Video premiere: The Workday Release, ‘I Do’

Kevin Bronson on March 31st, 2021

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Remember getting all decked out for a night on the town? Miss it?

Singer-songwriter and producer David Ottestad does it up right in the big-hearted video for “I Do,” the new single from his solo project the Workday Release and the latest from the new album “Like the Light of Stars,” due April 16 via Enci Records.

Dressed as they were for their nuptials, Ottestad and wife Monique do a night on the town — in this case, downtown Fullerton, hopping in and out of local businesses. Directed by Ottestad himself, the video was filmed by Kevin Reyes.

“For the video, I wanted to portray the idea that ‘I do’ isn’t just something you say on your wedding day,” the songwriter says. “It’s something you say every day. I thought an interesting way to show this was to have the video take place in a time of life transition, and in this case, going through the process of moving. I decided to shoot the video with my wife and show us getting back into our wedding dress and suit years after initially saying ‘I do’ as a symbol of wearing that phrase during changing circumstances.

“It also gave us a chance to feature some of our favorite local businesses in downtown Fullerton, where we live. Especially during the pandemic, being able to make a video that serves as an encouragement to the viewers to #shopsmall was really important to me. We made a purchase at each store we filmed at and had so much fun visiting each spot in our wedding attire.”

The video’s message might be to think small, but the Workday Release’s new album harbors no such restraint. Ottestad has released four albums and two EPs over the Workday Release’s 12-year lifespan, but production-wise they have been no-frills affairs. The new album is being made at Gold Pacific Studios in Newport Beach, and, judging from the singles so far, has a grander AOR polish.

The songs, though, remain typically familiar, relatable and evocative. “‘I Do’ serves as a callback to the sound of my 2011 EP Simple Distance; a really happy acoustic pop record that I made in my friend’s garage one summer,” Ottestad says. “The EP has been streamed over 100 million times and I still get messages constantly about the songs playing at weddings for the first dance. As a songwriter whose lyrics often explore difficult, personal things, sometimes it’s nice to write with the aim of purely giving an audience something unabashedly happy and hopeful.”

As for the making of the record — which was orchestrated by veteran music manager Pat Magnarella (Green Day, Weezer, Goo Goo Dolls) — Ottestad says: “Going into a professional recording studio for more than a single day and taking time to record a full album’s worth of songs while obsessing over what gear to use to get the best sound and then really thinking through what instrumentation would best support those songs and being the one in charge of every single guiding decision made along the way, and thus completely responsible for the end result, has been my dream for a long, long time.

“I’ve been in this music-songwriting-recording-performing space for 12 years now. I really know what I’m doing. I’ve been around the tools and the process for long enough that when it came time to make this record, I knew exactly how to do it and who to do it with.”

Longtime friend Andy Toy is engineering and mixing; he worked on the 2016 Workday Release album “Songs From a Sketchbook,” which was recorded in a living room.

Now they can think bigger. While still shopping local.

||| Watch: The video for “I Do”