By Phoenix Johnson
It all started with a friend crush and a trip to Montana.
S. Holden Jaffe aka [Del Water Gap](https://www.instagram.com/delwatergap/) and rising young actor [Charlie Plummer](https://www.instagram.com/charliefplummer/?hl=en) have always wanted to work together, and a pandemic road trip has allowed the dream to finally come to fruition. Del Water Gap’s new song “Hurting Kind” releases today, along with a music video co-directed with Plummer in the beautiful Montana mountains, off of Del Water Gap’s forthcoming [self titled debut album](https://found.ee/DWGLP), out October 8th via Mom + Pop Music.
Their friendship started years back after the two played footsie on social media, thinking the other was cool from a distance. It’s cute, really. After a trip to a vegan restaurant, the boys have been friends ever since.
“I asked Holden out of the blue, ‘Hey, would you want to go to Montana for like 10 days and go see a Bon Iver show and then drive around?’ and he was like, ‘Yeah, sure.’ It just all kind of worked out that I finished this job and he had just finished an album that he had done. We got to go out there and had this incredibly beautiful, serene experience...and was just so connected to the place,” Plummer recounts.
By Silken Weinberg
“We went in August, so it was beautiful and sunny. Then when we were out there, he played me ‘Hurting Kind’, and a couple others that he was gonna put on the next album. I just really fell in love with this song in particular and said to him ‘Hey, the second you want to make a video for this, let's talk about doing one.’ It was already starting to kind of come to me a little bit in terms of some ideas and stuff like that. Almost two years after that, it all kind of came back around and his label gave him some change to make a video, and so we got to go out back to Montana and shoot it and brought a good group of people out and went to the exact spot that we were in last time. It proved to be a really, really wonderful experience.”
From intense eye contact, a still sex scene, and a half-broken truck found on the side of the road, the music video presents Jaffe, who was also the creative director of the project, vulnerable in all forms of the word. The roots of the poem-turned-song trace back to a heartbreak of the singer and details the magnetism in attraction, with all the complications in between.
“I have worked with a few of my friends on music, but I have not worked with many friends on visuals. I find that visuals and the visual representation is much more involved. The sort of risk of being misinterpreted feels much more dire with visuals than it does with music, so it's a really vulnerable thing to entrust someone with,” Jaffe said. “I think it definitely brought us closer.”
Jaffe sat on the song for around three years, and still finds relevance and a ring of truth in the lyrics. As for the music video, the visuals have evolved to what they are today.
“I'm a big proponent of rooting \[the video\] with the words \[of the song\]. But in this case, I had this guy who I think is such an incredible lyricist, and the song that I really loved, so it made the most sense to start there,” remarks Plummer. “I think that idea of this being in-love type of feeling that has pain to it, but then it's like two sides of a coin. As we kind of furthered, even that thought became more of a conversation on someone's inner dialogue with themselves, basically, in terms of wrapping themselves up into another person, and a being-loved type of feeling. In this case, we had our kind of hero, Holden, who's the first thing you see in the video \[wearing a\] red jacket, and he's kind of contrasting this other Holden. He's trying to take himself back. I think I talked about it like he's trying to hijack his life back from the part of himself that's gone full into this new relationship or feeling or whatever it might be...
“By the time we end it, he's just resigned to the fact that it's a part of him, and that it exists. But at the same time, it's never that simple,” Plummer continues. “I think there is that part of him that’s kind of weakening a little bit and crippling a little bit, and definitely suffering. I think that that was an interesting thing in general, in regards to relationships, especially new relationships. There's so many kinds of conflicting thoughts that are going on. It's like, ‘I never want to lose this person,’ but also ‘I need space, and this is terrifying.’ And so just trying to find a way in this beautiful landscape to get to explore those themes”
With projects ranging from tv series (_Looking for Alaska_) to indie films (_Gully_), Plummer utilized his diverse acting background to approach his first directing experience from a different point of view.
Plummer says on wearing the directorial hat, “I remember calling Holden out of the blue and being like, ‘I think I have an interesting topic we can explore.’ And it's one that is vulnerable and kind of tricky to navigate sometimes, and it's all relationship stuff...codependency stuff, and all that, but I think in doing so, we can really kind of open the video up to do something that really has legs, and hopefully, people will be able to appreciate for a long time that isn't just a flurry of really cool shots and cool aesthetics, which I think is awesome. We did another video at the same time that's definitely more in that vibe. But I think for this, I connected so much with the lyrics from the jump, and I really just wanted to kind of honor that in a very real way and actually explore something and hopefully kind of end it \[by\] asking a question more than just giving an explanation of what we were trying to say.
“I'm always blown away by Holden, and any musician that I know, because I feel like as an actor, and in some respects to as a director, you can always really hide behind the veil of a character, or a story that separates from yourself or performances that are yours. But as a musician, those are your words. And when you get on stage or when you're in the video, it's you saying them and singing. There is really no hiding from it at that point. And so, I don't think I could ever do that but I admire and love the people that can.”
