See Kiefer Sutherland’s Debut Country-Music Video ‘Not Enough Whiskey’
As Kiefer Sutherland, star of 24 and countless movies, preps the release of his debut album — an Americana and country outing dubbed Down in a Hole — he already knows what people might be thinking. “If I hear about an actor doing a music project, my eyes are the first to roll,” he tells Rolling Stone. “It’s been done before and, on some levels, not very well. A lot of actors make records but won’t tour to support them or make videos, and it ends up not being serious. I felt strongly that this was something I wanted to do.”
Today, the actor, who will be presenting at the ACM Awards this year, proves just how genuine he is in his ambitions by releasing a music video for “Not Enough Whiskey.” He financed the clip himself — “I wanted something that was personal and traveling,” he says — so he and his songwriting partner Jude Cole found a motel where they could film one long shot, through a parking lot and into a bar. It’s a video that purposefully showcases Sutherland, who didn’t want to “hide behind a band,” to prove his commitment to being a musical artist.
“Not Enough Whiskey,” like many of the songs on the album, due out this summer, is personal for Sutherland. “I’ve certainly been there, where something will happen in life, and one, two, three bottles of whiskey are not going to fix it,” he says. “In the context of the song, those moments are important to realize so you have to find another way to deal with them. I’m sure a lot of people have felt that way.”
In “Truth in Your Eyes,” he tells another personal story, about witnessing one of his best friends lose a partner violently. “I can only imagine how devastating it was for them because I still think of it as one of the saddest times in my life,” he says. Another, “Calling Out Your Name,” reflects on a relationship he had in his early twenties that fell apart as his acting career took off. “There’s a moment in everyone’s life when they go from a girl to a woman or a boy to a man, and that transition, at least from my experience, is illustrated through heartbreak,” he says. And then there’s the title track, “Down in a Hole,” which pays tribute to a friend who drank himself to death.
The opportunity to tell stories through song is what attracted Sutherland to country music, a genre he got serious about during the past decade. “I never picked a script because, ‘Ooh, that’s a character I want to play,'” he says. “It’s always been because I thought there was an interesting story to tell. Country music to me is like that.”
Although he claims to be a huge rock fan, citing AC/DC, Neil Young and Paul Simon as some of his favorite artists, he is as much a fan of Kris Kristofferson (“a genius writer”), Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash. “I could hum you every melody or guitar solo from a Pink Floyd record, but I couldn’t tell you what the hell they were talking about,” Sutherland says with a laugh. “There’s no messing around with a Johnny Cash song, and there’s something I really admire about that.”