Caleb Sommerville

I had the privilege of shooting a promo video at a Music Across Borders fundraiser a few weeks ago. This was a bigger video project than I’ve ever tackled before, and I think it turned out pretty well. I have a lot to learn, yet.

It’s October, it’s time for spoooooky stuff.

There's something about the wilderness. America was traditionally untamed. That’s what made us unique. Our wilderness was/is second to none. The West was to be won, but it won us over in the process. Every time I go to the mountains, I get teary-eyed and thoughtful. I wonder what our forebears went through in the vicious reaches of the past night. I wonder what it would be like to worry about my next meal. I wonder about the view of the Front Range before cars and pollution and DSLRs. But it's not all wistful hopefulness. That wilderness is dangerous. We're not meant to be a part of it. I don't know if there's a Something about National Parks. I don't think there's a Something stealing kids. But there's a problem with a categorical statement like mine: that wilderness is too big. We haven't tamed our forests in 300 years. Even with helicopters and cars and DSLRs, public land and federal land and Wide Open Spaces still hold a foreboding. This land is inherently untamable. Is that a good thing? Of course. But that doesn't mean it's not dangerous. Missing 411 is a flawed documentary, for sure. Amateur-level shots and interview (I know because it's about what I could produce), half-researched cases, and goofy reenactments don't take all that much away from the investigation and the realization that we don't belong some places in this world. Also, it's spelled Comanche.

I haven't seen this is 15 years, but boy has it not held up. Quite possibly the worst Bond movie ever. I completely understand why they rebooted the entire franchise after this disaster. The one-liners are groan-inducing ("Well, the fun is about to come to a dead end." "You know, I've missed your sparkling personality." "How's that for a punch line?") The set design is late-90s at it's worst. The gadgets are video-game-tier. The story is one giant eye roll. The CGI is atrocious. They even do that early 90s lo-fi slowmo where they shoot normally and just double up the frames.

Halle Berry is useless (I cannot believe they were planning a spinoff for her). The villain is very very boring. Brosnan is a gigantic flaming ass to everyone, enemies and allies. I know that's the point of Bond, but dang. He's just entirely unlikable.

Also Michael Madsen is in this. What a terrible movie. 

“Look at my shiiet!" A bizarre, unreliable, menacingly neon nightmare/daymare. Korine's self-brand as "beach noir" is dead on. Jaw-dropping performances (especially from Hudgens and Franco), some truly unsettling scenes (not-Riff-Raff James Franco stroking Selena Gomez's face), gorgeous color work, and a fantastic score meld together under sweltering sunlight into a... pretentious Thief ripoff with college girls and Skrillex? I dunno. This one’s hard to nail down.

Astonishing. I hope this (along with Peter Jackson's WWI restoration "They Shall Not Grow Old") signals a new trend of archival documentary, because there's just something about the original (and sometimes jaw-droppingly sharp 70mm) footage FROM THE EVENT ITSELF that just elevates it. This film is pretty simple. It follows Apollo 11 from suit-up to splash down, with some quarantine and press stuff playing behind end credits. But it's the footage itself. It's just...astonishing.

David Foster Wallace described Lynch films as "refer[ing] to a particular kind of irony where the very macabre and the very mundane combine in such a way as to reveal the former's perpetual containment within the latter." However heady and goofy this may sound, I agree with it 100%. Having only watched bits and pieces of Lynch films in the past (plus 1.5 seasons of Twin Peaks), Blue Velvet seemed as good a place as any to start down this weird road. And weird it is indeed.

I’ve written a ton of movie reviews over on my Letterboxd site. I’ll post some of them here.

Somehow my first Kurosawa film. I know, I know.

I wrote this for a now-defunct website that never published it. So now I’m publishing it.

Kansas City is no longer flyover country. We've become a mecca for startups, tech firms, and young people eager to try anything. And that's resulted in great food. From Ethiopian cuisine to barbecue, from food trucks to fine dining, from breakfast hangouts to 24-hour diners.

But out of all these amazing places, there's one place that feels like home to me. McCoy's Public House in Westport. Since 1997, they've just BEEN there. They've been making gastropub-style food since before that was a thing, and they've been a craft brewer since 2001. They've sold hundreds of thousands of plates of their famous mac and cheese.

And I love every second I'm there.

