My friend Pastor Wildman called me up last year, and asked if I would be interested in participating in a music video for a song he was working on. I was immediately in, and when he described the part he envisioned for me, moreso.
The song “Wildman” is about John the Baptist, and the vision for the video’s open was a newscaster noting a developing story about a “wild man” who was a prophet and a preacher. I put together some rough drafts, there was some back and forth with the Right Good Reverend Wildman, and we hashed out the final details. Then came the time to shoot my video portion.
For that, I turned to my hetero life mate and Empowered Parent Podcast partner, Ryan. He and Kayla have a business, One Big Happy Home, they do their speaking engagements and trainings under. It’s also the umbrella we run the podcast from under, because, no longer being supported by a ministry, we have to pay the hosting bills. (Podcasts ain’t free to produce and maintain, folks. And we are very picky about sponsors and what products we might promote.) To that end, they maintain an office with a setup that’s great for virtual training and, as it turns out, filming fake news casts.
You may have seen a pair of photos I posted last month, joking that I wasn’t ready to say what was going on, but that it had nothing to do with the Iowa caucus, which had actually taken place that day, if memory serves.
Now that Wildman has released the debut single, and if you haven’t seen any of my social media posts about it, you can now see my finished work:
To celebrate the music video debut, and to promote pre-ordering the EP, Wildman had me and the other actors—his podcast partner Steve, and our mutual friend Pastor Paul Ahnert—on The Wildman & Steve Show to talk about how it all got put together. (You can listen to Part 2 as well.)
This past Saturday, Wildman had me on his evening show on Classic Christian Rock Radio, and we talked more about my portion of the video, and how “Clark Barr” came to be. That interview got turned in to a podcast episode.
The interview is more wide-ranging, and the podcast doesn’t have the music that was played in between our chats, but the gist of my newscaster persona is this: he’s cobbled together from lots of different anchors and other media personalities, as well as a little of myself. The name Clark Barr came first from Superman’s alter ego, Clark Kent, and also from a scene in the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan rom-com You’ve Got Mail. The pair are discussing the online handle “ny512,” and trying to decipher what the 512 is for.
Ryan: “Five hundred and twelve people who think he looks like Clark Gable.”
Hanks: “Five hundred and twelve people who think he looks like a Clark bar.”
And thus, Clark Barr was born.
So there you have it, my music video debut, and my story behind it. Buy Wildman’s EP today!