Today we premiere a video from the Portland Oregon-based Shook Twins’. “Holler It Down” is slated to appear on their forthcoming album tentatively titled What We Do. The new record was produced by Ryan Hadlock (The Lumineers, Milo Greene) and is tentatively scheduled for release this winter. The song was videotaped as part of the Humboldt Live Sessions by Chuck Johnson in Humboldt County California. Below the video, the Shook Twins (identical twins Laurie and Katelyn Shook) share their thoughts on the tune and the new record.
This song was written by our violin player, Anna Tivel. She has her own solo project called, Anna and the Underbelly and she is an amazing songwriter and guitarist, as well as shredding the violin! She never really loved this song when she sang it on her own, so she gave it to us one fine day and we melded it into this arrangement! We are very happy with what all the band members have brought to this song and we think it is a great tune. When we asked her what exactly this song was about, she couldn’t really give a straight answer, but we all picture a bunch of street kids running around in the summer and staying up late into the night and being wild and free. She has a beautiful way with words and they create such great imagery!

The new release we just recorded (that has this song, “Holler It Down,” on it) is a whole new beast for us. We have never had drums on an album, or never really had a full hands-on producer. Our last two albums, we worked with some brilliant people, but we were very much producing as much as they were, and this time we really put it into someone else’s hands and it was WONDERFUL! We had full trust in Ryan Hadlock and pretty much from day one; we knew that his vision was very similar to ours… but better!

Humboldt Live Sessions is something we’ve wanted to do for a long time… ever since we saw the video that Chuck did for Niko (our newest band member, who has a solo project called Cyber Camel). Chuck is a BRILLIANT videographer and we had such a blast shooting this with him. He’s hilarious for one, but he had a great casual way of filming us that made us all very comfortable and it was so easy!

Originally we were going to do our song, “Ting Ting” , off our last record, Window. That song is about an old run-down shack, so we asked Chuck to scout out a cool looking run-down shack… and he sent a pic of this one and we all loved it, but realized it’s not the “Ting Ting” shack… it’s the shack that those kids in “Holler It Down” would hang out in! So we changed it to that song instead! It was an awesome location… lots of color and interesting graffiti, it was perfect. Except for the ticks! Niko, Anna and Katelyn all found ticks on themselves after the shoot!