Americana artist Rick Shea has released a new video for “Texas Lawyer”, a song from his most recent album, Love and Desperation from Tres Pescaderos (Europe-Appaloosa Records).
Shea comments on the origin of the song:
“I wrote this song with my friend Wyman Reese, Wyman and Chris Gaffney were negotiating a record deal at the time and had a lawyer from Texas representing them, Wyman kept referring to him as the Texas Lawyer and that kind of stuck with me. I was reading a lot of Elmore Leonard crime stories at the time and I liked the idea of the lawyer being crooked, the song just ended up being this kind of noir tale where everyone is guilty of something. My father-in-law Johnny gave me the Spanish refrain, which I’ve always thought was quite beautiful and perfect. He’s been gone for a long time and I’m so glad that he left me with this.”
Shea walks us through the filming of the noir-inspired video:
“I’ve known Charlie McGovern awhile and worked with him on a number of his projects, recordings and other things. He and I got together and talked about some ideas for how the video might look. We talked about Orson Welles black & white film ‘Touch of Evil’ with its twisted story line and menacing shadows, Charlie talked about Robert Altman’s loose sort of directing style on ‘McCabe and Mrs. Miller’ and we talked about creating a set on my patio and shooting there.
After that it went pretty quickly, Charlie messaged me a couple days later and said he wanted to come over that night, I scrambled a bit to put things together, told my wife Susie she was going to be in the video, Charlie came by, we did some setting up and then we shot maybe two or three full run throughs.Charlie had some specific ideas about lighting and shadows he was trying to create, and then just very generally told Susie and I what he thought we should be doing. The additional footage Charlie shot locally between here and Pasadena and out near Pioneer town and Joshua tree.Charlie is director, producer and editor with some general input from me; we shot this at my home in Covina Ca on October 4th, 2021.
All final editing was done by Charlie over the next few days, again with some general input from me. We shot at my home for reasons of convenience and because we were able to create what I thought was a good setting, kind of like the outside of some old Cantina somewhere. I’ll try and get Charlie to talk about his gear a little; Charlie is a master at working with very little. Most of the props, the table, candles etc, were things here at my house. Charlie brought the stool he wanted me to sit in and the kerosene lantern which I was worried was going to blow up the whole time. We were outside in my backyard so our dog Katy was wandering around during the filming but didn’t manage to get in any of the shots, a minor disappointment.”
You can also check out Rick Shea’s video for “Big Rain Is Comin’ Mama” and catch him on an upcoming performance on November 24th at the Maui Sugar Mill Saloon in Tarzana, California.
