“Klein’s gentle strum and clean, melodic vocals bring to mind classic folk singer-songwriters like Townes Van Zandt. Stuart Cole’s subtle upright bass adds texture and depth, while the violin by Parisa Sarfehjoo transports the listener away, just as the camera rises and pans over the wide-open landscape… Excellent stuff.” – Andrew Frolish, Americana UK
Thanks to my good friends for their work on this piece: musical partner Bronson Tew (producer/engineer) for bringing the songs of Low Flyin’ Planes to life, filmmaker Jeff Shipman, and of course musicians Stuart Cole and Parisa Sarfehjoo for their beautiful playing.
About the “Low Flyin’ Planes” video:
The video for “Low Flyin’ Planes” was shot by my good friend Jeff Shipman. Jeff documented the making of the album, and we returned to the studio about six months later to shoot additional drone footage of Water Valley, Mississippi, home to Dial Back Sound studio, and to film in the Delta. On a memorable, whirlwind day trip, we drove through the seductive flat farmfields of the Delta and visited some key spots, including Dockery farms in Ruleville and the nearby crossroads, one of the potential sites of the mythological sale to the devil of Robert Johnson’s soul. We also got some striking aerial shots of the land and the Sunflower River.
In essence, the artful video documents the genesis of a song— opening at the crossroads, a highly symbolic place signifying a longing, a place where bluesmen were said to have gone in search of something supernatural. So the search begins at the crossroads, and the video then shows the creation of the piece in recorded form, and finally, returns the viewer to one of the most elemental sources of all things, water. Charting the Sunflower River from above, the viewer travels along the source of the Delta’s lifeblood, its rivers, used to farm the fertile lands and its gumbo mud to which African Americans were either brought as slaves or to which they flocked in hopes of achieving greater autonomy and economic uplift.