Conshohocken, PA-based Rock duo, Jamie and The Guarded Heart, are due to release new album, Funeral Song, on April 29th, produced by Scott McGinley (New Religion, BLISS). For their second album, Jamie Salvatore and Morgan Russo chose to really focus on what they know best, drawing on the stories of their working class hometown, which they often find that fans find universal to their own experiences.
Writing and recording Funeral Song took on some of the darkest days of the pandemic period, and recording necessitated isolating and careful planning. The recording itself was often an emotional experience for Salvatore and Russo as they delved into the album’s very personal themes. The first track on the album, “Black Dresses” has more than a passing relationship to the album’s title, Funeral Song, since it not only takes on the texture of local life, delivering a snapshot of the local Legion Hall, but also jumps off into the sense of loss and mourning that the album particularly highlights in a search for catharsis.
Today, Wildfire Music + News is delighted to premier the video for “Black Dresses” from Jamie and The Guarded Heart, shot by Bob Sweeney:
Salvatore and Russo comment on the single and the video:
“Black Dresses” is a song about processing loss. In the past few years, we’ve experienced a lot of it… and it just doesn’t get any easier. So, we wanted to talk about specifically what it feels like in our little corner of the Philly suburbs on the day of the funeral. Because while they’re all different, they all have common threads. We shot the video with our buddy Bob Sweeney at a baseball field in Bridgeport, PA on a cold and windy January day. The interior shots were from a super shady motel that we had to sneak the cameras into. A very bizarre, very cold but very memorable shoot. In the end, Bob was really able to capture the bleakness we were talking about in the song.
The duo feel strongly that their local community has supported their music in an integral way in the past, so it’s only fitting that this album delivers that attention back to the community in terms of both the songwriting and the videos. That also includes the wider fan community who might find their own experiences and locales reflected in the new music. As they have shared: “…We care about the people who connect to this thing. We’re playing for legacy and we won’t let them down. This record is who we are. Listen to it. We hope it speaks for itself.”
