Dashboard Confessional Share the Origins of New “Here’s to Moving On” Video: Exclusive
The post Dashboard Confessional Share the Origins of New “Here’s to Moving On” Video: Exclusive appeared first on Consequence.
With Origins, artists get the chance to share insights on their latest release. Today, Dashboard Confessional’s Chris Carrabba reveals the deeply personal story behind the video for his band’s new single, “Here’s to Moving On.”
Dashboard Confessional’s latest single “Here’s to Moving On” is an exercise in deep, personal honesty. Yet despite the track — and in fact, much of the album it comes from, the forthcoming All the Truth That I Can Tell — being penned months before Chris Carrabba’s near-fatal 2020 motorcycle accident, its meaning shifted in the wake of that frightening trauma.
“I spent a little bit of time with my new record recently and it now sounds to me like I wrote all of it about the accident,” Carrabba tells Consequence. “It’s become THAT to me now. It wasn’t that, since I wrote it about six months before the accident, but it’s definitely become that to me now. I don’t know that I wasn’t trying to get through something myself when I wrote the record, but it wasn’t something as coalesced as this. It wasn’t a defining moment like this.”
Fittingly, the music video for “Here’s to Moving On” is entirely about Carrabba’s recovery. The clip finds him waking up ahead of a show day, stretching out his still-sore shoulder. He finds himself in his garage, looking at letters from friends and fans he received while he was in the hospital. Then he turns and discovers the patient belongings bag where his torn and cut motorcycle gear had been sitting sitting since the day of the accident. As Carrabba reveals in his deeply personal Origins of the video, the unplanned moment you see him opening that bag is indeed the first time he’d laid eyes on those items since they saved his life.
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Check out the video for “Here’s to Moving On” below, followed by Carrabba’s full Origins of the single and video.
All the Truth That I Can Tell is out February 25th via Hidden Note Records/AWAL, and you can pre-order it now.
The Journey Home by Radhanath Swami
I was given a lot of books by some friends, and even by a lot of strangers. One that was given to me is The Journey Home by Radhanath Swami. It was given to me by John “Porcell” Porcelly (Youth of Today, Shelter, Judge, Gorilla Biscuits). One of the reasons it comes to mind now is because his story is one of fearless exploration of life and of self, and admission of your own fallibility in the process. Whereas I think before my accident I was endeavoring to be a better man, I feel like I’ve learned since to also be grateful for whatever kind of man I am right now. I’ve come to understand that that’s already a product of improvement from who I’d been in the past. I made the mistake of not being appreciative of that before reading this book, and certainly before this accident. I wanted to be a better man, but I wouldn’t have given myself the grace or given the gratitude for having become better than I’d been before. So in the video, I wanted it to represent some of that gratitude.
Break Down the Walls — Youth of Today
The whole spirit of Break Down the Walls is about revealing who you really are and revealing how things really are. For this video, I needed a little motivation to allow myself to reveal. I’m the kind of guy who protects myself, and I guess I don’t have as big a desire to be on display as much as people that do what I do really need to have. So when I was gearing up to make this video and we were bandying around ideas – a lot of them were personal – I found myself listening to this record, and it’s probably connected to Porcell having given me the book that got me there. I listened to the record just a few days before the video submission. When I got the submission and we started to tweak it, I found myself saying, “Lett’s break it down, let’s break it down more.” I was prodded by my fanhood of this record to get there.
The West Wing and The West Wing Weekly
I just watched The West Wing for the sixth time, and I love The West Wing Weekly podcast. I don’t expect the listener to easily find the through-line from The West Wing to “Here’s to Moving On,” so let me point it out. When I found myself with the lyrics to my song in hand for the first time, I could feel the spirit of the famous West Wing line, “What’s next?” “What’s next?” is about moving forward and so is the lyric “here’s to moving on”(perhaps less elegantly!). I might have also suggested that we use the walk part of the Aaron Sorkin/Tommy Schlamme walk-and-talk element in the video as an homage to The West Wing.
Bell Helmets, Alpinestars Motorcycle Gear, and Rev’It Motorcycle Clothes
Dashboard Confessional’s “Here’s to Moving On” video
There’s a moment in this video where there’s a glaring bit of honesty when I’m going through the bag of patient belongings. The moment of honesty is that that’s really me going through it for the first time. That wasn’t preconceived. I found it while we were doing this other shot of me going through all these get-well cards and things people had sent me to keep my spirits up; people I’ve never met, people I hope to meet one day. And as I was clearing the boxes, I saw the patient belongings bag and I said, “We can go through that,” and then I was on the hook. So we went through it and in that bag were the clothes that I was cut out of by the emergency room staff. They were the clothes that saved my life. It was the armored safety gear that you wear when riding a motorcycle – my Bell helmet and my Alpinestars jacket and my Rev’It pants. I can’t tell if they look as haggard on film as they look to me in person, but what definitely does is my face when I see them.
I felt the moment very heavily while filming, but when I saw the video cut for the first time, I could see a bit of shock. It’s a revelatory moment. When you see this moment in the video, you can feel the gratitude I was speaking of before. Someone in my life once said, “Wear all the gear all the time.” Maybe my uncle said it. I never thought about it again once it was said and I always wore the gear and it really did save me from worse injury and probably death. My helmet only looks marked up a little, but it’s enough to know that my face couldn’t have handled that. My skull could not have handled that impact. Whatever you can or can’t see in the clothes while watching the video, you can clearly see that I’m seeing this gear and understanding the whole gravity of the situation. It was a lot of luck, but it was more than luck – it was this gear.
Vanderbilt University Medical Center
Photo via Facebook/@VanderbiltHealth
A major inspiration for this video is the medical staff at Vanderbilt. The power of intention that all of those people had, the responsibility that they all took on on my behalf to give me physical freedom in my life again – this was a grand effort. I can’t imagine that it just feels like their job to them. I can’t imagine that these people could have all done what they did with their medical care and just their feeling of care towards me if it was just simply their job. From the beginning of the video when I’m getting out of bed to the end where I’m actually walking and carrying my own guitar in my own hand under my own strength… I very nearly couldn’t have done that. The medical team at Vanderbilt inspired that in a direct way. They manifested it for me.
Dashboard Confessional Share the Origins of New “Here’s to Moving On” Video: Exclusive
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