It’s a rare thing when a music video has a genuinely touching story behind it — one that might even go so far as to shore up your faith in humanity, just a little bit. The six-year tale that culminated in Valerie Lighthart’s new video for “The Journey” is one such story.
The 3 minutes and 39 seconds you’ll spend enjoying this mini-movie will only offer relative glimpses of its real-life inspirations: a bus-turned-home, a fiercely supportive family member and the general goodness that lives inside most people. So let’s start with what you’ll see in the music video and blow it out from there.
The premise is that a young lady sits alone at her own birthday party, with no guests to celebrate with. A pair of performers arrive to supply the entertainment and, seeing the situation, take her on a fairytale adventure complete with cake-and-candles, a sing-along and a balloon-filled disco/recording session.
OK, so … with that out of the way, let’s get into the emotional roller coaster that took six years to unfold.
Back in 2018, Lighthart had a lot going on. She was working on her debut EP with Will and Kevin Bush of Immortal Girlfriend. She was helping bandmate and longtime friend Lauren Bahr convert an old bus into a house on wheels. And she just landed a gig at Summerfest’s Johnson Controls stage.
“It was my first opportunity to play on a stage that big, and I was shaking in my boots — desperate to maintain my pitch, summon all my resonance and not cry,” Lighthart told us. “My entire family came out. My grandma wheeled my grandpa to the raised platforms so he could see, my mom and siblings took up the front row … and then, off in the corner a few rows in, is this little girl beaming up at me.”
That was Bahr’s cousin, Lucia Bahr-Garcia, who still felt the impact of that experience one year later and got the chance to share how much it meant to her, exactly when Lighthart needed it most.
The Milwaukee artist has always been up front about how hard she needs to work on her singing voice, and back in 2019 she was wracked with doubt and increasingly critical of herself. In stepped Lucia.
“[Her] enthusiasm for the Summerfest show and for the music itself was contagious,” Lighthart recalled. “I felt like I was able to see my voice through a new lens — an enthusiastic, uncritical, celebratory lens. It helped me fall back in love with singing and creating.”
It turned out Lighthart’s biggest little fan had her own performance dreams, but for acting. So Lighthart and Bahr swore they would one day create a chance for Lucia to step in front of the camera. “The Journey” turned out to be that opportunity, although it didn’t come easily.
Bahr had moved to Oregon in 2023, and Lighthart had to cross a couple time zones to once again crash a family gathering for a video shoot starring all the major players: Lucia, Bahr, Lighthart and, of course, the bus. Local cinematographer and director Spencer Ortega shot the project with help from George Sande, and the end product is a video that Lighthart said “feels like how I felt when I was 20: so full of a wild and childlike hope that the world would be a bright and beautiful place that I could savor every facet of.”
It’s a lovely story for a lovely video that you can watch at the top of the page. Check out everything the tirelessly creative Lighthart has brought into the world, including a no-budget feature-film-length musical(!), on her YouTube page and keep up with her many pursuits by following her on Instagram.
