This project has been the recipient of more than its share of serendipity. Logic and Precedence was against most of the ideas and movement around this, and yet it kept happening. Let me just say, and I will continue to say, that the artists in this film are the top of their game. True believers in their craft and deeply devoted to their work. Everyday I hear people complain about the fall of the music industry. Listen, there is beautiful music out there to had, and a good handful of it is right here in this film.

I grabbed Rocco when he was warming up for his set and asked him if he would perform a song with me. He’s not just a genius guitar player and singer, but a true musicologist as well. Knows all the history without making you feel like he knows it all. Truly humble cat. I showed him some old lyrics I dug up from the original abolitionist movement in the States during the 1800’s. The song was called “I Am An Abolitionist” and its a crusty little number. I had no idea when I found the lyrics what the music was supposed to sound like (I found out later you are supposed to sing them to the melody of auld lang syne—The New Years Eve song…“Should old acquaintance be forgot…” la la la). So, I decided to write some music around these hard, no-holds-barred, aggressive lyrics.

Anyway, I played the song for Rocco and asked if he would perform it with me. He bravely jumped him, found himself a place inside the song, and we were off.

The band I play with are mates of mine from years of playing together. Dino, Ben, Aaron, Kris, Jonathan… all top shelf players. They were all kind enough to come in to cut the songs that I was performing for the film. Now, they had never heard “I Am An Abolitionist” before. So here we were, a 40 person film crew, 10 person sound crew, lights, cameras, and a totally unrehearsed band. Brilliant!

I showed them the chord changes, Rocco and I split up the verses (had to have cue cards to remember) and Lights, Camera, Action. Now, I think artists are their best when faced with do or die situations. Screwing up a take was not just a do-over, but a complete reset and burning up of valuable resources. You see, I knew exactly how much every foot of film cost. Every dollar and every minute of time on the set was constantly running through my brain. But instead of some expensive trial and error attempts at a performance, we got music. No one really knew where the song was going, but we just somehow followed each other all the way through. Watching and LISTENING. This is why I like bands. They have to DEPEND on each other. That can be the most exhilarating feeling. To need the other to get the end and land it with dignity. We found the song while playing it, and what a beautiful moment that was. That really became a metaphor for this entire project. I never really knew how to end it, I just knew, that with all these amazing people around, we were going to find something beautiful, and perhaps, just maybe, make art. Scary and wonderful at the same time. And the curtain falls.

Justin Dillon

I swing as hard as I can at every ball that crosses the plate. Some people call that wrecklessness. Some, and with good reason, are more measured and planned with their approaches. Not me. If I see a glimmer of some target off in the distance I will start running as fast as I can without a lot of thought.  

The day we started shooting our first performances in LA I knew I had run far without a lot of thought of where I was going. I had a faint glimpse, but no idea how to get there. We filmed that day at famed Village Recorders in Santa Monica. Such an incredible recording studio with a rich history and crazy cool staff (Brook Brook Brook). By 6 am there were film production trucks circled around the block. A mass of crew was running in and out of the building, hauling the gear up several flights of stairs into an old Masonic Theater that actually sits on top of the recording studio. Everything is wired in so you can record upstairs and send it all down to the studio. I love old rooms.

I had this queezy feeling as I looked at this mass of semis and gear I could not identify, that I had crossed a line I could not return from. I know every film has its fabled story about how they didn’t have the budget to film and they found it at the last minute, or how they went $100 million over budget but made it back the first day of release. While all the gear was being rolled into this beautiful studio, I was in the basement writing grant proposals to foundations for money to pay for all that was happening that day. I spent the first part of the shoot day faxing tax forms and not for profit id numbers. We had no money in the bank the first day of shooting, and with all the favors and donations of service, gear, and facilities, this was still going to cost something considerable. I knew it would come, somehow. But it was not there yet.

