Dilettante is a collection of songs I’ve written and recorded over the last 10 years or so.

 

I'm excited to share them and will be releasing them

in this space one at a time over the next couple of months. Welcome to week 13!

 

We could call it a record, an album, or a playlist.

 

All the tunes were produced and recorded in Canada in various locations; wherever Tim Thorney (the great!) has had his studio, Villa Sound, that’s where I’d go, from Toronto to the lovely Blue Mountains of Ontario.

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This week brings us to the final tune in the collection and it's called CHELSEA. I saved it for last and I'm thrilled to be putting it out here today because it is a video that has been almost two years in the making and it's a collaboration with one of the most creative and visionary people i know, Josh Rosenzweig. And he's my friend. We've known each other since high school! Since being my favorite actor back then (oh, if only you'd seen him as Jesus in Godspell or Algy in The Importance of Being Earnest), he has expanded and focused his energies through several different lenses over the years-- from being the Artistic Director of the famed, downtown drag theatre company Theatre Couture, to working as a brand and content shaper for various media empires large and small, he has always brought his huge stores of vision and creativity to bear. When I knew I wanted to make a video for Chelsea, I immediately thought of Josh. We hadn't done anything together since the late 1900's when we started a theatre company together in Los Angeles, and I got real excited at the prospect of collaborating with him again, each of us having been down a few more artistic roads by now.

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It was absolutely delicious. He very generously accepted a sort of vague concept that I pushed on him, and then he ran with it, made it his own, and added to it in a way I would never have thought of; his aesthetic has this combination of grit and symmetry that I love.

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Then came editing. My favorite part. Josh truly excels here! It was just so. much. fun. to sit with him at that editing bay and watch his musical sense blend effortlessly with his notion of how to tell a story in an understated, un-obvious way.

I learned a lot. 

 

So I thank him from my heart & gut for his time, talent, patience and love. This video is really his.

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Special thanks this week also goes out to Keith Levy, aka Miss Sherry Vine, for hosting us at the YouTube Studios (and for being playback bitch on shoot day!).

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This is the last song in the Dilettante collection but there is more to come in this space, including another collaboration with Josh, a blog and maybe a little store where you'll be able to purchase any of the songs you just have to have in your own collection. And then...maybe some new songs.

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Until then and with gratitude,

Nell

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the CHELSEA video

 

(click here for a bonus video)

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