OurStage

August 19, 2008 - After weeks of hype about the premiere of a music video filmed locally, area residents filled the patio of the Great Pacific Coffee Company Aug. 11 for the showing. Sixteen-year-old Cara McHugh had much more screen time than expected in the Therese-Marie video about a guy who flirted then said, "I Ain't That Kinda Man," the title of the song and DVD. Six of McHugh's Bishop DuBourg High School junior classmates were on hand for the screening. "It was good," McHugh said. "I didn't know what to expect but it was good. I liked the make-up." The much ballyhooed boots-on-the-bar-rail scene - that took two hours to film and prompted Keith Bruns, Subway Sandwich shop owner, to become one of the chief contributors and chairman of the premiere - did not make the final cut of music video. During the shooting, Bruns had been recruited to place his boots on the bar rail, along with a line of other cowboy boots, to signify a group of men at a bar. "It turned out to be too dark," Therese-Marie said. "It just didn't work." The singer-song writer performed live on the stage and conducted a live auction prior to the airing of the video. Young dancers, twirling flashing streamers that reflected the lights of the outdoor patio, gamboled in front of the audience. They wore Therese-Marie butterfly tee shirts, promoting the artist's new album of that name. The event was a benefit for Troy Kwiecien, Catawissa, who suffered a spinal cord injury 14 months ago in a freak accident in the yard at his family's home. Organizers worried whether Kwiecien, who does not have a handicapped accessible van, would attend the event. As it turned out, his friend and mentor Mark Hulsey, Robertsville, transported Kwiecien and his motorized wheelchair to Pacific. Therese-Marie wrote the song, arranged the music, produced and starred in the music video. She donated CD and DVD sales to Kwiecien. Raffles of fragrance baskets, framed music pictures and a 50-50 raffle generated a total of $2,945 for the Kwiecien family. The money will be used to modify the Kwiecien home to make it handicapped accessible. "I'm just elated," Bruns said as he delivered the funds to the family. "People really turned out."

August 5, 2008 - Therese Marie has felt the expressive and purifying power of music as a divine marriage of ideas and devotion. This has given her a compelling and passionate voice in the world of popular and contemporary music. Former hits of the popular singer-songwriter include "There's a City in My Heart," a critically acclaimed album, which was followed by "Whosoever Will," a music video. A seasoned inspirational artist, Therese Marie was commissioned to write the theme song for McDonald's Gospellfest music video. She also has contributed her voice and songwriting talents to TNN's Nashville Celebrity Benefit. Now she has turned to the country genre to produce a commercial music video with her autobiographically inspired song, "Ain't That Kinda Man." Therese Marie's rendition of the song, which narrates the video, was recorded in a studio. Much of the video story was shot at the Great Pacific Coffee Company in Pacific. The shooting of the video inspired Dave McHugh, owner of the Coffee Company, and Keith Bruns, owner of five local Subway Sandwich shops, to host a local premiere of the music video to raise funds for Troy Kwiecien, a local quadriplegic. The two-hour premier party, which will include live music, is the brainchild of Therese-Marie, singer-songwriter, who wrote, produces and provides the sound track for the DVD, titled "Ain't That Kinda Man." The event will be held Monday, Aug. 11, beginning at 7 p.m. at the Great Pacific Coffee Company, 220 S. First St. Cost is $10 per person, which includes sandwiches, soda, iced tea and coffee. A cash bar also will be available. The artist will air her new DVD and perform live during the event. "We hope people will come out for the evening for a bit of nourishment, great company and the fun of seeing Therese Marie's new DVD," Bruns said. The premiere will benefit Kwiecien, 21, who was injured a year ago in an accident that left him a quadriplegic. Kwiecien lives with his parents in Catawissa in a home that is not handicap equipped. The family also needs a handicapped accessible van to transport Kwiecien to therapy, doctor's visits and eventually college classes. "When it was suggested that Therese-Marie premiere the DVD at the coffee company where much of it was shot, we immediately thought of a benefit for Troy," Bruns said. Subway Sandwich Shops in Pacific will provide sandwiches for the premiere party. The Great Pacific Coffee Company will provide the soft drinks. Tickets can be purchased at the Great Pacific Coffee Company, from Keith Bruns and from Therese-Marie. For more information, contact Bruns at 314-420-4111. To learn more about Therese Marie visit www.therese-marie.com.

