Jerry Cantrell and Brighten
“This was the first time I had ever worked with Jerry Cantrell, and so being in the studio with this extraordinary and legendary musician was a career highlight. I was shooting at Igloo Studios for the drums and then at Dave’s Room for all of the guitar tracking. Being in the studio with just Jerry and the sound engineer at Dave’s Room, was an incredible experience. Jerry was just getting lost in his own melodies on this beautiful acoustic guitar for hours. I held my breath for the whole time, seriously!”
“Brighten has this really unique sound to it. It’s bright sonically speaking. Alice in Chains has always had this minor sounding tonal position in their music, and yet Jerry was brightening the tonal essence for this album. So I was really excited to be a witness to this shift in his creative process.”
“I had just completed filming two days at Igloo and two days at Dave’s Room, and then the whole world shut down with Covid, literally the next day, March 15th 2020. We were all wondering what comes next? So this is how this documentary then starts to arc on a very unique journey.”
“I mean everybody was really scared and paranoid at that time, so Jerry decided to finish all the vocals in his home. So things were changing dramatically as Jerry turned his home into a home studio. Given we were in the midst of this massive pandemic, the only person who could be there was Paul Fig, the engineer.”
“Jerry said he would shoot all of his vocal recordings on his iPhone, just to keep the documentary alive. If you had told me, that I would be doing a documentary with Jerry Cantrell who would be recording vocals in a bedroom and documenting this on his phone and sending me the files, I would never, ever, have believed you! But that is exactly what happened.”
“Months later as Jerry is starting to do press for the album, I get a call saying it will be released in two months and they want to finish the documentary. Steve Appleford, the accomplished and renowned music journalist is doing an interview for Revolver Magazine, with Jerry and all the guys and they want to use it as the master interview for the doc.”
“Firstly, having a film crew shoot a press interview for a print outlet never happens. I can’t even tell you how rare this is. So this whole journey was completely left of field. Jerry knew this was going to be a unique moment with the entire band all in the same room at the same time, after so many months of isolation. It was going to be the first time that everyone was able to talk about their thoughts and interpretations of the music.”
“I hated the idea at first. Interviewing more than one band member at the same time, can be your worst nightmare scenario as a filmmaker. And here I was documenting six or seven people all talking about their experiences. My usual creative practice is to do ‘one-on-one’ sit down interviews where I can really connect with people and pull impactful quotes out of them. And given we had all been separated for an eternity, I wanted to document this interview perfectly. And more so, because I wasn’t going to be able to go back and capture it all again!”
“I have been a fan of Alice in Chains since I was a teenager listening to their music in my hometown of Orleans in France. And so having the perfect interview for this documentary was incredibly important to me. But in the end, my fears about interviewing so many people at the same time turned out to be unrealized fears. Steve’s interview approach and the band’s energy being reunited after so long, resulted in this unique moment that really makes the documentary. The whole journey turned out to be this big loop.”
“We started filming in the recording studio, and then we were all isolated for months and months. And then at the very end of this album’s creation, we all came back again to talk about the one thing these guys love. And that’s creating music. Here they were in the same room again, talking about the thing that’s so important to them. Their collaboration as musical artists.”
“I mean, it’s one thing to record music and then listen to it in your home or car. But music is supposed to be experienced live and together. And that is what this documentary shows. This interview with Jerry and the band indicates that we were all coming back together again. And that they would soon be onstage once more playing venues packed with music-loving fans. Although Covid and isolation wasn’t to be part of the story of this doc, the arc of ‘Brighten’ shows that music connects people in a way nothing else can.”
