
A quick note regarding this image: Shortly after I put Breakers in a bottle and set it adrift in the digital sea, I began scheming the LITR music video. Although I had reached the top of the first plateau, so to speak, there was another mountain in the distance—one I was already heading toward. There was no vinyl, no hurry—only a flood of ideas and a bucket to catch them.
It started with several film shoots, one of which was a three-day guitar trip into the Sierras—a windy journey, for sure. I stayed in a hotel with a window facing the Sierra, and the Three Amigos kept me company during my midday naps. Each morning and night, I carried my gear up the mountain—this included a few guitars, a DJI camera gimbal setup, an R5, a drone, an iPad monitoring system, and, of course, a playback system and wardrobe. I filmed at sunrise and sunset.
In full costume, I do believe I startled a few friendly hikers who stumbled upon a strange man with a long black and red cape and diamond eyes as they came over the ridge. Oh well—all’s fair in love and war.
On the third day of creation, I rested... and snapped this picture.
It's almost midnight—how about a little update?
It pains me tonight to leave the Canyon of the Wolf. But someone said something to me today, and it awoke a flood of words and emotions. Yes, I’ve actually been hard at work on Hadder things, even though the forest seems quiet and still. Such is life for the alchemist of creation—the red recluse that I am.
Today, someone said to me, “Long is the wait.” And I suppose those were the words I needed to take off my blinders. It broke my hyper-focused attention.
From those words came a flood of deep thoughts—just what I needed, actually, as I was cooking frog legs for some spring soup. I need to jump further, indeed.
Welcome back, Mr. Hadder.
A little story. I was in manufacturing for a long time, trading my life away for money to keep me off the streets. I traveled to the mountains every chance I could—the High Sierra—to chase the light with my camera. I carried a Ka-Bar knife and some bear spray most of the time because I saw a mountain lion once or twice while traveling in the twilight hours. I think I just felt safer knowing I’d put up a fight if I had to, to keep myself from being eaten. Luckily, it never came to that. I upgraded to a .42 caliber later in life when Mr. Hadder started showing up in my loft.
I had a fascination with the stars at night and time-lapse photography during my travels, so I built my own camera remote slider—literally. It took about three months to machine it on a CNC, including the rails, which I cut in Delrin (a small blunder, as temperatures below freezing caused the rails to shrink, which resulted in jittery camera footage in the cold and barren White Mountain landscape). I also wired it to turn on and off automatically in the mountains while I stayed safe in my car from nightly predators. But that’s me—I’m a dreamer.
The opening sequence to the LITR music video is a time-lapse of the mountain above my home that burned—the place where I wrote Breakers. I shot it with my slider just before sunrise, a few months before the fire, during the June gloom months along the Pacific.
The second clip is a scene of the actual view just beyond the breakers along the Pacific—where I spent a lot of quiet time wondering where it all went so wrong. Many words came from that horizon—literally.
It took over two years to record the Breakers record. Two years with blinders on. And when I decided to make a video for Long Is the Road, well, there was still a lot of unfinished business in my life. I never truly completed Breakers. It’s still ongoing. The music videos I’m working on are an extension of it.
Here I am again, with blinders on.
It’s been difficult not revealing too much of what happens in the video—my little ten-minute Avatar movie. Dedicated to someone special—the kind of person who left a mark on me and on hundreds, thousands of others. That’s what this video is all about, after all. Following the light out there, finding yourself—beyond the breakers. It’s about the people and things that inspire us to rise again.
In case you haven’t noticed, Beyond the Breakers is more than just a record filled with songs… and so is this upcoming video. For me, it’s a perfect extension of the record—complete with new musical scores and choirs created just for the video, tracked along my route into Hollywood each day, out of the canyons and under the oaks. And so The Ballad of the Dead Rabbit will be another closing chapter.
To some degree, my detachment from the outside world is a key element of the art I create. Isolation can be a wonderful tool—it can also kill you, by the way.
“Long is the wait,” perhaps. But what is time, really? Are you happy with who you are and what you’re doing? What will decorate your gravestone when you’re gone? Was it worth it? Did it make all your friends happy, or is it deeper than that? Is it personal? Is the story over, or is there another chapter—something ongoing that no one else knows about? Will anyone care… and does that even matter to you?
Okay, okay, I’m coming already—I hear you.
Stay the course, friends.
I wish so many good things for you. When you’re all alone, wondering if anyone cares—yes, I do.
I’ll meet you in the middle, friend. Someday.
Rise and shine.
Find your breakers and f%&k the haters.
—J
P.S. If you’re interested in some stories about Breakers, a few new interviews are up—"The Why" and "More than Gold", feel free to check them out. Thanks to my dear friends across the pond, Lord Yiannis Dolas at Rockpages.gr and Sir Michael Kohsiek at Deaf Forever for asking questions and giving me an early platform to speak on this adventure. I’ll be posting some more interviews soon, including a special one with Mr. Evermore himself, who hijacked one of my interviews with the Italian Rock Hard magazine. And lastly, I’ll be doing an exclusive interview with Jorn Reese at Zephyrs Odem, discussing the LITR video in detail soon after its release.
Thanks, Jorn.
Video info: A few visuals from the soon to be released "Long is the Road" music video.