UTICA—Singer-songwriter Nick Vanderwood of Utica released a new single and music video titled “Little Vacation” on Friday, January 21.

The song was written at the start of the pandemic when holidays weren’t really an option. Vanderwood said he made a vow to record a music video for this new single when the time comes.

A year later, Vanderwood achieved his goal and shot the clip for 24 hours in and around Los Angeles and Ventura counties in California with the team at MGS Productions.

The team’s goal was to deliver a video that captures the sensations of a euphoric escape from everyday life alongside the paradoxical forces of nostalgia and momentary bliss that color the experience of taking a vacation.

Vanderwood wanted the visuals to demonstrate the ecstasy of being immediately present in these two spaces. After collecting all the footage and making their preliminary selections, the team faced their first major narrative challenge: everything was too happy. While they had achieved their goal of displaying the joy and beauty of the character’s surroundings, something was still missing.

“We didn’t want to have a video of Nick frolicking in the sun – Vevo is already inundated with it. We wanted to tell a story. We wanted the audience to feel what Nick was feeling,” said co-director Luke Sunderlin.

Returning to the idea of ​​escape, they decided to focus on the beginning of the character’s journey.

“We wanted to portray a level of chaos in the intro, so we used samples of candid audio recordings from my journey to mimic the character’s distress that prompted her journey in the first place,” Vanderwood and team said. from MGS Productions. “By the end of the song, the viewer has endured the same hardship and confusion as the character, and they both escaped to a much nicer place.”

Vanderwood is the former singer of popular regional band Trampoline Jetstream (Glen Street). He is working on his first solo album at Big Blue North Recording Studio in Utica and plans to release additional solo music and videos.

“Little Vacation” is available now on all streaming platforms.