Let's start with the look of the place. It feels like an old English pub. Dark wood, dim set-aside booths, sports on TV, and a general bustling feeling makes McCoy's seem pleasantly warm all the time. It all seems like it's always been there. And you'll be hard-pressed to find bad service here, too. Even if they're slammed on a Friday night, your server will be cheerful but not TOO chatty. Even if the place is jam-packed for the latest Sporting KC match, you'll get a table. The food comes relatively quickly and without that much of a fuss.

And the food. Oh my, the food. Even though the menu has changed a few times even in the seven years I've been going there, the theme has always been comfort food. The Country Club Salad (which a friend affectionately named the Fat Man Salad) has chicken strips on it. Actually it's mostly chicken strips. The beer pretzels are huge and toasty warm. The pizzas are crispy and fresh. The burgers are heavy-duty and mouth-watering.

Oh, and there's a whole menu section literally named "Comfort Food." Fish & chips, pot roast, chicken & waffles, and my absolute favorite, the chicken strips with barbecue sauce. I'm not sure why, but there's just something about the spices they use and the basket of fries and the sauce and just the smell of it that makes me happy sigh whenever it's plopped down in front of me. I have food dreams about it. Pair those delicious chicken strips with a beer made 20 feet away and you've got my favorite meal of all time.

And their beer is what makes McCoy's really stand out. Sure they have great food and a lovely atmosphere, but they're one of the few places that takes the "-pub" part of "gastropub" seriously. They've brewed dozens of styles of beer over the past 15 years (and most are top-notch). Staples like a rotating lager and the ever-present Hogpound Brown flow freely and rapidly. Weirder ones like a spicy Gose and their heavy-duty wintery Ursa Major stout are there for the times I'm feeling more adventurous.

But all that's not why I truly love McCoy's. Sure the beer and food are part of it. But the main reason I adore this pub is because of the time I've spent there. Since I moved to Kansas City in 2009, I estimate I've been there over 100 times. I've celebrated getting a job. I've mourned losing a job. I've watched KU games. I've sat on the porch. I've sat in booths. I've sat at those weird high tables where you can't figure out how to scoot your chair in. I've had business lunches, client beers, and family brunches. I've had growlers to go. I've picked up food for my wife and I after she's had a long shift at the hospital. I've had a quiet dinner with my wife. We've had raucous parties with friends and family in the back room. We've celebrated graduations, birthdays, new clients, visiting family, and just Tuesdays. We've taken our son there a few times. After my wife spent a weekend in the hospital (she's fine now), McCoy's was the first meal we had.

So yes, I will always love Joe's barbecue. I will rave about Pigwich's incredible sandwiches. I will recommend the Rieger Hotel and Manifesto and The Majestic and all the other classy places I shouldn't be allowed in till I die. But McCoy's? That will always be my second home here in Kansas City.

I’m selling prints finally! I’ll have a booth set up at the Squier Park Homes Tour & Market on October 7. Check out a quick preview of what will be for sale here: 

I got to do another video for Sike Style. This time, he painted a Tribe Called Quest tribute mural at Josey Records in Kansas City. 

Kansas City is home to some amazing artists, and I have the privilege of regularly working with Phil Shafer (AKA Sike Style). His graffiti-style art is fantastic and I’m proud to have edited together this little sample of his recent work in Seattle.

I wrote this for the Mills Record Company blog back in December.

After a whirlwind few years, Donald Glover’s musical alias Childish Gambino (Troy Barnes, 30 Rock writer, stand up comic, the future Lando Calrissian) has released yet another jaw-dropping album. “Awaken, My Love!” is his third studio album (he’s also had a few EPs and mixtapes). Whereas Camp and Because The Internet were somewhat more traditional hip hop albums (they still had Glover’s stamp of differentness), “Awaken, My Love!” is a soul/funk album through and through. And even though those genres sound outdated and old-fashioned, the album is perfect for it’s era. And it’s profoundly passionate and personal.

The first single, “Me and Your Mama,” signaled to us that this wasn’t going to be a standard hip hop album. A cross between Pink Floyd, James Brown, and Prince, the first track is a unique three-part opener. An R&B slow jam backs a gospel-style female chorus. Elements of trap start infiltrating the bassline. Then, two minutes in, a Vincent Price-esque laugh intros Gambino’s incredibly passionate vocals (“You know that I love you!/So let me into your heart!”). After his amazing vocal section, a Pink Floyd-ian synth outro leads us into the rest of the album. And what an album it is.

