VIDEO: Riddy Arman Shares 'Both Of My Hands' Music Video

Montana singer-songwriter and cowboy Riddy Arman recently released her self-titled debut album via La Honda Records / Thirty Tigers to significant cross-genre acclaim. Today, she is sharing a new music video for album standout "Both Of My Hands," which was helmed by Los Angeles-based director Keenan O'Reilly (Dua Lipa, Joshua Bassett).

O'Reilly, known for his calculated choices and grounded characters, chose the song for a visual treatment due to its cinematic qualities. Shot in Western Montana and starring Arman as an enigmatic and lonely ranch hand, the video brilliantly captures her haunting lyrics and serves as a devastatingly honest depiction of coping with isolation.

Of the track, Arman offers, "It was written during a really heavy time in my life. I was working on the ranch what felt like around the clock and then coming home after dark to an empty house. I suppose I took to drinking because it was the easiest way to comfort my body and mind after those long days, and looking back it was the loneliest way I could have done so. Making the music video was a very intense, yet grounding experience. Transporting my headspace back to the time and place I wrote this song was a bit excruciating but allowed for me to see how much has changed over the course of one year."

With the release of her acclaimed debut, Arman's music has garnered favorable comparisons to work by legends like Johnny Cash & Dolly Parton (FLOOD Magazine) and Glen Campbell (Rolling Stone), as well as New Pornographers' Neko Case (UNCUT) and indie-country trailblazer Margo Price (Brooklyn Vegan). No Depression praises, "In a genre that places so much emphasis on authenticity, when you hear Riddy Arman's life-weary voice, you know she's the real deal," and UNCUT adds, "Arman's self-titled debut is sparse and gothic, keeping instrumentation minimal enough to leave room for emotion as open as the western skies she works under."

Arman's songs are rooted in the poetic imagery of country life, from the beauty of its simplicity to the isolation and loneliness that can often overtake its inhabitants. Her music was first introduced to longtime fans with a viral Western AF performance video of album opener, "Spirits, Angels, Or Lies," which was inspired by the true story of her father's passing and Johnny Cash's posthumous visit to his deathbed. Against a bucolic backdrop and clad with ranch-worn clothing, Arman is clearly in her element.

"Old Maid's Draw" is a song about the landscape where Arman has worked, an area mythologized by locals with the tale of a woman who lived alone in the early settling days of Montana. "Problems Of My Own" is rooted in classic country songwriting, exploring the darkness that can lurk within family life using simple references such as bacon frying in cast iron pans. Like "Both Of My Hands," "Barbed Wire" was written during her time working as a ranch hand and distinctly recalls the seclusion and longing that can come while living on the range.

Arman grew up in rural Ohio but has traversed the country, working as a ranch hand and practicing an Agrarian lifestyle, and wrote the majority of the songs on her debut while stationed in the sunburnt hills of California ranch country, during an intensely creative period in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and after relocating to New Orleans following a friend's passing. Songwriting has allowed her to move forward from some of the most painful moments of her life, and recording with producer Bronson Tew (Jimbo Mathus, Dom Flemons, Seratones) at Portland, Oregon's Mississippi Studios continued her healing process. "Recording these songs brought me back to the times that inspired them," Arman reveals. "But instead of reliving the pain, the studio magic empowered me to overcome it."

Watch the new music video here:

To post a comment, you must register and login.