No Age: Turned to String

I’ve worked with Randy and Dean on various projects over the past 10 years and always love collaborating with them. So when we started discussing possible music videos for their new album “Goons be Gone” album, I immediately wanted to do something for “Turned to String.” It had a manic driving energy, like a car in flames going over a cliff.

The plan was initially to shoot in Austin with Revelator Productions in the Spring of 2020. We discussed a couple of large concepts and I knew that I wanted Choreographer Katie Faulkner to be a part of this. Then Covid hit and all budgets were shut down. I suggested to Randy and Dean that Katie and I would make the video on our own. We’d take everything down to a basic rawness: Camera and Choreographer and we’d work through ideas until something started to click. It was liberating to work like that again. We weren’t trying to perfect anything; we wanted the messiness and earnestness to come through.

Katie and I ran around Oakland and Alameda with our masks on and shot in handball courts, on sidewalks and in the middle of suburban streets. We let the music dictate and would go until we felt we had it. She was fearless. I’d play the song on a boom box, and she’d just start right in no matter where we were or who was watching.

The video premiered on Cool Hunting, in June of 2020 with an excellent article from David Garver about the process of making the song and the video.