It’s impossible to watch “Jump-start Your Heart,” the latest music video from the Iowa band Miss Christine, and not take note of the medical scrubs and face masks, but the video was produced almost six months before those things became part of our daily lives.
“My friend and I joke that I made the pandemic happen,” said singer and bassist Christine Moad, with a laugh. “My parents used to be pharmacists, so I got all those supplies from them. And when I put the mask on, I put it on wrong. Little did I know that, six months later, I would be very accustomed to putting on a mask.”
Moad is the singer, bassist, and main songwriter for Miss Christine, a band based in eastern Iowa. Moad specifically cites The Beatles, Jefferson Airplane, and Led Zeppelin as influences on the band’s power pop sound.
Miss Christine has mostly focused on singles and videos since they released the full-length album “Conversion” in 2019. One of their previous videos, “Stay Away,” is featured on the Iowa Arts Council’s Digital Stage.
Like all musicians, Miss Christine had their careers upended by the COVID-19 pandemic, with one added challenge: there’s no internet at Moad’s farm outside Iowa City, making livestreamed shows difficult.
“I did do a livestream every week in April 2020, and you don’t have any of that energy returned that a crowd would give you,” said Moad. “It was very exhausting to just be sitting alone in a room playing. I want to do one again, but it’s not something I want to do all the time.”
Miss Christine did play a few shows in 2020, including kicking off the “Local Legends” series at the Gallagher Bluedorn Performing Arts Center in Cedar Falls. Moad went on field trips to the venue while growing up.
“That’s where I got to see all these live performers, and was like ‘I wanna do that someday,’” said Moad. “So it was funny when we were on the Gallagher Bluedorn stage, and nobody was there. (laughs) I’m very grateful I got to play there.”
Moad also played as a fill-in bass player for Surf Zombies, another eastern Iowa band. “My band started at the same time as Surf Zombies, and we looked up to them and thought they were super cool,” said Moad. “I’ve always wanted to play surf rock in a band, so I got to cross that off the bucket list.”
The video for “Jump-start Your Heart” was produced in October of 2019. Moad says the song is about “realizing you’re in a relationship that you don’t feel strongly about.”
“It’s a dream sequence, and I wanted to be this weird, broken heart doctor,” said Moad. “I love watching things with the reveal at the end that it was all a dream. I don’t remember my dreams, and I wish I could, so I wanted to create this weird little dream.”
Miss Christine is currently in the process of recording their second album. “The whole album is about the feelings and emotions of 2020, so I’m recording it all virtually in order to really capture the essence of the past year,” said Moad. “I wish we were all in person, but i feel like this is a time capsule. There’s been a lot of pros and cons, but one of the biggest pros is that we have more time to sit with the songs, and come up with the parts. Musically, it’s been able to ‘expand’ a bit more.”
“Jump-start Your Heart” is available on Bandcamp and Spotify, along with the rest of Miss Christine’s music.
