New Orleans, LA. QC in the Lower 9th Ward. March, 2007.
I met Quinten during my 1st 2-week stint helping out in New Orleans. We were both volunteering with Common Ground over Thanksgiving in 2006, gutting houses and doing our part to help the displaced people of NOLA. I found a kindred spirit in Quinten, who introduced me to the joys of Hazmat suits, safety meetings and lo-fi music-making. Along with hundreds of other volunteers from all over the U.S.—and the world, really—we stayed at the abandoned St. Mary's Catholic school, where Quinten discovered an abandoned old reel-to-reel tape recorder in a closet. During his many months of volunteering—he was still in New Orleans when I returned for another 2-week volunteering stint the following spring—QC wrote and recorded an entire album's worth of material on that tape recorder. I took my favorite song from that album and made this music video, using my photos and video to illustrate some of the things Quinten writes and sings so poignantly about. I think his lyrics are brilliant on this song, a Dylan-esque catalogue of vivid images and haunted characters. Last I heard, he's living in Colorado, raising 2 little kids with the lady he met after he finally left NOLA. I miss this guy.