June 10, 2008 - I was invited to sit in on the shooting of a country-rock music video at the Great Pacific Coffee Company last Sunday afternoon. . . This was a lot more engaging than you might think, especially if, like me, you find that you get caught up in other people's enthusiasms. It takes about 24 hours of shooting with a handheld video camera to produce four minutes of video, according to Therese-Marie, the music artist who wrote and sings background vocals for this video, titled, "Ain't That Kinda Man." What was to be shot at the coffee company was a 30-second segment of the video. I was there for 1 1/2 hours and they were still shooting when I left. What kept me watching and waiting was the enthusiasm of Therese Marie, a spiritual music artist who landed at the coffee company because she needed a bar in her quasi-autobiographical tune about a traveling guy who has an opportunity to stray, but withstands the temptation and goes home to his wife because he, "Ain't That Kinda Man," the title of the video song. Therese Marie plays a melodic guitar and sings in a lilting soprano voice that I could tell would be right at home in the big church musical productions she puts on. She has honed her skills for 15 years after a startling moment in 1991 when she was sitting on a couch and she got a calling from God telling her to sing the glories of his name. I don't doubt this calling business and I don't think she doubted it either. She has written some 50 songs, made 25 videos and produced an easy-to-navigate Web site that shows her singing her songs in well-done video productions. Neither the Web page nor her songs look as churchy as you might think. Therese Marie looks more Dolly Parton than "Little House on the Prairie." She is a nonstop talker, unequivocal in her views, and quick to tell you, that a large part of her public singing has been with church groups or in church-related productions. She wrote the theme song for a City of Hope Hospital production that aired on national TV. She has had so much acceptance as a performer that recently she's been thinking she should do a straight country-rock number, shoot a really good storytelling video with her song and send it to Nashville. She is ready to move up to national exposure. So she wrote this song that was inspired by her personal story. And like a lot of country songs, it offers some gritty facts that you might not pass along in a casual conversation. Her father had an affair with a woman other than her mother and the husband of the woman he had the affair with killed her father. That loss cast a deep shadow on her life and she has never stopped thinking about what might have been if her father had not strayed and had lived to be with her. So her new commercial video song is not about what happened to her father. It is the story of her lifelong fantasy of what might have been. Listening to it, it just sounds like a nice flirty little song about a chance encounter between a traveling man and beautiful little temptress. She needed a bar and a beautiful temptress to shoot that part of the story. She turned to Lenny Lahm, an auto-repair shop owner in Union who she had worked with her on a D.A.R.E. commercial that aired on TV. It didn't show her, but it was her music. "I want you to work on this video with me and I need a bar for some of the scenes," she said. Lenny has a solid understanding of how the process of shooting scenes in a video works. It can take an hour to shoot a scene that flashes by in a millisecond on the screen. "I know a really neat bar in Pacific," he said. "It's a long bar in a big room with lots of room to work. It's a coffeehouse actually. Let's call the owner and see if we can shoot there." The idea of split-second exposure in a music video was music to the ears of Dave McHugh, the Great Pacific Coffee Company owner. He saw himself on television a dozen times during the recent flood and he remembers that in each one of those news shows, he stood there in front of the camera and talked for 20 minutes and only one or two sentences would show up in the news segment. To his joy, and the joy of other Pacific residents, the news editors kept picking good comments that he had made about the town and how folks responded to the disaster. So he had a lot of trust in the process and quickly said yes. I'm not sure how this part happened, but Dave's beautiful 16-year-old daughter Cara was cast as the barfly temptress in the video. And the family came into the normally closed coffeehouse