The first group to show up was The Scrolls. This new band hosts an incredible matching of bands you have heard of: Nickel Creek, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and Toad The Wet Sprocket. All string instruments, keys and vocals…no drums.  Its as true a sound as I have ever heard.  Benmont Tensch was the first to show up. I can spot a musician in a crowd of thousands and I noticed him walking up to the studio unsure of where to go. I introduced myself to him, offered to carry some of his gear, and led him in. “So ever record here?” I said. “Sure, several times” “Wow, anybody I heard of”… “Well, Van Morrison”… “No Sh@*, wow man thats amazing, must have been a real moment for you”. It was not until later in the day when I asked the studio owner who Benmont played with that he looked at me a faint amount of disbelief and said Tom Petty, as in, he is a Heartbreaker… like from the beginning. I was impressed and slightly embarrassed to say the least.

Sean and Sara Watkins could not be sweeter. I was a little unsure of what they would be playing. “We were thinking about covering Radioheads Exit Music For A Film” they said. How poetic. The first song we cut for this film is Exit Music. Perfect. Now there are a few pieces of music that just should not be touched. Led Zep posses most of them, as do U2. I think Billy Holiday and Jeff Buckley have cemented a few tunes into the ground as well that just have no chance of being removed. Ever so often you get someone like a Rufus Wainwright  who can manage a new take. But its rare. To touch a Radiohead song is like trying to use nuclear power. It has an energy that seems accessible, but used poorly, or worse in the wrong hands, and we have a global disaster on our ears.  

Sean, Sara, Benmont, and Luke Bella along with Glen Phillip’s honest and vulnerable vocals performed that song in a way I could have never imagined. They took it to a new place, which made us all love that song more. I remember being in the control room after the first take and it was just silent for what seemed like hours.  Everyone knew they just experienced something other-ly and all together beautiful.

Rocco and his band showed up next. A deeply humble cat with skills that deserve to be bragged about. The brother is focused and came to the shoot with all kinds of knowledge about the issue. He had just come back from Prague and began to tell me all the stories he was hearing there about the vulnerability of the women in Easter Europe. How they are so easily preyed upon by traffickers promising a better life somewhere west. His time there opened his eyes and he was full focused to point his talent towards some solution.

When the cameras started rolling Rocco and his mates went full force into “I Trust You To Kill Me”. The brother was pulling that performance from somewhere… somewhere deep inside and far way. He was absolutely possessed. And even in as sterile an environment as a film shoot, everyone was brought into this little world he was making for a few minutes. Some musical artists know how to write songs really well. For some, playing an instrument is their thing. Some sing and lead up front. And some just plain look good. Rocco has it all. And delivers it in the most convincing and humble package imaginable. I hear a lot of music, but that performance touched me.

After a 14 hour day of shooting I remember the Asst Director coming over and telling me it was my turn. Wow. I had completely forgotten that I had to perform that day too. After hours of making sure we were getting everything we need from these artists performances, I now had get out there and turn on the love light.  

Justin Dillon

FAIR TRADE PICTURES

Hi,  My name is Justin Dillon.  I produced and directed this film Call+Response.  I have been a singer-songwriter for most of my life, and have now somehow found myself in the middle of feature length film.  I never intended to make a film.  Honest.  It just kind of, happened.  I believe this film has always wanted to be made, and it just so happened that I was the guy walking down the street that day when the film landed on earth.  Let me go back a bit.

Have you ever seen something so incredulous, so ludicrous, so clearly wrong that you quickly looked up and around to see if anyone else could see what you were looking at?   To see if anyone else could verify this catastrophy?  That is how I felt when I first heard about modern day slavery and human trafficking.   27 million people?  32 billion a year in profits?  “Surely this is isolated”.  “Surely this is overblown and sensationalized”.  “There is no way in a globalized world that this could be happening…there’s too many cameras….too many news programs…”.   

When I did look up I saw some amazing individuals and organizations who were diligently at work on this issue.  They were passionate, but few.  I could not believe that in the 21st century we have people selling people to people.  Naive?  Maybe.  I’ve been called that.  But this got me so deep that it would not leave me alone.  I knew that this was not simply an issue, it was a downright breach of human justice, and I could not consider myself much of a human if I did not apply myself, in some small way, to right this.

