Joe Kenkel Battles Stifled Creativity in 'Something in Your Hands' [Fresh Vid]

Joe Kenkel’s Dream Creator delivers a newfangled look at the archetype of a young musician living in Nashville. Kenkel, a sophisticated folk-rock songwriter, documents Music City’s idiosyncrasies on his debut LP, with acutely observant lyrics that weave their way through a host of characters that you’ve probably encountered: strange men with unsolicited advice, churchgoing neighbors, the guy sweeping up downtown after the party crowd makes its way home. Turning his gaze outward, he finds inspiration in the weirdness, tragedy and tender moments that come with life in the city.

If Nashville is the setting of the record, then Dream Creator’s narrative appropriately revolves around a young musician on a quest to make something worth sharing and caring about. Plagued with existential dread and feelings of inadequacy, the artist by some miracle maintains the pure-hearted conviction to create. On the Dream Creator track “Something in Your Hands,” Kenkel confronts those internal feelings of inadequacy and anxiety, offering personal testimony. 

“Ultimately the song dances around a theme of being actively creative as a way of battling staleness or uncertainty or fear,” Kenkel tells the Cream. “To me there’s nothing more exciting than thinking of the years we have to make things — tangible things — with each other.”

The fulfilment of collaboration is at the center of the beautiful and playful video for “Something in Your Hands,” directed by Nashville filmmakers Joey Brodnax and Hilary Bell, which we’re very pleased to premiere above. Bell developed the video’s concept, choosing shooting locations based on her experiences of growing up in Nashville. The cast is made up of friends that Bell came of age with, and the locations, from the skate park to the Springwater, are their old stomping grounds. The video presents what Bell describes as “a day in the life” of a tight-knit community of friends and family, and she consciously chose a simple narrative in order to create an intimate portrait of the city she knows and loves. 

“I think there’s a collective anxiety surrounding the city’s rapid change,” says Bell, and I wanted to carve out some familiarity and a sense of community against the backdrop of that landscape.”

The “Something in Your Hands” video pays tribute to the invaluable bonds between friends, as well as the power those relationships and creativity have to pull one out of a creative slouch. “The song makes the case that the things we make together (art, relationships) are what stand the test of time,” Kenkel says. Stream and buy Dream Creator below via Bandcamp, and look for Kenkel performing as a member of Styrofoam Winos, who play with Altered Statesman and Crave on at The End on Wednesday.