Check out the official music video for “SHIMMY” by Nick Vanderwood! The song and its accompanying video will be heralding in the release of Nick’s new EP entitled “Reload”. This project has been the sum of many years of quiet craftsmanship as Nick has labored to overcome a chronic neck injury that has impeded his ability to sing. Kept at a frustrating distance from the microphone, as the EP title suggests, Nick is ready to come back with a bang.
The release of this video marks the second audio-visual collaboration between Nick and his life-long friend, and Utica-born filmmaker, Lukas Sunderlin. It’s been two years since the two collaborated on Nick’s project entitled “Little Vacation”. Since then, the two have moved in together in Los Angeles and have been consolidating their creative visions under their new media production label known as “Monomaniac”.
The project actually began with Nick playing the song for Lukas shortly after completing their cross country trip to Los Angeles. The song was originally a b-side track of his debut album created in 2021 (debut album set to release in 2024).
“It was weird serendipitous timing, really. Nick was standing in the entryway of the living room, playing the song from a beat up bluetooth speaker. Not to sound overly romantic and corny, but it was something about how the light was hitting him — I just had this idea right away. And I asked him ‘dude, what is this? whose song is this?’ And he perked up and said ‘ It’s mine!’ Somewhere along the line, we just adopted this attitude of ‘let’s just do the damn thing’ and to our credit, and with the help our world class team, and several exceptionally generous community members, we did.”
While the song was originally just a two-minute instrumental demo recorded in Nick’s home in New York Mills, the idea snowballed into a full seven-minute, cinematic short film. “We didn’t want to just throw something together and do something cute. The new work Nick is creating has an amazing amount of energy behind it, so we wanted to make this a truly cinematic experience that could represent it appropriately.” Nick states: “When you can’t physically use your voice, that voice finds other places to be heard. And Luke heard the call.”
The music video premiere and performance by Nick Vanderwood, will be the headline for the opening ceremonies for the first annual Dreamland Theatre Music and Arts Festival, hosted by the Monomaniac team, in collaboration with Michelle Klosek, owner of Varick Restaurants Inc, and Vice President of UMN for the Arts.
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