Coffeehouse 50

It’s said there’s strength in numbers, but “Coffeehouse 101,” a new video from singer-songwriter Scott Wilson, takes that theory to extremes. Rather than make a standard video for the tune from his album Kaleidoscope’s End, Wilson invited 50 of his musician friends to each lip-sync a line or two.

“I wanted to approach the whole video idea as a filmmaker rather than as a performer,” Wilson said. “I think that the artist performance concept has pretty much been done to death in music videos, so I thought it might be an interesting way to turn it on its head.”

With so many musicians, Wilson described the project as a puzzle, trying to line up the right musician with the right line. For the most part, performers were given lines to sing at random, though there are a few exceptions.

“I intentionally had Doug Meyer in a cowboy hat and accordion sing ‘Guess I live slightly east of Eden,’ since I did live in El Cajon at the time it was written,” he says. “I would have people sing a whole stanza, and then pick the best line of the performance.”

Due to conflicting schedules, he wasn’t able to get certain performers he really wanted for the shoot. For example, he said, “The Locust would have been particularly great.” As it stood, the shoots for the video were time-consuming.

“I had to do a lot of driving to get as many people as I did in the video. But in the end, it lent an extra dimension… to have so many different locations and gave a bit of the feel of San Diego by traveling around to different clubs, studios and stages.”

On March 9, Humphrey’s Backstage Lounge will host the release party for the “Coffeehouse 101” video, featuring many of the acts who participated in the filming, including Jeff Berkley and the Citizen Band, The Grams, Dave Howard, Will Edwards, Cathryn Beeks Ordeal, Gregory Page and Deadline Friday. If you can’t make the show, the video will be available later this month on Wilson’s website, www.metalogicmusic.com.