As we’ve mentioned several times over the past few weeks, there are two distinct sides to the music component of next month’s Outside The Box music and arts festival. The headliners are a pretty stale hodgepodge of bridge-and-tunnel bait (Smash Mouth, Daughtry), the kind of safe, bland acts that are unfortunately needed to pull in big numbers to these types of free summer concert events. The undercard, on the other hand — comprised mostly of homegrown talent — is pretty well-crafted and well-represented, and among the inclusion of Boston luminaries like Ruby Rose Fox, Dutch Rebelle, and Bearstronaut is singer/songwriter Jenna Lotti, a relatively new face in Boston’s pop scene who possesses a polished sound that touches on the more tolerable sides of modern country.
Today, in advance of Lotti’s appearance at Outside The Box on July 14, performing on Boston Common’s Fountain Stage at noon, we are premiering her new video for “Drive”, a deliberate, finely tuned number about never losing sight of your dreams and desires.
“I wrote this song in my bedroom when I was losing hope on my musical dreams,” Lotti tells us. “My mom kept telling me I had the ‘Drive’ to make it happen and if I kept working hard and not letting anything get in my way, it would happen eventually.”
“Drive” will appear on Lotti’s new EP, Bad Habits, due later this fall. The track was co-written by Lotti and her guitarist and boyfriend, Chris Facey. The video was shot by Vassili Shields.
The song, she says, is all about the will “to keep pushing through when times get hard. It’s basically a self medicated reminder to not give up.” Lotti adds: “We filmed the video in Los Angeles because I felt like it would capture everything the song is about. The opening scene shows me writing in my bedroom and daydreaming about ‘the days that are to come’. As a little girl, I always dreamed of being in Los Angeles and Hollywood because all of my idols were there. The whole concept of the video is a daydream.”
Outside the Box, meanwhile, goes down July 13 to 17 across multiple stages on Boston Common. Get the full schedule here.