Ahhh, but what to do?  Stabbing a human trafficker with scissors sounded right.  Breaking down child brothel doors sounded right.  Driving a tank into a locked work camp sounded right.  But none of these opportunities were presenting themselves to me.   So for me, I decided that my “activism” was to do what I know to do, and love to do, best.  I will write a song.  It could have just as easily been something else, had I been someone else.  But songwriting is what I know do do.  So I did.  I called it Baby Blue and I based if off of several stories of Cambodian child brothels I heard from journalists like Nicholas Kristof, and abolitionists like Kevin Bales and Gary Haugen.  I used the song to speak about the issue and move my little world towards some attention to this.  

That was cool.  But I wanted to do some more.  I still could find any jobs driving tanks, so I decided to put together a small concert near my hometown in San Francisco.  That went great.  Really great.  Now what?

I had this idea that more musicians might want to help with this cause.  The connection between music and slavery seemed very ancient and deep (it was in fact much deeper than I anticipated) and I thought that small benefit concert was due.  The problem is, I really don’t know anyone of note in the industry.   I can’t just pick up the phone and get said rock legend to come throw down.  It was at that time that I heard about a film that was coming out about the end of the British Slave trade by a company called Walden Media (Ray, Chronic “what” cles of Narnia).   What a great opportunity to push the idea that slavery is still around, in fact, its worse then it was 200 years ago.  I pitched an idea to Walden about a “Concert To End Slavery” that we could connect with their film.  Artists would get together and film performances for a one day concert event and we would share this concert with the world.  They were kind enough to let me run with the idea.  I think the words were, “Go get ‘em Gelfof, let us know when you get Jagger”.  They were very supportive and generous. 

I worked for two months to pull artists together in time for their film’s release.  Remember, I don’t know anyone.  After two months of me working every day of the week, we both realized that this was not going to finish in time.   We parted ways, but, to me, something felt like it still wanted to happen.  The connection between music and oppression was too great to be ignored.  Without the backing of a studio or institution I went to some of my friends in the commercial industry and asked what it would cost (with favors) to film a few performances.  Now keep in mind, I am a musician, and I must confess that for the most part I hate the sound of live recorded performances.  They sound sterile and lifeless to me.  Ever so often you get a good one, but usually its pretty weak compared to the studio recording.  Therefore I wanted to film performances inside recording studios, but I wanted them to look like stages.  The look of a live performance, the sound of a record.  Not easy to do, and not cheap!

After learning how much that kind of production costs, I started asking around how to finance something like this.  I knew I would have to get donations to pull this off.  And if I wanted to keep the momentum of the last months work of work up, I would have to get them soon.  I started asking around to charitable foundations who might want to support this kind of work.  The pitch was: 1 will get you 10.  $1 donation into this project will eventually produce $10 worth of of change for this issue.  Now thats a big proposal.  By taking that $1 and putting it into this project I was taking that $1 away from work it could do elsewhere for the cause.  I knew that by taking that $1, it was my ultimate responsibility to bring $10 back into the cause.  More on that later.

So, to my surprise, people started to give to this project.  And they gave quickly.   Now, I knew I was into something.  Soon I found that the generosity was not simply being expressed in cash, but also in time, talents and efforts.  Film Production assistance was soon flowing in.  People in the film industry were donating their time and efforts to help in this project.  Within two weeks we had enough help and resources to actually set up a performance shoot.  And it was off.

With all this generosity flowing I was beginning to see a constant.  An Axiom. A cosmic thread.  A timeless truth.  That people WANT to help when they see something wrong with the world.  Its just that we all have busy lives, and we don’t know how to actually be helpful to something so wrong as slavery.  Our efforts can seem distant and not as proximate as breaking down a door rescuing a child.  For me it was as simple as a song.  Thats what I know how to do.  For others its was lighting a stage.  For others is was setting up the microphones.  For others it was arranging production crews.  For others it was giving financial resources.  We all had something to give.  And how beautiful is it, when we ALL can come together and do what we do best, and see it matter?  To see something happen.  I had no idea what this project would become, and how much it would ultimately teach me.

Justin Dillon

FAIR TRADE PICTURES