Photo © Roadside Attractions
Dreamin' Wild
Dreamin' Wild
In 1969, three teenage sisters from smalltown New Hampshire recorded and self-released an album of original songs as the Shaggs. While it sank without notice at the time, their album drew a cult following in future years and gave them a second chance at a musical career. Something similar happened to the 1979 album by teenage brothers Donnie and Joe Emerson,recorded in a shed on their father’s Washington State farm. The self-pressed LP went undiscovered for decades until a record collector stumbled on a copy and started a vinyl viral sensation.
Bill Pohlad (who directed Love & Mercy about Brian Wilson) tells their story in Dreamin’ Wild. He gathered an A-List cast for the project. Casey Affleck stars as Donnie, now in his late 30s and still dreaming. He performs in a cover band with his wife Nancy (Zooey Deschanel) and the couple run a struggling recording studio with blank pages on their calendar and nagging phone calls from the bank. Donnie is nonplussed when Joe (Walton Goggins) calls, saying that a guy from some record label loves their old LP and wants to meet at their dad’s farm to discuss reissuing it with proper marketing and distribution.
That guy is Matt Sullivan (Chris Messina) from Light in the Attic, the lost and found label dedicated to giving forgotten or never known artists their second chance. Joe is enthusiastic but Donnie seems strangely ambivalent, even when Sullivan offers to mount a tour behind the reissue.
The brothers’ back story unfolds gradually in misty flashbacks where Donnie’s joy in discovering his creativity becomes haunted as the story moves forward by the ghosts of bad decisions. Donnie and Joe grew up innocent of popular music until dad (Beau Bridges) bought a tractor with a radio. Joe was the drummer and Donnie the songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, the Brian Wilson whose music would be called—during their comeback—a “symphony to teenhood.” Some of his songs were blue-eyed soulful pop; others could have been tagged as new wave had anyone bothered to tag them in 1979. Naïve creativity was part of the music’s charm. The Emersons came from a remarkably loving and supportive family. Dad even sold many acres of farmland to support what was, for the longest time, a dream that never materialized.
Surprisingly, there is no drama in Dreamin’ Wild’s first half. A hint of tension finally occurs when Donnie informs Nancy, who drums in their cover band, that Joe will be the drummer on the Emersons’ tour. But eventually, artistic differences erupt—less about musical direction than symptoms of Donnie’s unease at belatedly being respected for his music from 20 years earlier. He wants to be known as a contemporary artist, not an endearing oddity from the past. And then there is guilt over what happened after Dreamin’ Wild was released in 1979 …
Dreamin’ Wild is a film for musicians and music fans who will appreciate (and recognize themselves?) during the movie’s long stretches of songwriting, rehearsals and recording. It’s about kids with big dreams.
Dreamin’ Wild is scheduled to open nationwide on Aug. 4.
