https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkEOGUtPysE
During the band’s successful 2017 crowd-funding campaign, singer-songwriter-producer Gareth Auden-Hole (aka Jack Pine) revealed that, like much of the album, "You'll Find Me Waiting" was inspired by the island cabin built by his grandfather on Lake Nipigon, Ontario. Having spent the majority of his summers vacationing on this same family island, Gareth recalled family stories of his grandmother being left alone with her 3 daughters for days at a time while grandpa Jack took the boat with him to camp and work on the lake for Abitibi Forestry. Although the song doesn’t retell this story exactly, the inspiration is apparent in lyrics that explore the loneliness and longing of the song's protagonist for a lover that’s left them behind: “Oh so blessed will I be to hear your voice, dear, and replace that wretched tone of a man alone.”
To create the ghostly new video, Gareth Auden-Hole collaborated with videographer Monika Kraska (known for her previous work with the band Boyhood) to create a more modern interpretation of his grandparents’ legend of love and longing, starring Gareth himself and his partner in real-life, Martin Foucault. The story follows Martin through days upon days of lonely moments in a secluded lakeside log house. He appears to be alone, but flashes of a missing lover (played by Gareth) cross his consciousness and blur the lines between imagination and reality.
Needless to say, this video is as personal for singer-songwriter-producer Gareth Auden-Hole as it is important for Jack Pine and The Fire. Gareth explains his reluctant decision to star as himself:
“The stories of my grandparents’ era at the island inspired most of the the lyrics for “You’ll Find Me Waiting”, depicting a traditional Canadian marriage between a hard-working lumberjack and his wife back at home. The song assumed her perspective but I stumbled when my lyrics required me to reveal the gender of that isolated voice - is it the performer, me, “a man alone” ...or the more traditional “girl alone” that I had been imagining as I wrote. I found myself wrapped up in useless questions of sexuality, gender stereotypes and perceived identities despite knowing the song itself to be a universal story where the characters' gender meant very little. Similar lyric-writing conundrums had previously led me to leave songs gender ambiguous but in this case I chose to stick to the true first person in the song: Me.
When it came to making the video, I again struggled with the gender of the characters and it just felt petty. I compelled myself to confront both the societal biases and the personal insecurities that were causing me to subconsciously question the appropriateness of a same-sex relationship in a 'popular' media production. I stuck to the 1st person lyric and decided to further own it by casting myself and my actual life partner, as ourselves.”
The love and longing of his grandparents inspires the lyrics for "You'll Find Me Waiting" and with this new official music video Jack Pine further personalizes the age old stories of his family's heritage. Fitting too that the video is launched on August 17th, the same day that Jack Pine again leaves his partner behind to embark on an 11 date Northern Ontario leg of his solo “Lone Wolf Tour”. He’s stoked to get back out on to the long open road and threatens to make this route an annual pilgrimage.