ONE thought entered Jake Sills' mind the first time he encountered two guys cruising along Nobbys Beach on motorised recliner chairs.
"I said 'That would be such a cool music video'," says Sills, who writes and records songs under the name Warm Ride. "That was my first thought."
Two years on, the Newcastle-based musician has struck up a friendship with the pair known as Lazyboy MC (Islington's Andrew Burns and John Norton) and featured them in the clip for his second single, Something.
Following the March 30 release of the track, the accompanying video debuted this week and looks set to deliver Lazyboy MC with another online hit after footage of their antics went viral on social media two years ago.
Sills teamed with University of Newcastle student and film-maker Lachlan Kramer to direct and shoot the video which follows Lazyboy MC kicking back on their motorised recliners, casually dressed in shorts and thongs, as they cruise alongside Newcastle's scenic coastline.
"When we came together to discuss a music video, I told Lachlan I'd had this idea for ages about these two guys on motorised recliners," Sills says.
"We managed to meet up with them over a beer and told them we were making a music video and that we wanted them to be in it. They were like, 'Let's do it!'. They were all for it."
The video was filmed in one take as Burns and Norton weaved their way through the passing parade of walkers out enjoying the sunshine along Nobbys Beach and the Breakwall.
It ends with one half of Lazyboy MC pulling up to a Mr Whippy van to order himself a soft serve.
"We turned up at Nobbys Beach and totally winged it," Sills says.
"We let the Lazyboy MC guys go on their way and filmed them and the reactions from people waking past. You can see in the video they had surfers down in the water waving at them.
"We saw the ice-cream truck in the car park and said 'We need to get them to buy an ice-cream. That would be hilarious', so we did. It was perfect.
"I think one of the funniest things in the video is the people that don't react to the guys rolling past on their recliners. It's like they're used to it or something."
Something is a laid-back alternative R&B/soul track which the 24-year-old wrote last year during COVID lockdown after teaming with Wisconsin-based singer Unusual Dermot (aka Blu3 Boy) who Sills discovered on Spotify via his track, Amber.
He was impressed by Dermot's smooth vocal style and approached him about recording a song together.
The video was filmed in one take as Burns and Norton weaved their way through the passing parade of walkers out enjoying the sunshine along Nobbys Beach and the Breakwall.
After catching up over Zoom, the two found common ground musically as mutual fans of artists such as Frank Ocean.
Sills worked on a beat for the track which he sent to Dermot who wrote the melody and the majority of the lyrics.
The result is Something, a song which Sills says tells the story of falling in love with a close friend who doesn't feel the same way.
The track is one of eight songs Warm Ride has written and produced for his debut album which is set for release independently this year.
Wine Therapy is the tentative title for the album.
"The album is strongly centred around the feelings that I had during a trip I took to the States in 2019 to study a music course over there," Sills says.
"Wine Therapy is the name of a bar in Santa Barbara [California] where I spent a lot of time, this great little bar, and I absolutely loved it.
"The title has a double meaning because I started writing the album during the middle of COVID and kind of locked myself away and just wrote a bunch of music, and that's what came out of it.
"It was a form of therapy for me, like a way to get through that time and escape."
As well as writing music, Sills works as a DJ at various venues around Newcastle and has been slipping the track into his sets to gauge the reaction.
"I never tell anyone it's my song because they might react differently if they know it's mine, but I have played this track a few times and the reaction has been pretty positive," he says.
