Backseat Beat is more than just an old Volvo and a handful of Flip cameras. In each episode San Francisco itself becomes a character, whether it’s through conducting the interviews in a moving car where the city passes by behind the heads of our subjects, to superimposing time-lapse footage of the passing neighborhoods, to searching out unexpected and forgotten urban corners where bands can perform in an unusual environment. We use our cameras and each band’s musical performances to transform places like a stretch of shoreline littered with old tires, rusted out abandoned warehouses, or repurposed shipping containers from their anonymous day to day existence into surreal, magical backdrops, to be shared on this site and elsewhere.
Want to take a ride with us? Email us at backseatbeat@gmail.com.
The host of Backseat Beat, Jaime Lee Currier left the wilds of New Hampshire for Portlandia, New York, and San Francisco, where she acts her patootie off when not asking the tough questions in the backseat. She’s written rock musicals, she writes sketch comedy, and she plays ukelele. She was probably dancing like a wild woman at that last show you went to.
Backseat Beat is the brainchild of Brad Robertson, a filmmaking mastermind who not only produces, shoots, and edits every episode, but also owns the essential 1983 Volvo sedan. He has also made music with B and Not B, Upstairs Downstairs, Moomaw, Young Moderns, the Vandyke Pajama, the Smart Set, and the Farallons. He was probably wielding a Flip camera at that last show you went to.
Dana Goldberg is the executive editor at an independent press, and in her spare time co-produces and films episodes of Backseat Beat. She has performed with Young Moderns, the Vandyke Pajama, Upstairs Downstairs, and the Thunderbird Theatre Company. She may very well have spilled her bourbon on you at that last show you went to.
