SPECIAL ENGAGEMENTS 005: WOODKID

Woodkid is Yoann Lemoine, an acclaimed French director and photographer. Before this current project, he worked on a bunch of music videos for Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, and that Lana del Rey one where she makes out with a skinny dude with unimaginative tattoos until she dies in a flaming car wreck.

Now he’s on this electro-acoustic pop tip. It started a few years ago at Ludlow Guitars on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He was shooting Richie Havens, and Yoann started talking about how he wanted to learn the ukulele. After the shoot, Havens gave him a ukulele signed “Yoann, a friend forever,” and Woodkid was born.

The project mostly exists so that Yoann can figure out his relationship to this new instrument. He came from a family of distinguished musicians, and studied piano and recorder at conservatory. Thumbs up if you thought not one over eight or nine “studied” the recorder.

He brought some French pop luminaries into the project, namely Julian Delfaud (Phoenix, Herman Dune), Revolver (the band), and labelmates the Shoes, for whom he’s already directed videos. Each new member brings his own diverse background to the final project.