Mitchell Ferguson and Drugstore Cowboy Music Video Mocks Influencer Phoniness

The Mitchell Ferguson and Drugstore Cowboy single “Dramatic,” released last year for the duo’s Maverick album of collab tracks, is about the phoniness drummed up on social media by those who seem to have a talent only for garnering attention.

Director Jake Ryan Hull found the perfect fake set piece for the song’s music video, which the artists released on YouTube and Hull’s new music media app, Cinderblock.

“A good friend of mine and I are constantly sending each other Facebook marketplace random items,” Hull says. “I think someone was selling a tank on there recently.”

Hull says he found a hollowed-out private plane interior set on Facebook’s shopping page. It came from the liquidation sale of a jet-interior design company that used the fake plane part as a display for trade shows and demos. Hull hurried down to the sale site at Dallas Executive Airport and talked the owner down to $500 for the whole thing.

“Everything works on it,” Hull says. “The lights, the TVs, recliners; it’s like a perfect model of a real private jet. So we rented a trailer and brought it to Dallas.”

Ferguson says he and Drugstore Cowboy’s Carter Davis and Grant Thompson wrote the song to mock online influencers like Maison Melissa and musicians such as Bow Wow and Lil Nas X, who have posted photos of themselves riding in style on private jets that were just empty sets in Los Angeles film studios they could rent by the hour.

“So we thought let’s turn it on its head and mock that fakeness and being dramatic online,” Hull says.

“I just love the juxtaposition of us acting like we’re inside of this jet when it’s really not actually a full jet,” Ferguson says. “I think people gossip often, and a lot of the point of the song is being cautious about getting involved in other people’s job and projecting yourself in other people’s stuff. That juxtaposition of us playing as wealthy illustrates a lot of the dramaticism.”

The video shoot took two days, the first of which took place in Hull’s driveway. It was there that he had parked the giant fake plane, which attracted the attention of passersby.

“My neighbors were extremely curious of what’s going on but they were also super cool about it,” Hull says.

The second day, Hull says they put the plane on a trailer and drove it from Main Street in Deep Ellum through downtown Dallas and back, filming the whole trip from a second vehicle.  “The most fun part was even though the Dallas PD drove by, one of them took a picture of us,” Hull says. “They gave us no issue. The crazy part is that the jet has working seat belts so that was our fall back plan.”

The fuselage was secure on the trailer when they drove through downtown with it, but Ferguson says it still felt weird looking at the interior of a private plane right next to a downtown street.

“We took a lot of time to make sure that everything was strapped in very securely,” Ferguson says. “We all felt safe but it was pretty trippy. We definitely had to hold on. It was a lot of fun seeing everybody’s reaction to us filming this downtown and in Deep Ellum.”

The response to Ferguson and Drugstore Cowboy’s video has been overwhelmingly positive. It went viral a second time when Hull released some behind-the-scenes footage of the shoot on his Instagram.

Hull says he found a home for the fake plane after the shoot was finished.

“I just called a friend who owns a wine import company in the Design District, and he said to just bring it on over,” Hull says.