Recovered VHS footage of the Boston project’s lost TV appearance on ‘The Dick Griffin Goodtime Hour’

Who says you can’t find gold on old dusty video tapes? That is exactly what happened to Boston based project JATK

To celebrate the release of their latest single “Don’t Come Knockin’” JATK reached in to the way back machine and unearthed a performance from the unfortunately forgotten “Dick Griffin Goodtime Hour, recorded at a time when late-night television hosts were snippy, the fashion screamed in kaleidoscopic colors, and super-catchy, riff-laden power-pop was probably just called something else entirely. Pulled off old dusty VHS tapes and uploaded to YouTube, JATK’s “Don’t Come Knockin’” video enters the digital age and debuts on the internet today . You can listen to “Don’t Come Knockin’” on Spotify Here and on Apple Music Here and you can check out the video below.

We feel incredibly grateful and bless that the footage was saved from the great non digital abyss. We here at The Whole Kameese consider this musical discovery to be an important musical moment. So naturally we had to search for more information.

Don’t Come Knockin’” was first officially released last year as a b-side and sister song to “Don’t Call,” a single that appeared on JATK’s acclaimed debut album Shut Up and Be the Light, and now the Boston band led by songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Matt Jatkola is set to deliver a new EP of companion tracks led by the reborn “Don’t Come Knockin’”. If Shut Up and Be the Light was JATK’s center core, this wave of upcoming releases – videos, EPs, merchandise – are the new planets and moons that orbit it. You can check out the amazing merch Here

The “Don’t Come Knockin’” is far more than a video that sheds light on a time gone by . Produced by Jatkola and directed by longtime collaborator JP DiSciscio. Shaun Clarke, another longtime JATK collaborator who directed the band’s previous “Conscious Wonder” video, served as director of photography. Jatkola and his brilliant team of collaborators have carefully crafted and sculpted a visual masterpiece that needs to be experienced.You truly feel like you have stepped back into time and are watching a 60’s/70’s era talk show. Another amazing collaborator was Amber Primm who lead the direction of the project. Amber designed, constructed, painted, and installed set pieces and doors (built DIY-style out of foam) and managed details all the way down to the position of Dick’s coffee mug. Even the audio, captured using period-specific mics and overseen by Ross Matthei, adds an authentic aural flair, while the video was preserved through resurrected old TV cameras. Both approaches only serve to further blur the lines from where — and when — this footage actually came from.

JATK’s assembled team is not only excited that the “Don’t Come Knockin’” video is no longer lost to time, but are stoked to help shine a studio light on a song that’s one of Jatkola’s personal favorites and signal boost it to a crowd far greater than the assembled studio audience on that fateful night long ago. The track’s passion spills out of the static and bridges the analog age to the digital one.

It’s a song about not feeling like the other person is ‘for real’ in a relationship – that you’re in a non-reciprocal situation, a one-sided deal, they’re playing games while you’re being sincere, that sort of thing,” Jatkola says. “Now you’re fed up with their lack of fortitude and you’re like, ‘If you’re gonna knock, you’d better be there when I open the door!’ I find this dynamic way more in friendships than in romantic relationships, but it’s meant to be taken any way the listener desires. It is fully inspired by old school ‘60s R&B production that you’d hear on a Temptations or Smokey Robinson record back in the day.”

We are privileged to live in an amazing digital world however, the stroke of genius that is the “Don’t Come Knockin’” video proves that there is still room in this world for projects led by the old school DIY spirit.