Premiere: Quiet Takes “Wanted" Music Video
☆ By V. FREEMAN ☆
HAILING FROM THE MIDWEST, THERE COMES A WANTING — that evokes a wish: one still waiting to be manifested, but remains, stubbornly, flickering as a passing afterthought as another year passes by. And yet, from there come storytellers who allow our sense of yearning to push us to create moments for ourselves or — better yet — others. Last year was the first time I listened to Quiet Takes. I sat on my Cleveland porch during my first visit home, nostalgia looking at me from my mother’s forgotten garden, all the way to the various downtown lights sprinting across my eyes, since quarantine times halted the natural progression of many of our lives. Sarah Magill, the Midwestern wordsmith behind Quiet Takes, found a way to make me feel emotion over time passing, or life developing, without anxious tears having to touch my face. All the songs were stories telling me it was okay to be imperfect, because that’s where our humanity can be found. She was able to use her own life lessons to sing an optimistic view onto whichever road anybody is crossing.
“Wanted,” a shining track off Quiet Takes’ new EP, San Fidel, remodels the way yearning can impact our lives by telling us to offer ourselves up to its teachings — whether they be for the best or the worst — because how can life be memorialized if there isn’t a healthy balance of both? I had the chance to go back home a month ago, a few days after San Fidel was released. Once again, I sat on my porch as the sun saddled up to set while the closing of “Wanted” played. I could only offer up a smile, and played it again. Then again, a few times after that.
From a young age, we are taught for the sake of searching — especially if your location seems to offer up dreams or hopes to any gust of wind heading its way. Honestly, that’s when the birth of longing begins to jones in the body — even though we can’t decide what it is we could want. Quiet Takes seems to offer a chant — a hushed resolution — for anyone who has their sights on the past, or tomorrow: life is full of longing, so embrace being human, instead of running from it.
The Luna Collective is excited to share the premiere of this special video for “Wanted,” along with our conversation with Quiet Takes. We hope it brings a sense of peace and acceptance into your life as it did ours.
LUNA: How has this spring season and quarantine been treating you?
QUIET TAKES: Hey, thanks for asking! I deal with some S.A.D. every winter, so spring is always a season of relief for me. But this year, everything is heightened. I know I’m not the only person riding waves of grief right into sudden giddiness for what the vaccine rollout could mean for 2021. The hope is disorienting! My parents and grandma are all fully vaccinated now, so as a low-risk person, I got to have dinner with them this past weekend. Indoors! Without masks! It felt strangely normal. I’m one shot in myself (went to the end of a mass event to see if they had leftovers, and they did!), so I am looking forward to long hangouts and hugs with vaccinated friends soon, and not having the weather control whether or not I get my people time in.
LUNA: Back in March, you released your EP San Fidel — congrats! I love the feel of the “Wanted.” Can you share a little bit about the story behind the track?
QUIET TAKES: Thanks so much. We live in a culture that over-values acquisition and — I don’t know — victory, I guess; success. Being without or not having enough is seen as shameful. And admitting that you want something you don’t have — that’s even worse. The story we tell each other (and ourselves) is that if you don’t have the thing you want, you just have to work harder. Be better. But the truth is you can work hard and be in constant self-improvement mode and you’re still going to fail and fall and be left wanting. It’s just life. It’s just human. I found this song extremely embarrassing when I first wrote it. My producer, David Bennett, heard the demo and said, “Yep, that one is definitely going on the EP.” He was right. Humiliation works every time. We ended up making two versions of it, a more acoustic version that I put out spring of last year and the fully produced version, which is in this lyric video.
LUNA: I’m sure it’s had its ups and downs, but what impact did quarantine have on the making of the EP?
QUIET TAKES: Fortunately, we had all the tracking done before the first shutdowns began. While David was mixing, I spent some time finding folks to help with the release efforts and starting to collaborate on the videos. As we’re all aware, everything just took longer in 2020. I wasn’t on any particular timeline — which is the great part of being a completely independent musician — and spring of this year felt like the right time to finally put it out. Meanwhile, I kept writing and demoing. I worked out a safe studio bubble situation with David and his wife, Kayla, who runs a salon in the same building, so we’re finishing the next EP right now. I am very, very grateful that I got to keep on making music during the pandemic; it was a mental health lifeline for me.
Photo By Shawn Brackbill
LUNA: You teamed up with your friends Nate Happer and Haley Kostas to create the music video for “Wanted” — can you share a favorite moment from filming?
QUIET TAKES: Yes! We were waiting for a nice day to film, and we finally got a random warm day in February. Nate’s filming, I’m watching, Haley’s improvising. At the end of one of the takes, Haley was at the top of the structure, flipped upside down, and she just disappeared completely into the little sunken center of the top tier. There’s a beat as the music ends, then she pops back up like a groundhog with this distressed look on her face. Apparently, no one has cleaned the park for a long time and it was very, very gross down there. But that’s Haley — she commits to whatever she’s making!
LUNA: In addition to a video for “Wanted,” you recently released a video for the title track from the EP San Fidel. What do you like about bringing the visual side of your work to life?
QUIET TAKES: I’m a long-time lover of film and photography. My favorite kinds of songs are ones that can tell a different story every time you hear them; music videos capture those stories one at a time. I’ll get ideas for those visual stories early on in my songwriting process, and I love brainstorming with friends how to make them real.
LUNA: What do you like most about working with friends?
QUIET TAKES: Working on a creative project together is my favorite way to really get to know someone. You find out how people’s minds work, what they really care about, where their wounds are, how they solve problems, what they geek out about. Making art is vulnerable and risky, and vulnerability and risk are friendship glue. Haley and I were just coffeehouse acquaintances before we collaborated on a performance art collective called Rubix together, and now she’s one of my best friends. Nate and his wife, Ali, helped shoot Rubix, which was how I got to know them, too. I’m so ready for more post-pandemic friend collaborations.
LUNA: If you could collaborate with any artist in the world (dead or alive) who are you picking?
QUIET TAKES: Oh, I have a LIST. So I’m going to cheat on this one and say an entity or two instead of just one artist: I’m a super fan of everything that PEOPLE/37d03d does. I love their approach to inclusive, collaborative art making and how they give audiences surprising, intimate, human experiences. It’s like they are holding up this alternate path for everybody to follow: You can resist consumerist approaches to music-making. You can have reciprocal relationships with audiences. You can do it differently. You can be human. (It’s that vulnerability + risk again!) Similarly, I’m a long-time fan of the Eaux Claires crowd and [just] about died of happiness when they started going a PEOPLE direction with that festival. Some friends and I went to their PEOPLE collab Eaux Claires Hiver festival at the end of 2019 (as audience members, to be clear), and it was heaven. That’s my ultimate dream: to be part of ECX/PEOPLE-ish collaborations as an artist. I’ve got to strengthen my collaborative music-making muscles now; I feel rusty after this past year.
LUNA: Now that the “Wanted” video is out, what’s next for you?
QUIET TAKES: We have one last video in the San Fidel series to release. And then new music is coming! Hoping to start to drip out new singles this summer with another EP release in the fall. I’m also diving back into writing. I write best on road trips, so I’m looking forward to some long writing drives soon!
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