By Silken Weinberg
While Plummer became more comfortable with his role as director, he took note of his past experiences on set and tucked it in his back pocket for safe keeping.
“The directors that I've gotten to work with that I really respect and enjoy working with, all kind of share this trait of being able to really know what they want, and be very clear about that. At the same time, able to sit back and let other people do their jobs and let people shine in whatever role they have, and just really, actually support people more than anything. You can make sure that that's really the tone on set. Hopefully, I was able to do that,” Plummer says.
Because the duo have bonded over cinema throughout their friendship, Jaffe and Plummer derived inspiration from films like _Hiroshima Mon Amour_ and Gus Van Sant’s _My Own Private Idaho_ as well as _Paris, Texas_.
“I grew up watching music videos. My parents would show me Spike Jonze ,and so I was always kind of in love with that medium from a pretty young age,” Plummer remarks. “So once this all kind of came around, it was really exciting to get to dive in and take some stuff from music videos that I've really loved, older stuff, and just stealing a bunch of shit, to be honest with you. Also, from films that I really love. Spike Jonze is a big one for me. I love how he can really carry an energy through a whole video and I think he works best when his stuff is really simple, which I really admire. It was a cool opportunity to get to give some props to some of our favorite films and videos.”
With a performance two years ago at Market Hotel marking his last show, Jaffe is itching to release more music and be amongst a crowd. During the pandemic, he escaped to his parent’s house in Maine, learned how to use Ableton, and started journaling along with half of the country.
The year slowly passed and Del Water Gap was finally able to take the stage in front of 7,000 people in late May, and even had a surprise visitor.
“It was crazy. It felt like doing the most amount of drugs my body could take, and then doing more. And I was sober,” recalls Jaffe. “There \[were\] a lot of people that knew my music, which I wasn't expecting. Right before the set actually, I walked into my dressing room and there was a raccoon...eating my meat plate. There were a bunch of people behind me and I was just like ‘raccoon!’ and everyone ran, and the raccoon charged out after us. I googled it and apparently, raccoons are a sign of luck and wisdom. So it was a good omen. “
By Silken Weinberg
He adds that the show was one of his favorite moments to date, saying “The best way to sum it up was like when you're 14 and you're like, ‘I want to be a rockstar.’ You have a picture of what that looks like. This was the first time in my entire life the reality aligned with what that fantasy was so that was super cool. Because, that doesn't usually happen.”
As for Plummer, he will be starring in Roland Emmerich’s _Moonfall_ that is expected to release in February 2022, speaking on the role saying, “It was a full on experience that I've never had, working with green screen, doing crazy action sequences and stuff like that. But it was pretty fitting, because for me, I was already in such a weird, surreal time of being super disconnected from everything, and not seeing my friends and family, and just being isolated a lot of the time. So it was kind of perfect that in the midst of a worldwide disaster ourselves, I was getting to do a proper disaster movie.” However, he still plans to explore his future in directing, with interest in television and film. “Going forward, I would love to be able to continue to direct things that really do mean a lot to me—having a core long battle always then push me to really kind of give my best performance as a director and also for the storytellers to be the best they can be,” Plummer said.
Plummer continues, “Honestly, I'm at a stage where I'm just trying to learn as much as I can learn from people I really respect. If I get opportunities to do that, then that would be really exciting. But it's just another way of expressing yourself really, and I love acting. I still want to do that for the rest of my life, but it'd be really nice to have a couple other things too, that I'm just as passionate about or just passionate about, in general, that I'm able to do to get that same kind of fix.”
Forever bonded by this Montana dream world they’ve created, Plummer and Jaffe are complementary of each other and what they brought to the table but ultimately, that they made a killer video together.
“Not only is it a success for me, hopefully in some sense, but it really is for him and there's really nothing better than, in my eyes, getting to make something with people you love and have that mean something to them just as much as it does to you,” Plummer said.
“And I mean, I was definitely stressed but at the same time, I felt like I was able to really have fun. I really just like to actually get to step behind it and get to take a shot and take in a special moment rather than being in the midst of it, which is an equally special thing. It's just a different point of view.”
Plummer adds that he hopes they “get to do more of it, because I love music videos. I love the format. I love getting to tell a story that's pretty broad over the course of just a few minutes and doing most of it just through imagery. I think it's all really, really fun.”
Del Water Gap looks forward to the release of his full 12-song LP, _Del Water Gap_, on October 8, of which Jaffe explains, “It's a bunch of songs that I've sort of been collecting over the past couple years. I worked with friends and I worked with not friends. I'm really, really proud of it and it really sums up the last three years of my life. It feels like a good picture of the last couple of years of living and getting to know myself better. It's been a dream of mine to make an LP. I've never done that. There's something so classic about having 12 songs, and putting them all together. We're all so single driven and EP’s and that's great. I've done that, but I think there's something really bucket list about having an LP.”
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