Dreaming In America: A Film About Lucero (2005, Aaron Goldman)
-now available on DVD
Lucero is one of those bands that you fall in love with the first time you see them live. There’s something about them that, as filmmaker Aaron Goldman says, “It reminded me about everything I loved in music.”
So he did the only thing a filmmaker who’s always wanted to shoot a documentary about independent musicians could do. He approached Lucero and asked them if he could make a film about them. More specifically, about how they balance making a living (barely) while continuing to pursue their vision. When Goldman came to them, Lucero was a band between record labels, preparing to record their fourth full-length album, and they’d never seen a dime in royalty money. They supported themselves–and still do–solely by touring.
“They were. . .a little bit dangerous and on the edge, you weren’t quite sure what was going to happen next. Maybe a little bit too punk for their own good, but at the same time they sounded really awesome and were very unself-conscious and loose and they all seemed like four very different guys on stage, which I learned is really the case,” Goldman explained further. “And I think they aren’t jaded. You can go see a lot of bands and you really get the sense that they’re bored as hell, and then you as an audience member, you’re bored, this disaffected thing that happens with a lot of bands and it just rubs off on the people in the audience. And Lucero’s just so damn sincere. I think the documentary is incredibly honest, that’s who those guys are. They are the same people offstage as they are onstage, there’s no persona, there’s no pretense.”
Dreaming in America is a film about one band, but it’s also a film about every band who tries to make it. Every band, that is, that doesn’t live in New York or L.A. and play to industry people every day. Goldman and his director of photography traveled with the band for several weeks on tour and then joined them during the recording of their album at Jim Dickinson’s barn in Mississippi. He interviewed the band and several people close to them, as well as a super fan with multiple Lucero tattoos. The film is also peppered with bits of live performances from venues across the country, and a few wonderfully honest, hilarious moments such as the one where Ben, cut off from playing onstage at their show, follows a couple who wanted one more song from bar to bar to make sure they get to hear as much of his music as possible. “That was actually our first day shooting, where they didn’t really know us from anything, and when we got that on our first day shooting, Dave and I looked at each other and were just like ‘Holy shit, that’s so awesome,'” Goldman said of that moment, one that epitomizes this band.
Dreaming in America, much like the band it follows, was a labor of love, edited in Goldman’s living room at night and on weekends around his work schedule, with some help from a professional editor, and shot mostly by Goldman and his DP Dave … on borrowed cameras and one rented high-end digital video camera. It is Goldman’s first feature film, conceived perhaps as one of a series of films “about people around the country that do things that have either jobs or passions, things that they do that kind of go outside of the box, be creative, are under the radar, to the beat of their own drummer continue doing whatever they’re doing no matter what.”
The film is worth the price of the DVD just for the live performances included on it, but it’s also a great behind-the-scenes look at this band. You get to see firsthand how most touring musicians live, but at the same time learn more personal details about the four guys in this band, their lives, and how they’ve managed to get ahead on honesty, good music, and hard work rather than industry connections and mediocre radio-friendly crap. Lucero’s got a new record imprint with East/West, called Liberty & Lament, and they’re putting out this DVD through that deal. Not to mention, it comes with a bonus live CD that has their version of “Kiss the Bottle” on it, as well as tracks from their earliest recordings up to the present. So get on it, already. If you haven’t yet figured out why Kaffeine Buzz loves this band so much, maybe this film will be the ticket.
You can order it through their website, www.luceromusic.com, or look for it at local or online stores like Amazon and CD Universe.
Kaffeine Buzz: Can you tell me about yourself and any other movies you might have done?
Aaron Goldman: This is my first film. I have not done any other films except for–I did a few little films in college. I’ve been working in production stuff for a long time now. I was at MTV for five years, I’m currently at the History channel, doing mostly post-production stuff. I’ve always wanted to do my own project, more typically on independent musicians and how they kind of negotiate making a living, making things work for themselves while at the same time continuing to be artists.
KB: How did you end up with Lucero as your subject?
