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Los Angeles singer-songwriter-guitarist David Haerle draws inspiration from formative experiences that have stayed with him like half-remembered dreams. His new single, “Tucumcari Tonite!,” looks back on long summer drives through the American Southwest and is rooted in the enduring magic of places like Tucumcari, New Mexico.
“Tucumcari Tonite!”:
https://youtu.be/0rKCzCldA10 // https://lnk.to/DHtucu
Rooted in nostalgia and simpler times, the music video for “Tucumcari Tonite!” embraces new technology to push the boundaries of artistic imagination. Created using AI tools under the direction of award-winning filmmaker Sabrina Doyle, marking her first project to fully integrate AI into her creative process, the video unfolds as a hallucinatory, dreamlike reawakening of an old memory, blurring reality and imagination through a magical road trip seen through a child’s eyes, complete with surreal encounters, ancient landscapes, and even roaming dinosaurs.
Built using Google Veo 3, the project shows how AI can unlock stories that might otherwise be impossible to tell, not by replacing creativity, but by expanding what’s possible when guided by a clear artistic vision. The video blends cutting-edge tools with deeply personal imagery, a grandmother character modeled from a photograph of David’s maternal grandmother, shaping the piece into a tender, intimate work of memory.
“Every summer of my youth, my brother and I went to stay with our maternal grandparents Walter and Anna Duke–or Muz and Papa as we knew them–at their farm in middle Tennessee. Oh, the good times we had with them,” David explains of the inspiration behind “Tucumcari Tonite!”
“Most summers, we would fly there and back from our home in Los Angeles, but on a few occasions Muz and Papa made a road trip of it, driving us one way by car. Pending the weather, I-40 or I-10 would be our route. A few different cars made the trek over the years but I remember their 1970s brown Buick sedan the best.
“My inspiration for this song was my memories of those road trips and a town called Tucumcari, New Mexico. Tucumcari is located along I-40 and old Route 66. Its place along the interstate amidst the American Southwest’s vast distances without cities and towns makes it a natural stopping place for travelers and road trippers. Tucumcari used to advertise ‘2,000 motel rooms’ and ‘Tucumcari Tonite!’ on billboards coming into town. I remember the town’s name itself captivating me, and I can hear my grandparents saying it aloud.
“My combined recollections from these trips along with research for the song conjured up so much in my imagination: souvenir shops, giant cactus, ancient indigenous cultures and costumes, the epic Meteor Crater and Petrified National Forest, billboards and neon signs attracting tourists, themed motels, swimming pools, dinosaur museums, and of course the exquisite feeling of freedom from school that came with summer vacation. So much to make a lifelong impression on a kid.
“But which Kodachrome memory shines more brightly than any other? The image of Muz and Papa and their love for us grandchildren. So join me on this road trip, if we make good time we’ll be staying in Tucumcari tonight!”
“‘Tucumcari Tonite!’ by musician David Haerle is a nostalgic trip into a 1970s childhood, both real and imagined,” adds video director Sabrina Doyle. “I see it through a distorted, Lynchian lens that pulls its Americana into a sharp focus — like a fistful of desert sand thrown in your eyes. Referencing cult TV shows like ‘Land of the Lost’ and leaning into the mystique of the American Southwest, I invite viewers to step into a parallel Tucumcari where the landscape constantly rewrites itself. To meditate on deep time and the insistence of memory. In order to hallucinate the past, I harnessed the latest in AI-assisted filmmaking. Unlocking personal histories and, also, planetary histories in the form of the giant beasts that once roamed this land. An ancient dream rendered in modern strokes. And a desert world — both fossilized and evolving — that reveals itself anew in every frame, reminding us that anything is possible in the places we carry within us.”