on Sunday afternoon for the shoot. Now, here's how I got involved. Therese-Marie shares the directing part of both the audio and video on this production with Ryan Callahan of Jupiter Studios in St. Louis - who also mans the handheld video camera. Remember, this is a homemade video done by a group of professionals who have worked with Therese Marie for years and have confidence in her music and her performing. So Theresa Marie and Ryan decided to show the inside of this bar where the traveling man showed up one evening in an abstract way. He would be seen briefly, coming in the door. A split-second shot of the room would zoom in to the brass foot rail where a row of cowboy boots would rest on the rail. The foot rail at the coffee company is long, so they needed quite a few people with cowboy boots. Somehow Keith Bruns was recruited for this shot. Now you'd be surprised at how long it can take to get a dozen men, who may or may not dance, to synchronize a simple step like placing a right foot on a brass foot rail, each with the toes pointing in just the correct angle. This shoot took so long that people got hungry. Keith was so taken with the whole operation that he treated the crew to giant Subway sandwiches and told and retold the story of his boots auditioned for a country-rock music video. Keith mentioned to me that some of the interior shots at the coffee company needed to be re-shot so the crew would be back on Sunday for a few minutes. I thought I'd go by and take a quick photo for the Pacific pages and not get in anyone's way. But I got caught up in the effervescence of the little music artist who played all the parts for me and sang with the sweet voice of a nightingale. So there I was, watching a professional makeup artist with enough little pots and plastic containers of color to fill an entire coffee company table, applying makeup to the face of the beautiful temptress, Cara McHugh. Once the makeup was applied and her long brunette hair combed and recombed they were ready to shoot. Lenny, who by now is an old hand at video production, kept reassuring Cara that she was very beautiful, totally forgetting that her father was watching, and envision herself in the hallway at school talking to the most handsome guy on campus. Cara giggled. The irrepressible Dave was all over the place, repeating the direction that the directors gave his daughter and bobbing around to get a good angle of what the camera was seeing. At one point, Cara had about 10 directors telling her how to play the scene. "Put the sunglasses on. Take the sunglasses off. Put your left hand on his shoulder. No put the right hand on his shoulder. Stand closer to him. Look right into the lens of the camera as though you know someone in there." And so it went. Cara followed each direction, treating her father's direction with the same deference she gave to the professionals. All the time, in the background the music track of video was playing. And frequently Therese Marie would step up and sing the lyrics that would accompany pictures to help guide the cameraman and the actors. Now I have to tell you, "Ain't That Kinda Man" is a good song. The lyrics are vivid, telling the story of the brief encounter between the traveling man and the beautiful barfly trying to tempt him to an evening of sin. Therese Marie's background vocals are wistful and only slightly sad. It's an old story told with a different perspective. A heart-wrenching camera angle of Hank Williams, "Hey Good Looking." When somebody strays, somebody is going to get hurt. The music was arranged and produced by Jim Callahan, owner of Jupiter Studios. Callahan also plays the lead guitar in the production. Theresa Marie sings and plays rhythm guitar. Jason Carder plays drums and Joe Dean plays mandolin and banjo to fill out the band. On the night that they shot the cowboy boots on the foot rail scenes, Doc McHugh happened to be in the coffeehouse, accompanying a musician with his stand-up base. Now Doc McHugh, with his white pony tail, Western attire and ancient stand-up bass looks like he should be in the movies. This sentiment was not lost on Therese Marie, who asked Ryan Callahan to grab a few shots of Doc McHugh just for flavor. These McHughs are anything if not flavorful. As the players played their parts, no promises were made about what would end up in the final cut. Before long you'll be able to go on Therese Marie's Web page at www.therese-marie.com to see how all this came together. I highly recommend it.