Music video director and musician Chris Graue makes great content. If you stop there, that’s selling his creativity very short. Graue visualizes thoughts, feelings and music vibes. He’s an army of one—well, that’s not entirely the case either, he’s a collaborator with a strong community of other creators. He values being part of a collective effort, and he’s figured out where he fits after a long journey from musician to music video director.
He’s part of the punk and ska music scenes. He makes music; he makes videos, and he makes music videos. He’s also a Twitch streamer, video game console repairman, and Super Mario Maker 2 level creator. His Lo(u)ser collaboration with We Are The Union on “Set It All On Fire” is a catchy tune. His Super Mario-themed video is fun, and the level he created for the video is playable by fans.
Graue doesn’t rest enough, he says, but every second lost from sleep is a minute gained furthering his knowledge of music instruments, photographic gear, and computer software. He doesn’t seem to waste a lot of time.
Over a decade and a half, from a place on the stage to a place behind the lens as a music video director, he details how he learned to create, one step at a time.
“It started when I was a kid,” Graue says. “I just liked to be on stage, to act, and play music, but as time went on, I realized no one was like, ‘I’m making a movie, let me put you in a part,’ or, ‘I’ve got a band, let me put you in it.’ I kind of quickly realized if I wanted to do it, I was going to have to figure out how to do a lot of it myself, so I learned to play every instrument so that I could play with anybody at any time.”
Graue took those on–stage experiences, musical skills, and knowledge of instruments to the next level by teaching himself to photograph and edit video—he became a filmmaker. He sheds light on his story.
“I started making my own little movies. I learned how to work a camera. I think I learned how to edit because there was a cute girl who needed help with a project for school, and I just told her I could edit. I picked up a disk with the software on my way to her house and installed it on my laptop in the car driving there. I was like, ‘Yeah, totally, I know how to edit. Hey, can I borrow your disk?’ But I mean, I wanted to learn so that I could start making my own little stories that I would be in.”
That lead to making videos, Graue says, sometime around 2005. He was combining his passions, working on music, working on video, and using the creativity like the bricks in Super Mario Bros. Graue was building a world for himself to exist in the punk and ska scenes. He says a simple audition video turned into something bigger.
“I started playing in bands a little bit, and the first real thing happened when Suburban Legends needed a new trumpet player, and that’s one of my favorite bands, and so I simply would ask. [They said] ‘Submit a video of yourself doing X, Y and Z.’ So, I sent in a video and they ended up finding a better trumpet player, Chris Lucca, who is still with that band, who’s a way better trumpet player than me.
“Like not even close. I can play a trumpet. That guy plays the trumpet. But they really liked my video, they were, ‘Wait, that was kind of cool.’ I just did a couple goofy things in the video. And so, I started hanging out with them and making these odds and ends, little YouTube videos, and then they had me make a proper music video for them. And then when people saw that, a bunch more people started asking me to do that.”
That experience hit the switch on his creativity. Graue went from playing music, he’d put that on pause, to using his tech mind to be a part of a bigger thing than just himself. Graue sums up the lesson.
“What I found out was, you can play a song and you can make a video, and that’s okay, you’re going to please one person— that’s you. But through doing this stuff I found a community of people that, especially in ska and punk, they’ve always won as a community. So, I guess it’s not surprising, but just finding that community and being like, ‘Okay, how can you be a part?’ And for me, it was video and technical skills.”
Flash forward—Graue tackled 30 different projects during the pandemic in 2020.
“It was a lot,” he says. “I’ve been, I don’t know. It was a really interesting time, because I’ve been making music videos for quite a while now, and I’ve been making them for a lot of the ska scene, a lot of the punk scene, and stuff. I’ve got a lot of friends there. I’ve been in a few bands myself. I was launching this project of my own which I got up last year, but when it happened, I was supposed to go… at the beginning of quarantine, I was supposed to go on tour with The Bombpops, I was supposed to meet up with Masked Intruder and do a music video, and gosh, there were a bunch of things kind of right at the beginning. I had to cancel a lot of flights.
“And there were all these bands that I knew and they were all just closed, and I saw pretty immediately that you were going to be the last ones back in any capacity. Music was not going to be a priority through this, and that was what all of my friends did for a living. Doing the music and the music video stuff, it’s not really a way to get rich. It’s a good way to make friends.”
He jumped into action, realizing his friends needed help and he had something he could contribute.
“I just got super worried right at the start there,” Graue says. “I was like, ‘This is going to kill a lot of bands.’ And I knew right away, I decided this isn’t going to kill any of my friends’ bands. We’re going to figure this out. After the brief window of like, ‘Okay, do we just have to wait inside for four, six weeks or whatever? Is this going to go away?’
“Once I kind of figured out, ‘Okay, no, this is going to be a while,’ I started getting everybody up. I was like, ‘Okay, this is the way out, it’s going to look like… let’s get everybody on Twitch, I’ll figure this out. ‘Let’s do some music videos. Write these pitches. Everybody gets a discount. You don’t have any money.’ I just started working with everybody as much as I could about finding resources for revenue, and for just getting content out.”
Chris Graue is a director, a photographer, an editor, and he does his own graphics. He often takes a breath and others do the producing. Brent Friedman did the producing on two of Graue’s latest videos, “Boys Will Be Girls” and “Morbid Obsessions,” for his band, We Are The Union. Friedman talks about Graue.
