• News

• All

Jan 13, 2014 By Mike Hilleary Cass McCombs

On his recent double album Big Wheel and Others, musical artist Cass McCombs recruited cult actress and singer Karen Black to provide the vocals to the record’s included track “Brighter!” After Black sadly passed away last year, McCombs turned to her widower Stephen Eckelberry to direct a music video for the song. Serving a well-crafted tribute to her work, the visual sees McCombs playing in a dark room as projections of Black’s film career are played on top of him.

“It struck me as an opportunity to explore a theme that interests me – the relationship of film and memory,” says Eckelberry. “We watch a movie and the images from that movie become part of our memory stream. My own memories of Karen are intertwined with memories of her in films – it gets messier for me since I directed several movies she was in – which memory is stronger; Karen during the making the film or what ended up on screen? An image came to me: Cass himself becoming a screen for the projection of images of Karen – as if his memories of her were playing themselves out over his body. I found a clip I had shot with my iPhone when Cass was over at our house rehearsing the song with Karen, and I combined that with clips of her movies, some iconic, some more obscure, and I weaved in footage of fire, sparkes, burning… The song does seem to deal with hell, or is it the hell of fame?”

Click below to watch.

Cass McCombs - “Brighter!” featuring Karen Black from Hector Savage on Vimeo.