Trent Freeman
Hot Spot for a Hobo
Reviewed by Andrea E.
Sliced and diced vegetables are the stars of fiddle player Trent Freeman’s music video, Hot Spot for a Hobo. One of the six music videos nominated for a Vancouver Island Music Award (VIMA), it has flawless timing—Freeman’s fiddle and the camera move in perfect time with arranged, cut, transformed, and beautifully lit vegetables and fruits. These seeds, roots, tubers, and flowers of vegetables are melodious, and surely organic, for not only do vegetable-fruit puppets play instruments made of themselves, but they also move, respond, and cavort to Hot Spot for a Hobo’s jazzy melody.
Freeman’s album Rock Paper Scissors (2012) is also nominated for VIMA for Instrumental or Experimental Album of the Year (one of three in this category). “Hot Spot for a Hobo” is the second song off this album which twenty-four year old Freeman chose as the signature music video. Freeman explains, “the sound of chopping knives and the aggressive drum beat” were twin sounds he heard in the writing of “Hot Spot for a Hobo.” Logically, as Freeman “has played with food all his life,” this led to the concept of a vegetable-puppet video narrative, “a brain-wave that might be fun.” A day was used to create the vegetable-fruit puppets, they “rested overnight in the fridge,” and the following day the improvisation began.
With the assistance of his cousin Adrian Murray, Freeman directs, shoots and edits (with a Canon T3i) the video, demonstrating that to be a joyful artist is to first understand your art. The result: this crystal-clear video, sliced and arranged by Freeman, is the most musically and visually aligned of the six nominees.
Trent Freeman is one of those adventuresome musicians who returned to BC with an added layer of sophistication and finesse. The Hot Spot for a Hobo music video reflects Freeman’s artistic growth, and his quirky-sharp humour. And there are riddles in this video, too–here is a clue from Freeman: “Are the puppets relaxing or being boiled?”
Trent Freeman will be playing the Vancouver Island Music Festival July 12th -14th
Andrea E., aka Country Heart, is a fourth-year UVic writing student who lives for any sound with a twang or a slide in it. You can hear Country Heart on CFUV later this spring.