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E-mail StoryOnly in Kern: Drinking a beer one minute, in a music video the next
| Thursday, Mar 27 2008 6:38 PM
Last Updated: Monday, Mar 31 2008 8:48 AM
Carlos Acosta was just drinking a beer at Trout’s and the next thing he knew, he was in a country music video.
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Acosta, 50, was one of four men in a fictional mariachi band for Mike Stinson’s “Late Great Golden State,” a song about old California, misconceptions and disappointment. The video was shot in Bakersfield Wednesday and Thursday.
Part of the song goes:
Leave your expectations at the gate
Of the late great golden state
’Cause they can pack you up
And send you home in a crate
Stamped the late great golden state.
“It’s sort of a faded glory kind of song,” said Stinson, a Virginia native but Los Angeles resident. “Good-old-days-are-over-for-good kind of thing.”
The song was written by Stinson and recorded by Dwight Yoakam for Yoakam’s 2003 album, “Population Me.” It also appeared on actor Billy Bob Thornton’s 2005 album, “Hobo.”
Now Stinson is taking a new twist on it, he said.
“We’re just trying to get some classic California images,” said the sunburned Stinson, sporting a Western shirt and brown cowboy boots. “This neighborhood has that old California feeling to it,” referencing Old Town Kern.
On Wednesday, Stinson’s crew shot outside Trout’s, which is how they came across Acosta and the rest of “the mariachi band.”
As cameras rolled Thursday, Acosta, bedazzled in head-to-toe mariachi garb, sauntered down Kentucky Street in front of Grenada Theater with his fictional band mates, Jesus Belmontes and Mariano Ochoa, who do maintenance for Trout’s.
Sergio Mendoza, 24, the fourth “band member,” was walking through Old Town Kern, when he was asked to participate.
“It’s a weird experience,” Mendoza said with a smile. “Just all the cameras, all the people saying, ‘Cut! Wait a minute. What’s going on?’”
In a later scene, Miss Bakersfield 2004 Tanessa Gallemore rides by waving from the back of an old convertible.
“They needed a pageant-looking girl to ride in the back of the car,” said Gallemore, a mother of two and server at Logan’s Roadhouse.
The video should be completed over the next couple of months, and then, if all goes well, played on a music video channel, said Los Angeles-based director Jim Hollander.
Stinson, Hollander and Tony Gotta, co-producer and director of photography, have been to Bakersfield before and chose it for its old California feeling and musical heritage, they said.
“The Bakersfield Sound is the heart and soul of the music,” Hollander said.
Gotta added: “The diversity of California is as much in Bakersfield as anywhere else.”