“Have Some Love” features a mesh between old-school funk, a seriously groovy rhythm section, some Gorillaz-esque guitar strumming, and an infectiously cheerful gospel chorus hook (“Have a word for your brother/have some time for one another/really love one another/it’s so hard to find”). Gambino’s vocals oscillate between 70s funk, strained low-key almost-rapping (for the verses), and a second half that’s somehow a glittering funk breakdown with twinges of Justin Timberlake.

There’s twinges of everything in this album. It’s hard to pin anything down, and that’s wonderful. “Boogieman” and “Zombies” feel like they should be 30 Rock parody songs (“Werewolf Bar Mitzvah” anyone?), but behind the melodramatic and silly-sounding lyrics, there’s a deeper message. As is normal for Childish Gambino. “Zombies” calls out our often zombie-like culture (“they can smell your money/and they want your soul” and “we’re eating you for profit/there is no way to stop it”) all the while using a style that feels like a future Daft Punk sample. It’s hard to nail down, and I think that’s his point. His style is completely his own.

A sexy slick slap bass intro brings us to the second single, “Redbone.” Slightly pitched up vocals swirl into oozy, gauzy goodness that encompasses just how different this album is from Camp and Because the Internet. Prince’s slow groove style leaks through this track especially. The slap/synth bass and Gambino’s processed vocals are showcased well.

And then, after a few serious songs in a row, we get the goofy “California.” The actual lyrics are about living in, you guessed it, California, and reference everything from social media to weed. But the vocals are hyper digitized and strained. The instrumentation (glockenspiel, carnival organ, etc.) sounds right out of the TV show Community, which is probably because Gambino’s producer, Ludwig Göransson, wrote the music for that show.

It’s not often I can identify with a famous rapper/actor, but boy does “Baby Boy” speak to me. I recently became a father too, and Gambino’s song to his son is fantastic. Intensely personal (and lovely sounding; a Hammond B3 organ and a thin 80s-style electric guitar duel throughout the track) and genuine, “Baby Boy” details his excitement, love, and doubts about becoming a father. And the last spoken section nails it: “There was a time before you/And there will be a time after you/Though these bodies are not our own/Walk tall, little one, walk tall/Let me hold you, let me hold you.” Gambino is known for his honesty and transparency, and for good reason. Art comes from experience.

Then we come to it. My personal favorite track on the album. The track no one expected: an instrumental soul/funk song from a rap artist. “The Night Me and Your Mama Met” is a hell of a title, and boy does the track live up to it. A sexy funk wah guitar, a gospel-style chorus, even more glockenspiel, and a groove that would make the most straight-laced grandma get down like a stank-faced bass player.

“Stand Tall” rounds out this unexpected album in a solid way. Gambino attributes the strong positive message to his parents: “Keep all your dreams, keep standing tall/if you are strong you cannot fall/there is a voice inside us all/so smile when you can, when you can.” The passionate vocals feel personal (“There is more out there/somebody cares ’bout you/I do.”) The 70s disco flute and funky chorus blend with modern auto-tune (used sparingly, don’t worry) and finishes out with an R&B groove. A weird combo, to be sure.

A weird combo. That’s what “Awaken, My Love!” truly is. A combination of disparate styles, instruments, topics, vocalists, messages, and feelings. And that’s what makes a human a human: uniqueness. Things that shouldn’t go together forming one thing that somehow works. Gambino’s always been a raw, personal artist. His intense honesty has made some balk. His acting career seems to bounce off his musical career. His hairstyles can be ridiculous. But he’s a human and he’s acting like a human in his music.

Personally, I like funk and R&B more than hip hop, so I like “Awaken, My Love!” more than his other albums. But there’s something all three albums have: personality. All three albums feature Donald Glover as Donald Glover. Sometimes that’s heavy-duty hip hop. Sometimes that’s hilarious stories from his childhood. Sometimes that’s funk. We just get to watch and listen. We can always sense passion in a project. That’s why processed corporate art, whether it’s literal hotel art or the latest unpalatable pop music, is so abhorrent to us. We prefer local coffee to Folgers. We prefer a local music shop (wink wink) to Best Buy. We prefer something made with love.