J.D. Hardy Opens Heart In Video Let Her Run
It takes a brave man to write a song so close to his heart, one about breaking up with the girl he loves. It takes an even braver man to film the video for the song on the place where it all happened. J.D. Hardy did exactly that.
Hardy, who grew up in Bakersfield, California, under the influences of his family who were musicians and his heroes, Merle Haggard and Buck Owens. He realized that writing songs from personal experience were some of the best songs you could write.
“Some of the things I write I can draw from some of my experience but sometimes I witness or hear about the experience happening to someone else,” he admits. “With ‘Let Her Run’ it happened to me. My girlfriend and I were in the first five months of our relationship. There is something about dating when you are our age, everyone comes with baggage. So I think she had some trust issues in our relationship at that early stage.
“My uncle is a well-known horse trader in Bakersfield. One of things I always learned about life from him was when those horses are bucking up on you, you turn them out and let them run. They will have more respect for you and you will gain their trust. So me and my girlfriend got in an argument and she said was leaving, so I held the door open for her and I said go run it on out. Sure enough a couple days later we had a good talk. Then the song idea hit me a few days later and I literally wrote it in 10 minutes. It just flowed out of me. It’s rare, out of all the songs I’ve written, maybe one or two have happened like that. The lyrics and melody for ‘Let Her Run’ both came to me at the same time and I sat down and here it came.”
Hardy says his girlfriend loved “Let Her Run” when she heard it, but at the same time it was sad, because “We went through some mountains and valleys for sure. She still loves it even though it reminds her of those times. Past relations can mess you up, there are things that can trigger you, and you think it’s the same but it’s not always the same.”
Hardy decided the most honest video would be one filmed where it all happened. “My main thinking was I wanted to mimic the connection Melody and I had. It was a really strong intimate connection but there was always those triggers, past relationships. So I did, I discussed the story line with the director, Alisa Danglio, and once the she was on the scene she pretty much took over. I had some input in between scenes and tried to keep it as authentic as possible. My girlfriend is camera shy so we got actress Monique Guilfoyle to play that part in the video.”
The video was shot in multiple locations throughout the central coast of California and underlines the song’s compelling themes of love, trust and freedom.
“The location is my house, literally everywhere Melody and I went, those are things we actually did. The scenes are at my house and the village of Arroyo Grande, a mid-1800s village which was just restored recently. It leant to the vibe of the video.”
“Let Her Run” is off Hardy’s album Killer, an album that reflects those influences from his growing up days in Bakersfield. “You know I think for those who don’t know the history of Bakersfield and this part of California, most think of Los Angeles when they think of California. When you get into Bakersfield it’s not different from anywhere in the Midwest. My family came out here from Texas, Oklahoma and parts of Arkansas. It was just a very traditional country upbringing. There was lots of storytelling in my family, not just songs but telling stories, which is a huge part of country music.
“In my teen years I heard Lynyrd Skynyrd and I was like ‘where have they been hiding that band.’ It was that bridge from country and rock. The Bakersfield sound that Merle and Buck created had a huge effect on me, that same upbringing I had they had too. They would have been the same stories and lifestyle contributed by my music, just a little different interpretation because of the time was born.”
Hardy was also influenced by his grandmother, Wanda Lou, who was a country gospel recording artist on Calvary Records and also songwriter. “They called her the gospel Loretta Lynn,” he says. “She was a neat lady. My grandad was a Pentecostal minister so they would go out and evangelize. He would preach and she would sing.
“Then my dad was a guitar picker, he would do session work in Buck Owens studio. My dad was pretty young. He would be out on Saturday night with me in honky tonks and on Sunday he would be in church.”
Dean Miller, son of country great Roger Miller who wrote “King of the Road” and “Dang Me,” produced the Killer album for Hardy. “We became friends on social media and he started listening to my music and he reached out to me and said we have to do something. Once Covid loosened up I reached back to him and he was excited to work with me.”
Although the songs on Killer are penned by Hardy, he says he didn’t write his first song until he was in his 20’s. “I don’t think I really put it all together until I realized I could write and then I got more comfortable with my voice and realized I could carry a tune. I write from a feeling, something that’s dwelling up in me and it comes out. I look back and realize that if you write enough songs you will hit those topics and interest points that fans want to hear.”
