Photo credit: Alfonso Cantarero

John the Martyr came together in 2017 when guitarist 26-year-old Kyle Ridley, who had moved to New York City from New Orelans, first encountered 70 year-old Harlem native Bill Hudson singing with a doo-wop group in the subway. Ridley approached Hudson abot recording some music he had written, which led the formation of John The Martyr. The 10-piece soul collective, fronted by Hudson, whose vocals have been compared to Otis Redding and Al Green, will release their debut record in 2019.

Today we premiere their official video for “Cross The Line.” Ridley tell Relix, “We wanted to introduce the whole band visually for the first time. So we decided that the ‘Cross The Line’ music video would be a good opportunity to try that. We’re all from different places but connected through music in NYC. We chose the medium of television to reflect how the way we connect to each other has changed over the past seventy years or so. So we picked TV sets from different eras and paired them with different band members. We shot it in one day in a handful of locations and had a blast working with our director, Jacob Goldberg.”