Soundboard

Eaux Claires Music & Arts Festival releases bizarrely great teaser video

Eric Christenson |

If you tuned in to Chippewa Valley Community Television any time in the last day or so, you might’ve been interrupted by glitchy visuals of grass blowing in the wind and a familiar, distorted voice saying, “Summer here comes on like a zaftig hippie chick, jazzed on chlorophyll and flinging fistfuls of butterflies to the sun.”

At that point, you might’ve dinked around on your remote or slapped your TV to fix the problem …

But it wasn’t a problem. It was simply a sharp guerrilla marketing teaser for this summer’s Justin Vernon-curated Eaux Claires Music & Arts Festival.

And that distorted voice? That’s local best-selling author Michael Perry, the festival’s official “Narrator,” lending his signature words to the spastic imagery.

“The swamps grow spongy and pungent,” Perry’s pitchy voice trembles as the video cuts in and out. “Standing water goes warm and soupy, clotted with frog eggs and twitching with larvae. Along the ditches, heron-legged stalks of canary grass shoot six feet high and unfurl seed plumes. In the fields, the clover pops its blooms and corn trembles for the sky.”

Evoking the thick of Wisconsin summer in the middle of a trippy, grassy glitch seems like nonsense, but it’s actually more emblematic of the festival to come: Calculated? Check. Subtle? Check. Weird? Three checks. Cool as hell? Check. Mike Perry? Check.

But what’s amazing is the team behind the festival produced the mysterious 37-second spot to run exclusively on public access via CVCTV, only reaching those of us here in the Valley, among the corn and the chlorophyll.

You know, more and more cool things seem to be happening with the ever-mysterious art festival, so be sure to keep up to date at VolumeOne.org in the coming week for updates.

You can find CVCTV on Charter Digital at channels 993 & 994. You can find what times the Eaux Claires spots will run by visiting www.cvctg.org/video/channelguide.