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Midlake “Days Gone By” Official Music Video

“I saw Midlake play London’s Roundhouse in 2023,” says James Lance. “The communion between the band and the crowd was divine. The way Eric Pulido tenderly sang ‘Noble’, their ode to McKenzie Smith’s boy, so tenderly tipped me over the edge. It was love. I thought, Trent Crimm, the character I play in Ted Lasso, would be a Midlake fan so I bought a merch T-shirt for Trent to sport somewhere on the show. A little shout out… If you know Midlake, then you know, and Trent Crimm knows. A ripple of joy for Midlake fans and a friendship with McKenzie Smith began through voice notes on fatherhood, music, and everything else. One day, Midlake’s manager, Zach Hundley, kindly invited me to a Willie Nelson concert, where I met Taylor McFadden, our talented director of this video, and I found myself welcomed into this community of sweethearts. I remember thinking I’ve met my people. This all happened because of the love I felt swirling around The Roundhouse for a magical boy called Noble. This video is an invocation…a remembering to dance with the sun, and the moon and the skies.”

“For ‘Days Gone By’ we wanted to capture the feeling of making a choice to leave one life behind and opening yourself up to new possibilities,” says director Taylor McFadden. “We worked with choreographer Phil Colgan (Hamilton, & Juliet) to express the power of processing an emotional state through the body.  The choreography pays homage to classics like Gene Kelly’s famous Singing in the Rain scene, a man so in love that he can’t help but dance through the streets of the city. We chose to film at a unique cross street in New York’s Lower East Side, with backdrops of an elevated subway train and the city skyline, a location that could complement the choreography while also acting as a metaphor for being at a crossroads in life. We chose to shoot on an iPhone to create a feeling of intimacy, capturing each movement up close and personal. We choreographed the camera and the dance to work in tandem with each other. Filming in one take allows the entire experience to be fully expressed without interruption.  Due to the location and complexity of the choreography, we knew we had to work with natural light timed to the exact moment of the morning golden hour…the sun then became another character in our scene that we could work and play with in line with his movements. This piece is about self-expression, and allowing yourself to bare it all even in the most public of settings…that moving through the difficult moments can often lead us to a surprising new state of love and joy.”