With a voice filthier than a festival toilet, Jamie N Commons presents his new video for vintage blues drenched song ‘Devil In Me’: a three and a half minute black n’ white ode to guilt and regret that portrays two people (played by the same man) at a table arguing.
“The kind of brief I gave them was the opening six minutes of the film ‘Once Upon A Time In The West’. No one says anything for the first 10 minutes of the film, so every single small action that people make becomes this massive gesture because there’s so little going on. The song’s all about this man who may or may not have murdered this guy, and he’s ruined his own life in doing that” Jamie explains, on his way to listen to the new Mark Lanegan album – in a graveyard.
The video, created by James Willis and Ben Murray, is a continuation of previous projects: “They did the first video for ‘The Preacher’, so we decided to go with them again. There’s a little link in at the start of the new video, there’s the instrumental section of ‘The Preacher’ playing on the record player, we were trying to get some continuity in there”.
The actor used is Daniel Vivian, a 6’ 7 Bosnian who has had small roles in X-Men and Blues Brothers 2000, and wasn’t up for doing the video at first: “He originally didn’t want to do it because it wasn’t much money, but they sent him the track and he was like ‘yes! I need to do this’. A really intense dude, but exactly what we needed to capture that intensity out of very small facial movements”.
Commons also talks about his hunt for a producer to work on his debut album: “We’re actually meant to be flying to LA to meet Rick Rubin ( of Def Jam/Columbia, worked with Adele, Metallica and U2). We’re just meeting producers at the moment, trying to find someone who can bring this kind of sound I want to achieve out. I really want to push the boundaries of what blues can be”.
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Words by Jamie Carson
Photo Credit: Max Knight
