Video: Wesley Dean Explores Toxic Masculinity in 'Gunslinger'

Nashville-based Aussie artist Wesley Dean portrays a weathered outlaw making his way through the harsh desert in the gritty music video for “Gunslinger.” The song appears on Dean’s critically-acclaimed new album Music From Crazy Hearts, which was recorded at Nashville’s historic RCA Studio A. 

The video was shot in the California desert towns of Joshua Tree and Pioneertown while Dean was on the Crazy Hearts Across America tour. Last summer, Dean and his family packed into an RV with a director and cameraperson in tow, traveling over 5,000 miles from Nashville to LA via towns steeped in musical history and playing shows off the beaten track. The album and its videos chronicle this experience, with a full-length feature film Crazy Hearts: The Documentary slated for release next year. 

“We wanted to go full Western,” says director Jacobie Gray. “So I was thrilled to capture the epic moment of Wes slaying his guitar on the rock in Joshua Tree at dusk. And we had no lighting or fancy gear on tour, just a camera and the dying light of the day.” 

“‘Gunslinger’ is an exploration of what it means to be a man struggling with the masculine identity passed down from father to son,” Dean shares. “On one hand, I identify with being an outsider and doing things my own way with all guns blazing, but on the other, the emotional isolation of an outlaw who isn’t allowed to acknowledge their vulnerability and ultimately ends up being ‘hung by the same rope that took his daddy’s life’ is something I wanted to highlight in this song. 

I believe isolating patterns of behavior can be broken when we become conscious of them, but sometimes we have to go through a dark night of the soul to wake up to our personal power. And I don’t mean macho, egoic power, I mean the empowerment that comes from having the ability to make a new choice when faced with old ways of being. I hope the discussion around ‘Gunslinger’ will inspire men to take a deeper look at the intergenerational trauma impacting their lives, and initiate a self-awareness that gives them freedom to have more connected relationships with themselves and others.” 

The songs on Music From Crazy Hearts complement the soundscape to Dean’s own story of breaking the industry mold to carve out his name independently. Leading up to the album’s release, Dean shared a number of singles and accompanying videos including “Mercy” and its neon-imbued romp through Sin City, “Blood Brothers,” which Magnet Magazine called "an epic country-tinged rocker,” “Don’t Look Back” featuring Sarah Buxton, which Dean performed on RFD-TV and Glide Magazine called “a gorgeous work of country-laced Americana that resonates with all of us,” and lead single “Burn This House”.

For more than a dozen years Dean’s been one of Australia’s best-known artists, armed with a larger-than-life voice that catapulted songs like “You” to the top of the charts. Even so, the Adelaide native found himself boarding an American-bound plane in early 2021 with his young family. Dean’s effortless ability to embody multiple genres, such as roots rock, soul and folk meant, after a brief hiatus from the spotlight of earlier years, Dean was able to return to music on his own terms, writing songs that mixed heartland hooks with heart-baring honesty for his previous album and American debut, Unknown.

Photo Credit: Sarah Barlow

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