“WORMS” and DOUGHNUTS
DeVotchKa’s Tom Hagerman on flying pastries, musical quarantine
Tom Hagerman is using what he’s got. Stuck at home without gigs for his main band, Denver’s Grammy-nominated DeVotchKa, the multi-instrumentalist and arranger for the Colorado Symphony looked at what was right in front of him.
“This is years of shredded-off carcasses intended for DeVotchKa,” Hagerman said of his newly formed side project, a band called Post Truth Serum. “And I hated seeing them die on my computer hard drive. But a lot of stuff happened to me. I had babies to raise. I got really ill.”
In addition to being the breadwinner for a family that now includes five daughters — four at home, one in college — Hagerman went through chemo- and immunotherapy after being diagnosed with follicular lymphoma, a cancer of the blood, in 2018. He still played shows throughout the months-long treatment, but the incurable nature of the disease (it’s currently in remission, Hagerman said) added another element of uncertainty to his life.
Considering his increasingly busy role with the Colorado Symphony — he translates rock songs into sheet music so the symphony can perform with national indie acts such as The Flaming Lips, or Colorado’s Gregory Alan Isakov and The Lumineers — it’s all conspired to keep Post Truth Serum at bay since its first stirrings in 2014.
It’s not for lack of interest. Hagerman had recruited Denverbased, Swedish-born songwriter and vocalist Elin Palmer to record vocals for the project back in 2016, adding to percussion recorded in 2014 with DeVotchKa drummer Shawn King at a building that doesn’t exist anymore (the former location of Mighty Fine Productions, now a Shake Shack on Larimer Street).
In the meantime, Hagerman continued lending his violin and other
talents to recordings from Colorado artists such as Nathaniel Rateliff, as well as indie-music stalwarts M. Ward, Eric Bachmann, Calexico and Sage Francis. He wrote original music for theater and dance, with performances by Wonderbound and the Colorado Symphony of “The 7 Deadly Sins”; “De Troya,” by Dallas-based Cara Mia Theatre; and Shakespeare’s “The 12th Night” for the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.
But it wasn’t until the pandemic hit and Hagerman was staring down an indefinite stretch without work that he decided to “panic release” Post Truth Serum’s debut album, “Modern Victims,” in March. That’s also when a video for the song “Worms” began to materialize.
“We had a video for another song on ‘Modern Victims’ all planned out before that,” said director Marcin Biegunajtys, who runs the Aurora-based film company ManMade Media Studio and has worked with the Colorado Symphony in the past. They had hoped to borrow costumes from the DCPA and film it at the Mercury Cafe, with a vampire theme befitting Hagerman’s love of
1980s goth.
“And then, like clockwork, doomsday hit,” Biegunajtys said.
That nixed the on-site filming, given Hagerman’s legitimate concerns about his immune system. But Biegunajtys, who had previously directed the video for DeVotchKa’s “Done With Those Days,” had another idea.
As a Park Hill resident, his girlfriend’s doughnut cravings frequently brought him to East Colfax Avenue’s beloved City Donuts.
“After five days of that, I only thought about doughnuts,” he said. “That was my daily breakfast — chowing down on two or three of those. And when we started talking music-video concepts, I thought, ‘Why not flying doughnuts? They’re delicious. Who doesn’t want to see those during this weird time?’ ”
Hagerman let the director pick his own favorite song from Post Truth Serum’s debut, which ended up being “Worms.” The gauzy, lush backing tracks — including strings played and arranged by Hagerman — provide a landscape over which Palmer’s delicate vocals soar. Accordion, piano and reverb-laden synths worthy of The Cure’s “Disintegration” add to the dusky, late-summer wistfulness.
“The concept started getting wackier and wackier,” said Biegunajtys, who generally ignores lyrics when making his videos. “I’d call Tom in the middle of the night with ideas.”
The concept evolved autobiographically. Stay-at-home orders became the starting point for a narrative about a quartet of young girls (played by Hagerman’s daughters) who had conquered their adult (Hagerman) and tied him to a chair. Clad in animal-face masks, they skip to locales around the city — some recognizable, some not — as they chase a flying pastry that looms like a glazed dirigible.
“I feel for Tom and all parents who are stuck at home,” Biegunajtys said. “So, what if these girls had had enough? They’ve been cooped up for too long and are just sitting there trying to learn like the kids in Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall.’ People follow their rainbows, but who doesn’t want to follow a ginormous doughnut they suddenly see floating in the sky? Their mission is to find out where it’s coming from.”
“The idea for the masks came from my wife,” Hagerman added. “We borrowed those masks from her friend; they were originally used in her friend’s wedding.”
Challenges loomed, of course. The actors were an easy get, but with the youngest being 3 years old, mom needed to be on-site for supervision and coaxing. The director wasn’t used to shooting on the fly with minimal equipment. Biegunajtys had to “slim down” the operation and be mindful of where he filmed, given his restricted movement and safety concerns — even outdoors.
The only time Hagerman broke his family’s quarantine, which he had steadfastly maintained at home since mid-March, was for a socially distanced green-screen shoot at ManMade Media Studio in which his girls climbed a rope ladder.
To bring all the footage together and give it an otherwordly, “every-frame-a-painting” look, Biegunajtys edited it with his finest software, then ran it through a $1.99 iPhone app that adds a hand-drawn-looking video filter.
“That gave me a lot of flexibility with sketching, details and lines,” he said of the app, which helped mask the compositing of video elements. “It’s sort of my take on A-ha’s ‘Take on Me’ music video.”
Hagerman is proud of having put something crafted and professional-looking out during a time when so many other performers are necessarily relegated to bedroom livestreams.
He’s done that too, but until a coronavirus vaccine arrives, he doesn’t see a return to his former life.
“Some performers are super engaging online, but I haven’t seen that many,” he said. “I tried to watch Paul Simon play ‘The Boxer’ (online) and he just looks like he’s off in a prison somewhere. Everybody kind of looks like that.
“I wanted something better than that, something that’s beautiful on its own, and Marcin delivered.”