'What ever happened to just being silly?'

"I'm glad I got to make this dumb thing," says Rodrigo Fernandez-Stoll, the man behind Fog and Lasers' new music video I Hope this Wins a Grammy.

While Rod takes centre stage in the video, he says the real joy was getting comedians and musicians to come together, goof off and make something fun. 

The video and the album were produced in collaboration with a long list of Canadian talent, including members of CBC's Schitt's Creek, Baroness von Sketch Show and bands like July Talk. Every single song was written with different musicians and songwriters. 

"We decided to put as much energy and passion and actually motivate a song in the way someone would if they were trying to write a song... and then added funny lyrics to it." says Fernandez-Stoll. 

You may recognize Fernandez-Stoll from his work in all sides of Canadian comedy — on stage and on screen in Baroness as a male stripper as well as Enrique in Kim's Convenience. But with this music project, he wanted to do something different. 

"There's already Weird Al, a Lonely Island, and other parody artists. I wanted to do something that sounds like a real album but when you listen to it, you figure out they are all ridiculous songs."  

"I wasn't ever thinking, 'I need to make something awesome that changes the world.' What ever happened to just being silly?"

The collaborative process

"Any music video that has fog in it, I'm into it 100%," says Fernandez-Stoll. "We also wanted to see how many dramatic camera angles we could pull off, and used a lot of stock shots."

Fernandez-Stoll says the reason there are a variety of different shots and ideas in the video is because of the unplanned, collaborative creative process. 

"Everybody was getting their say. Nobody was ever shutting anything down. When we got together to work on it, we'd talk about our day for 10-15 minutes, and then we'd take those ideas and run with them." 

The same goes for the song lyrics for I Hope I Win a Grammy, which were inspired by the team talking about what they loved about their favourite Bon Jovi songs and who their '90s girl-crush was. This explains the song's reference to Stephanie Seymour, the model and actress known for appearing in the famous Guns N' Roses', November Rain, music video. 

"The whole idea was to get together with people and make a bunch of songs with my favourite musicians in the Toronto scene, and a bunch of the comics I really liked. I had a really good time making things with my friends, I feel like more people should be able to do that." 

And there's more to come: Fernandez-Stoll plans to make a video for all songs from the Fog and Lasers album.