How we made the Caravan Up North video

We know that lots of you have been loving our Caravan Up North video. Here’s a short insight into what on earth we were thinking when putting it together, written by James.

The Caravan Up North set contains a tune by Ewan and a traditional song. The tune was inspired by the title of a highland tour that our erstwhile agent was trying to put together in 2014. The Caravan Up North Tour! We kid you not. The song, An Robh Thu ‘Sa Bheinn or Were You in the Hills? is about losing cattle in the hills, check out the song lyrics here >>

We had planned to get together in July and make some more videos for the new album in the highlands. However, that was logistically difficult just coming out of Covid restrictions so instead we put together plans to do another ‘lockdown’ style video in our respective locales (see Black Dog – for previous form!). The theme was camping and generally holidaying in the highlands. Each band member was also instructed to film themselves playing the track against a grassy background with the hope that we could kind of make it look like we were all in the same field! 

Malcolm’s brainwave was to add the toy car and caravan scenes and his daughter Phoebe did a fabulous job painting the backdrop. The fort and garage are actually toys that Malcolm’s grandfather made for him. Everyone sent their contributions to our manager Jane-Ann, who edited it all together. She had the idea of trying some rudimentary green screen placing Malcolm inside his own toy scenes.

My personal inspiration was those slightly surreal videos the Old Grey Whistle Test made for bands that couldn’t be in the studio. In the end though, each band member had their own ‘style’ making the final edit look like Tom Weir meets Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention! Necessity is the mother of invention after all.

Caravan Up North is available on our brand new album Acid Croft Vol 9, buy your copy here >> And if you haven’t seen the video yet, you can find it here >>