it’s been at the core of all of my artistic efforts. Sometimes by choice and sometimes by necessity.
The point is, you don’t need some big company to give you permission to make art. You can just do it yourself and take it directly to the people. This project is a natural continuation of that idea. We made a film that we’re proud of and then we took it to the people. We put a message in a bottle and threw it into the proverbial ocean to see if anyone might find it.
The people found it.
One year later, over 64,000 people have watched our film. Imagine how many movie theaters you would need to find seats for that many people. Not bad for a project that was held together with duct tape, chewing gum and good intentions.
The entire film was shot by me and my buddy, Todd Fox.
Thanks for giving a damn,
-Otis