Ford Fairchild | Laid Back / 2023 [music video]

sunshine dripping like country time lemonade

by Douglas Messerli

 

Chris Housman (singer, lyricist, and composer), Ford Fairchild (director) Laid Back / 2023 [2.50 minutes]

 

Beginning in 2020, with the release of his memorable single, “Nobody,” Kansas-born gay singer, Chris Housman came into the public consciousness. That song, based on his personal experience of a gay breakup, is not included in these pages because it contains no pronouns and no images of any male relationship. But in its country western plaints, it somehow attracted my attention, sounding very much to my ears like a gay ballad. How to explain that is difficult. It could be a tale of any straight man breaking up with his girl, but somehow the depth of his emotional pleading sounded like a wail of gay distress that just doesn’t come through in straight country western plaints.

    By the time of his following album Blueneck with its song “Drag Queen,” the latter written in response to the passage of the Tennessee Adult Entertainment Act, Housman had brought his open sexuality into his music.

     In “Laid Back,” and “Guilty As Sin” in 2023 and 2024—both also from Blueneck, he had made his sexuality quite clear in the images of his videos, both of these video singles directed by Ford Fairchild.

     “Laid Back” is simply about a group of friends “chillin’” together, but in this case with his particular boyfriend, as the other swim in the waters of Percy Priest Lake.

 

Brand new bobbers, hand me down poles

Cooler full of beer to keep the ice cold

Just enough sand, to feel like a beach

Down at that spot we got at Percy priest

 

Y’all can meet us there

Bring your own lawn chair

 

We gon’ keep it laid back

On the back half of a Sunday

Sunshine dripping like country time lemonade

Cold can 12 pack fighting off a heat wave

…No way we ain’t having us a good day

Put the phones down, turn the dial up

Catch a buzz and a bass with a little luck

Wave by wave, our troubles float away, yeah

Cuz we don’t need that

We’ll keep it laid back

Laid back, laid back

 

    And indeed, the gay couple are cuddling in laid-back style, a can of what appears to be lemonade hanging from Housman’s hand.

 

Los Angeles, March 21, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema (March 2025).