Tall Buildings Tips The Scales For Hilary Grist.

Hilary Grist, is at the 'tipping point', with the release two days ago of her amazing home made video 'Tall Buildings' and the subsequent 'making of' video - the odds are all in her favor now. It seems the combined talent of husband and wife have helped tip the scales.

"She did a lot of cartooning when she was a kid and then kind of grew out of it." Mike Southworth says, speaking of his wife Hilary Grist, "It's neat that her music has been a catalyst to get back into art."

When I was thinking of starting this article, I though, wow, I'll ask Mike a few questions, since his band has had some downtime, and he's been lending a hand to wife Hilary's career. But since then, I have just seen the posting of the 'Don't Forget Who Loves You' sidewalk chalk art' and I am thinking, what this story is really about, it's about using whatcha got, from a husband's helping hands to anything you can dream up!

"Yes, I think it really helps that we have been creating a lot of good and varied content. Over the last year, Hilary has released an album and a christmas ep, 7 feature music videos and 3 viral video E-Cards(www.dontforgetwholovesyou.com). The fact that I have a recording studio and video setup really helped us be able to create that much professional content on an indie budget. I really believe that the rise of social networking has made it extremely important to consistently release interesting creative content. Word of mouth is the best advertising and people love to share videos that resonate with them. Also, as I previously mentioned, Hilary's TV placements, touring and the Peak Top 20 have really helped raise awareness and light a fire under our buts to work harder. And yes, it really is a team effort... but that's marriage - not to be too cheesy about it. I believe in Hilary and want to help her succeed, luckily I have some tools to help."

I remember the Branches Arms video, (in fact we borrowed it for one of the Christmas albums last year!), and I know how long it took to make it, can you talk a bit about the time involved in these projects?

"Yes that was the first drawing video Hilary did was only a minute and a half long and took us 15 hours to do. The last few that we've done have taken less than half that time. Hilary is a lot quicker at drawing now too, but for Tall Buildings,  it's been pretty crazy having 2/3rds of our apartment tied up as a video set for the last 3 months! This video was definitely a lot more work than we thought it was going to be. I originally figured it would take a few days to build the city, but I have a tendency to be overly optimistic about these sorts of things. The good news is that when we finally get the rest of apartment back from being a video set it'll feel like we did a big renovation - our apartment is going to feel huge!"

Do you guys feel like you're getting close to a 'goal' of sorts, enjoying the ride? Or too busy to think about that yet?

"Well, I think we'll be keeping pretty busy. We're wrapping up a charity single/video right now that will be released in a week or so and there's another 3 music videos on the back burner. We're going to record another few Christmas songs and re-release that album this winter. We're also about half way completed doing a cool lullabies album, something both adults and children will enjoy. Hilary is illustrating a book to go along with that. I'm also recording bands in my studio, working on music videos and writing articles for my website and some magazines. But enjoying the ride!"

Watch for Hilary as on of the top 20 finalist in the 2011 Peak Performance Project, Vancouver's premier independent music contest presented by The Peak 100.5 FM, and then, watch for her everywhere!

www.hilarygrist.com

www.collideentertainment.com

http://peakperformanceproject.com/