“For a month long license, I’d need to charge you $0, but if you licensed it for your lamplighter project for a year, I could give you a deal of 12 months for the price of ten, for a total of $0. Lots of blessings on continuing a positive journey:).”
This was the response that we received from Craig Menowa, lead singer/songwriter of Cloud Cult, when we sent out a hail-mary email to ask if we could use one of the their songs for our Lamplighter sculpture video.
Zero dollars. That doesn’t happen.
Cloud Cult is Ashley’s favorite band and one that has always resonated with me as well. They write powerful and moving indie rock/folk songs chock full of raw energy and emotion. Their songs are about love and death and loss and light and hope. Always hopeful. Craig has a way of weaving humor and real human experience into his poetic musings. His writing style, coupled with the band’s sweeping musical prowess, invites the listener into the cosmic jamboree of their music. They’re a top-notch band.
And now, Craig Menowa was letting us use on of his songs, “There’s So Much Energy in Us”, as the musical backdrop for a video about our new Lamplighter sculpture! $0. So generous…
The Lamplighter Sculpture video with Cloud’s Cult’s “There’s So Much Energy in Us.”
Fast forward a couple of years and we notice on Patreon that they are playing a show in La Crosse, Wisconsin as part of at the ArtSpire arts and music festival. Booyah! “When is the ticket pre-sale for tickets to the Artspire?” Ashley asks on Patreon. “That show will actually be free,” Craig responds.
Zero dollars. Once again.
So we apply to the art festival, get in, and that brings us to June 10 when we found ourselves drumming our hands on the tiny stage watching Craig and the band warm up for their evening performance. The muddy waters of the Mississippi meandered by as the sun set and birds flitted about. Grandma had the boys which allowed Ashley and me to recall former days when we rocked out with reckless abandon, losing ourselves in the musical ether that only a live concert can create. God I have missed live music.
Cloud Cult is an amalgamation of six multi-instrumental musicians and two painters. They all sing and on one final song, they all collectively played a drum while singing. The painters work on stage while the band plays, creating a finished painting that is auctioned off at the conclusion of the show. The band comes at you from every angle possible: lyrics, melody, sweeping orchestral movements, rhythm, paint strokes, dance moves. Watching them on stage is an invitation to let loose and be courageous, to love without hesitance, to accept loss without bitterness, and to hope for the light in all of us to drown out the darkness. As I said, they’re TOP-NOTCH.
Music, art, and HOPE.
The beginning. (They only stayed for a few songs.)
The end.
So we rocked. out. Afterwards, we managed to score to the setlist and Craig came back to sign autographs and meet fans, I suddenly found myself at a loss for words. Now, this doesn’t happen to me very often as I can yap with the best of them. But facing Craig after he and the band had just put on a masterful performance, trying to express how much his music means to us and how generous he was to let us use his music in our video, I just blanked. My mouth was moving and making some hems and haws but the words were stuck in my throat. I was fan-girling.
After what seemed like a whole heaping helping of awkward, we thanked him again and floated away with our set list in hand. The crowd dissipated as we strolled down the streets towards our Airbnb and our sleeping children. Ashley elbowed me and said, “You were fan-girl.” I chuckled admittedly and looked at the set list again. “Thanks for being”, he had signed.
Thanks for being, too, Cloud Cult. It felt good to be together, if only for one beautiful summer night in La Crosse, Wisconsin.
Meeting Cloud Cult and watching them perform to perfection under the night sky was both humbling and inspirational. Seeing these talented creators, who offered such great generosity to us personally and to the crowd that night who watched for free, reenergized us and the energy has carried forward into our busy summer studio.
May our creative work energize you as well and may we all remember that not everything of value has attachment to a dollar amount. Thank you for sharing in the journey with us.
P.S. Ashley recaps all of our trips in her Stories From the Road posts on Patreon. Check out the La Crosse story HERE.