The “Against the Tide” music video launched a few weeks ago and I’m thankful for everybody who checked it out and for all the positive comments, Like’s, and subscribers on YouTube. I’ve gotten quite a few questions about the making of the video and music-related stuff in general and I’m responding to a number of these in a Question/Answer format below. Also, please feel free to reach out to me any time via my website – www.justintoe.com – or follow me on social media.

Question: Why did you choose the stage name Justin Toe?
Answer: A couple of reasons: 1.) to separate out personal/business from the music 2.) it was a high school nickname so I’m already used to it 3.) “Lady Gaga” was already taken

Question: Why doesn’t your video have women in thong bikinis?
Answer: This is Justin Toe – not Justin Bieber.

Question: What was the most unusual thing about the making of the video or the song itself?
Answer: There are plenty of unusual things and some of them are described in these other responses. But one thing I thought was pretty unusual and also cool was the use of a guitar that had been owned by Johnny Cash. The guitar dated back to the early 60’s, I believe, and was played on one specific part of the song – the opening interlude for the first 15 seconds or so of the video.

Question: Who was the nerdy looking guy playing basketball in the video?
Answer: He’s a guy I met playing basketball at various YMCA’s around the middle TN area. His name is Eugene and I’d say he’s even a little shorter and older than I am (which means he’s pretty darn short and pretty darn old) – but he knows no fear and regularly plays against young guys who are a good six to eight inches or so taller than him and manages to more than hold his own. Also, he doesn’t seem to know the meaning of the word “three pointer”; he takes the ball inside every chance he gets. So yes, I absolutely had to find a place for him in this video! He was upset, though, that we ran out of time when shooting the basketball scenes. Basically the whole video crew got kicked out of the gym by a local college team that called it home. It was somewhat hilarious to see the college players waiting to take the floor for practice while Eugene was doing his thing on their court. He vowed to me afterward that at some point he was going to finish the rest of the basketball scenes so he can do his “big moves” that we were not able to capture for the video. I told him he just might get the chance someday.

Question: What did it feel like to get your songs rejected so many times?
Answer: It felt awesome, of course :)! No, it’s a tough thing because the song becomes kind of like your baby and imagine being told your baby was ugly or flawed in some kind of way – time and time again. But I think that’s kind of the road traveled by a songwriter, especially one who’s still trying to learn the basics of music at the same time he’s trying to write songs; usually the one comes before the other. But to be honest, I would have tried 100 times – 1,000-plus even – if that’s what it took to get a song I believed in to the point where it needed to be. Anyway, as the song says, the journey itself is so much what it’s really all about – that’s where you discover the essence of yourself.

Question: This video contains a number of stories – how did these stories come about and the idea to include them together?
Answer: Well, the original version of this song was written a couple of years ago as the very first song I ever tried to write and even back then the visions for a number of these stories were running through my mind – the senior citizen athletes, the elderly lady who decides to get her college degree, the athletic black teenager who does ballet, the short middle-aged white guy who plays basketball. These were all based on real stories I read about or people I knew and they were all inspirational to me. A few of the other stories, including the young lacrosse goalie with a disability and my own story (which I originally had no plans whatsoever to include in the video until the director talked me into it) came much more recently. I wrote what amounts to basically the screenplay for the video, which was quite a challenge to try to match up all the different story elements with the song. But hopefully – with plenty of edits by the video’s producer – we ended up with something that will resonate with some people. All of these stories are joined by the common message that’s the theme of “Against the Tide” – in a nutshell, “that our age, size, and other labels do not define us – we are only defined by what we choose to do and who we choose to be.”