AG: I had the idea for the film about a band like this for a while, and I kind of run through some bands in my head, and I didn’t really know much about Lucero, but I thought that I would like them based on a few friends’ recommendations, so I went and saw them about two years ago, and it just kinda clicked for me based on seeing them live, their personalities, reminding me about everything I loved in music. But they were at the same time a little bit dangerous and on the edge, you weren’t quite sure what was going to happen next. Maybe a little bit too punk for their own good, but at the same time they sounded really awesome and were very unself-conscious and loose and they all seemed like four very different dudes on stage, which I learned is really the case. It was interesting, because you know, you don’t want a bunch of the same people.
KB: I would say they are very cinematic.
AG: They are cinematic. It was cool for me too, because I’m in New York and I’ve spent a lot of time in Los Angeles, and I think bands from New York and Los Angeles–not to stereotype, but I think lots of times they are really caught up in what’s cool, what the next thing is. Not to say there aren’t real bands in those cities, but I think they’re very affected by their environments and by the music industry being there. I think that with Lucero being from Memphis, and not being isolated, having a very independent, rich musical history and scene where they’re from, really I think allows them to kind of do their own thing, not be bogged down by a large scene.
KB: Plus, it’s got to be interesting for you to get out of that–you went on tour with them for a little while, right?
AG: About three weeks, but then–we originally thought we were going to shoot everything in three weeks, for financial reasons and for a lot of reasons, because the people working with me have two jobs as well, and we didn’t really have a lot of time to do this, but after we shot for three weeks, I think John said “this is just the beginning,” and I was thinking to myself, No, I think we got really great stuff, I think the story’s there, but then a year later we were still shooting. I went back to Memphis a lot, went to Texas, shot with them every time they were in New York, so the project went on longer than we’d initially thought.
KB: It seems to have been good timing to make a film about them, since they were recording the new record, trying to find a new record label, all that while you were filming.
AG: I think we got lucky. I had no idea when we approached them–I think right before we started shooting I had been talking with Ben a little bit and I don’t remember for sure, but I think I knew that they were without a label. When we first approached them we didn’t know what the situation was. When we first talked with them it was actually in Texas, at South by Southwest at the Tiger Style showcase, so they must not have known yet because Tiger Style was still, I think, going at that point. I don’t know what happened–I think the dudes who ran it also ran Insound, and a publicity company that’s now doing a lot of stuff for movies, so they were more focused on doing that than running a record label.
KB: So how did you come up with funding and the time off from your job to do this?
AG: It all kind of happened in a very lucky way for me. I had just finished a project that I was working on, and I saw Lucero in December of 2003, and I was working as a freelance producer for the WB on a show that never really got picked up. But then that ended and I didn’t really have anything lined up, and I just ended up going full force with it, and that’s when the whole tour thing happened. I ended up getting work as we were driving back from the last show, so then it was just a matter of editing on the weekends and at night and taking time off to go down when they were recording the album, went down a few other times in Memphis, to South by Southwest, just figuring out how to take time off. The whole thing was really edited in my living room, at night, by myself and one other person who could work for almost no money. I don’t consider myself a real editor, but I did have a real editor at the end help out a lot. It was done from the hours of 7 PM till 2, 3 in the morning.
KB: Can you tell me more about the cameras and equipment that you used?
AG: It was all digital–I guess not all digital. We wanted to shoot on as many formats as possible, and film was just so damn expensive. We did shoot some 16 MM, of which only about 10, 15 seconds make it into the actual film. We shot some Super 8, there’s some of those shots, but for the most part we used Panasonic VX100, a 24p camera, which mimics 24 frames per second, normal video is 30 frames, and these cameras kind of give the effect of film. They do a pretty good job, they don’t look exactly like film but they look much better than your average 3-chip video camera. Which we did use, the main shooter had a Sony it’s like a PD150 but like a step down, more of a consumer camera, he used that a lot, and we had some 3-chip little camera that we’d use. It was just two of us and sometimes we’d have four cameras at a show, so two of the cameras were stationary and we’d just run around with what we had. These were all borrowed cameras, except for the 24p cameras, which were rented–we got a pretty good deal renting them from a friend of a friend. Editing, we used Final Cut Pro, I got a few external drives, because I think we shot a little over 150 hours worth of footage, so it was a pretty daunting task going through everything. So as we started building the story in post, we’d digitize most of the interviews and build the story with the interviews and then for coverage just kind of go to our
KB: I just watched it with the commentary on last night, and Roy with the vibrating-voice mic was just great. I don’t know who came up with that…
AG: That was Roy’s idea, actually. It was a karaoke mic.
