Los Angeles garage rocker Kat Meoz has been building an appreciative following since 2012, garnering the attention of none other than legendary tastemaker Rodney Bingenheimer who took a shine to Meoz‘s music, especially the track “Christmas in Hollywood”. Meoz focuses on another California legend in her latest video, “Here I Wait”, San Francisco-based writer Richard Brautigan (Trout Fishing in America, The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966).
Meoz and friends (including director Kansas Bowling) traveled to the Bay Area in late 2017 to shoot the clip, searching for an important artifact in the late author’s legacy. Set to a noisy, angry slab of guitar-driven rock that summons comparisons to PJ Harvey in her earliest, nastiest era, the film is whimsical, cynical and filled with the blood and guts appropriate to its subject matter and the tune which it accompanies.
The artifact in question is Willard, a papier-mâché bird that resides in Petaluma, California and is central to the 1975 novel Willard and His Bowling Trophies: A Perverse Mystery. After Brautigan’s suicide in 1984, the author’s friend, voice-over actor Terry McGovern, was awarded guardianship of the mysterious creature.
Meoz, provides some insights into the video, saying, “Originally I was supposed to play the role of the ingénue searching for Willard, retracing Brautigan’s real life hangouts, as well as the locations where his book covers were photographed. However, since Kansas has read every book and poem by the author, it made more sense to me that Kansas play herself and I play the many Brautigan babes who graced the covers.”
She adds, “We took turns operating the camera, which was really fun. Actor James Kirkland, whose resemblance to Brautigan is strikingly uncanny, agreed to star in the Nor Cal adventure. We read Brautigan novels aloud in the car, and listened to rare recordings of the author and his friends reciting his poetry. My favorite, “Love Poem”, made it into the end of the video, read aloud by Brautigan himself.”