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Midnight Shine's latest music video debuts at Yorkton festival

Leather Skin shown Thursday at festival opening night
Music

Midnight Shine’s third music video received its debut the old-fashioned way… at a film festival!

 

The 2019 Yorkton Film Festival presented the worldwide debut of Leather Skin to kick off their ppening night program on Thursday. It was the first time anyone saw the video, which became available online today, (Friday).  

 

Leather Skin was shot on the coast of the James Bay in remote Northern Ontario – a gorgeous place unseen by most Canadians. To reach the isolated beach requires traveling north of Attawapiskat, by boat, to a set of small islands. With the resulting video shot in Ontario and Nunavut, a crew from Ontario, Manitoba and BC, and a video debut in Saskatchewan… Leather Skin makes for a special piece of “Canadiana cinema” ready to be shared with the rest of the world.

 

Inspired long ago by Coldplay’s captivating beach video for Yellow… Midnight Shine frontman Adrian Sutherland from Attawapiskat dreamed of one day shooting his own music video on the remote beaches near his home. And on one rainy October afternoon, that’s exactly what he did.

 

Adrian, his wife Judy, a video crew of three, and a boat filled with production gear took off from Attawapiskat, heading north along the Attawapiskat River to the frigid and unpredictable open waters of the James Bay. After 90 minutes they eventually reached the shoreline of the Twin Islands – a place uninhabited by humans. Even though it is traditional territory of Ontario’s Mushkegowuk Cree, geographical maps set it within the boundaries of Nunavut.

 

The Twin Islands are desolate, gorgeous, and not easy to get to – or stay at. Once landed on shore, the crew had merely two hours to shoot and get off the beach, or get stranded until the next tide rolled around 24 hours later. The boat had to continually be pried away from the beach during those two hours, too, with an ever-receding tide and fierce ocean winds constantly threatening to run them aground. All of this, because it’s exactly where Sutherland wanted to shoot his music video:

 

“I often think about going to my favourite place,” he sings in Leather Skin, peering into the camera as he strolls along the stunning shoreline. With footage from the Twin Islands cut with shots on the dusty streets of Attawapiskat, the video shows both sides of Adrian’s life – the pursuit of music juxtaposed with his simple life out on the land. His favourite place.

 

Most serendipitous of all was some unexpected weather that ended up tying it all together in an unbelievable way… resulting in what just might be the coolest music video ever shot… ;) 

 

Leather Skin is the third music video from Midnight Shine in the past six months. Heart of Gold (Cover) has been viewed on YouTube by nearly 200k people since its January release, and is nominated for a Golden Sheaf Award in the category of Performing Arts & Entertainment at the Yorkton Film Festival. The awards are handed out Saturday, May 25, in Yorkton, with the production team for Heart of Gold (Cover) also behind Leather Skin

 

Midnight Shine are currently working on their fourth music video, this one for the song Lonely Boy. It will be the first video featuring performance by the full-band, and using actors to convey the story. Production took place in Winnipeg on May 18 and 19.

 

The band’s current album High Road was nominated for Best Rock Album and Best Producer/Engineer at this year’s Indigenous Music Awards. Midnight Shine performed at the Indigenous Music Awards on Friday May 17, and Adrian Sutherland co-hosted the awards along with Beatrice Love.