“I handled almost all of the day to day surrounding the release of this record, which also included producing all of the videos alongside Chris,” he says. “Chris’s ability to roll with our insanely demanding and tight schedules (which seem to be the case with almost all of our videos) is a huge reason why we like working with him. He’s also very likeminded as us, in the sense of always sharing the same vision creatively, and also just being able to problem solve extremely well on the fly. Oh, and it helps that he’s insanely goofy and great at creating as stress-free of an environment as he can, every time we’re working together.”
Graue quarantined with We Are The Union while making their latest record, Ordinary Life. Meanwhile, many projects he had going were being shelved due to COVID. He put his visual talents to work matching their musical talents. They dove in, he filmed, and they recorded. He recalls the scene.
“I was with the band when they were recording that record in October. We went out to Joshua Tree and just had a house, and were kind of like, they were recording, and I was filming stuff and helping them.”
His approach is unique. Graue talks about his place in the punk and ska community, it helps him tell his friend’s stories and make excellent art.
“I hang out with the band and I get to know them,” he says. “I get to know what they’re trying to say and what their song is about, and find another way to hit similar scenes, but to tell a new and unique story when we do it. That’s how I do it. We Are The Union I know very well, and I’ve known them for a long time, so I kind of took a big swing.”
Graue talks about telling a very important story for We Are The Union and lead vocalist Reade Wolcott. He pitched Wolcott on visualizing her transition.
“Song’s called ‘Morbid Obsessions,’” Graue says. “I know Reade has always been into spooky Halloween stuff. We did a vampire video for Halloween this year, so I knew that she had inclinations in that direction. And then I was just thinking about the concept of death and rebirth with being trans. You’re sort of reborn as a new person, and I was like, ‘Whoa, kind of sounds like zombies.’ And if it was anybody that I knew less, I would never have pitched the idea, because I could really see that going either way. I could see if someone was super offended by that concept, I would completely understand, ‘Okay. You’re right, I’m sorry. Let’s go a different way.’ But because I knew Reade very well, she was just like, “Yeah, 100%, we have to do this.”
With some bands going into hibernation, Graue remains wide awake. He bundled himself with smaller bands and made art. In addition, he made his own music, fixed video game consoles on Twitch and wrote his own world in 2020— not to mention writing the world of Super Mario too. He puts his stamina in perspective.
“Well, you don’t sleep very much. As far as the video game goes, there is a game for the Switch, and there was one also for the Wii U, called Super Mario Maker. And it’s a game where you make levels. What I did is not insane in a sense that there is a game where you can do this, but doing those auto Mario levels where you don’t touch the controls at all, and Mario just bounces around and doesn’t die, it takes a lot of time. Building the Mario level like I did is sort of like doing drag and drop code. So, a little more than WordPress, but a little less than just writing JavaScript, typing it out from scratch. It’s sort of like, ‘Okay, drag this guy here. It has a start point of this. It interacts in this way. It’ll move according to these times. Okay, one more thing. Oh shit, I messed up the timing. Let me move that guy over one pixel. Ah, okay, that’s what I want to do.’ And you just keep doing that over and over again, for every piece that’s in the puzzle.”
It’s seen as a pretty big feat.
“When I posted that and put it out there, the Super Mario Maker community was basically like, ‘This is the longest one of these we’ve ever seen.’ Basically, I’d get home from one thing and I’d be, ‘I can’t edit this anymore.’ I’d go sit at the Switch and just start placing components until that was done.”
With such an action-packed life, when does he find time to do the thing he set out early on to do— make music and be on stage? He attempts to explain getting Lo(u)ser off of pause and back in play.
“Unfortunately, the one that takes the biggest back seat is always my own,” he says. “So that’s why I haven’t put out a song since February. I have three more that are ready to go. I have to have the time to finish them. […] What I found is that to be in a band and to be an asset in the musical world, you do need to be able to play well enough, being a virtuoso on anything is not the real thing that people need. They need somebody that they want to be around. They need somebody that’s cool and creative, and is going to help book the shows, and drive the van, and figure out how we’re going to get merch orders done— all that stuff.”
Chris Graue is an army of one in a community where everybody is an army of one. That common strength gets things done. The art he creates with and for other people is reciprocated back to him. He concludes beautifully.
“My brain’s kind of always on, that’s definitely something I struggle with— hard to sleep because it’s always spinning. Usually when I hit a technical break, it’s either absolutely time for bed or I call somebody. I got different sources for everything. If it’s electrical engineering and I’ve been soldering these wires and this electronic component still isn’t working, I call somebody I know that’s a better engineer than me. If I’m writing a story for somebody’s music video and I get writer’s block, I call somebody I know that’s a good writer and I talk it through with them. All of these things are about community. I don’t think… your favorite band, no matter how much of a genius the front person is or whatever, there’s an entire team of, whether it’s engineers, producers, press people like marketing, artists doing the cover.
“It takes a village. All of this stuff. Anybody that’s trying to do this stuff that thinks that they have to be able to do all of it, the good news is, you’re wrong. You do have to try to do all of it, but you can absolutely do so many… You just need to become a member of the community and start helping people with what they want to do, and they’ll help you with what you want to do.”
Check out the Super Mario Maker 2-inspired video for “Set It All on Fire” featuring We Are The Union here:
For more from Chris, check out his Instagram page and his official website.
Photo courtesy of Jen Razavi