KB: He’s great. Something that you said a little bit ago and that Donna says in the film, that they make you remember why you got into the business. I think that’s a common thing with this band, especially with people in the business like we are, who might get really jaded really quick.
AG: Absolutely. I think I guess it doesn’t really matter how you get to a band, but the fact that they had the Jawbreaker cover early on, and I grew up on the West Coast, saw Jawbreaker play probably 20 times, they were one of my favorite bands. That was the initial thing that drew me to Lucero. That and I loved country music–though I guess they aren’t really country. I loved the Replacements, Jawbreaker, I love Tom Waits, I love all the things that Lucero kind of embraces and puts their own stamp on. It was a no-brainer when I saw them live for the first time. And I think they aren’t jaded. You can go see a lot of bands and you really get the sense that they’re bored as hell, and then you as an audience member, you’re bored, this disaffected thing that happens with a lot of bands and it just rubs off on the people in the audience. And Lucero’s just so damn sincere. I think the documentary is incredibly honest, that’s who those guys are. They are the same people offstage as they are onstage, there’s no persona, there’s no pretense.
KB: One of my favorite bits of the movie was when you have drunk Ben following the people around the city trying to play them that one last song that he’d promised them.
AG: That was actually our first day shooting, where they didn’t really know us from anything, and when we got that on our first day shooting, Dave and I looked at each other and were just like “Holy shit, that’s so awesome.” That was originally a much longer scene. He goes on for a long time there.
KB: It’s interesting to look at more behind-the-scenes stuff because it’s easy to see it as a persona–he wears the same white T-shirt and Levis and sing about girls, and it’s interesting to really show that no, this is really just who they are. Of course, I was kind of wondering if there was going to be any girl drama since the songs are all about girls.
AG: We were going to interview Ben’s girlfriend–this is the honest truth–as we were doing stuff, I thought this would be very important to have her there, we were going to interview her, she was totally into it. Dave I think was down for the record release, and I think everyone got too drunk the night of the record release and weren’t awake before the DP left so we never got the interview. But you see Ben’s girlfriend a few times in the documentary, a couple cameos.
KB: I think somebody made a comment on the commentary track that you had to drive them home because they were too drunk to drive?
AG: I think that was in reference to when they were recording the album. I went down to shoot with them with Jim Dickinson. It’s actually kind of an interesting story. The first day I was down there–I’m a big fan of everything Jim Dickinson has done, he’s worked with so many amazing artists it’s like, insane. But this is his studio and his property, and I was very clear with him that I don’t want to overstep any boundaries, I don’t want to be in anybody’s way, I don’t want to disturb anything. So I asked Jim, are there any rules I should be aware of, anything I shouldn’t shoot, so he said the one thing he told me was that I should not be in the control room when they’re tracking songs. Which was fine with me because I would rather be in the actual studio with the band while they’re tracking songs. But he said it’s fine while they’re doing playback to be in there and shoot that. But at the end of the day Jim Dickinson comes out and tells me that I’ve done exactly what he’s told me not to do and that I have to leave the studio. Which was never really explained and never really figured out, but Ben proceeded to be kind of pissed off by the situation but couldn’t really talk with Jim because Jim was providing the studio and all of this practically for free, and because it’s his studio and his house you don’t want to question anything he’s doing, Ben proceeded to get incredibly drunk and there’s an interesting interview that we did after that. But that’s actually when I had to drive him home. We never did find out exactly why I was kicked out.
KB: Where did the title come from?
AG: The title came from an idea a friend of mine and I had for a documentary series called Dreaming in America about people around the country that do things that have either jobs or passions, things that they do that kind of go outside of the box, be creative, are under the radar, to the beat of their own drummer continue doing whatever they’re doing no matter what. We had some ideas for this a while ago, and I always loved the title, and I think that’s exactly what Lucero does, so it made sense.
KB: How are you going about distributing the film now?
AG: It’s actually being put out through Lucero’s deal with East/West, through ADA, which is Warner’s independent distribution company. So we’re getting great, great distribution. I’m not sure how many they pressed in the beginning, but they already had to do a second pressing. The band’s also selling it through their website, which is good because it obviously goes directly to them.
You are able to get your hands on Dreaming in America at www.luceromusic.com and many online stores, including Amazon and CD Universe.
