When "Eclipse" star Jackson Rathbone's friend passed away several years ago from adrenal cancer, one of his deepest fears came true. "That's probably my worst fear in life, to see a friend pass away," he told Hollywood Crush while discussing his new horror movie, "Dread." "My friend Spencer was an incredible musician and artist and he had so many songs that never would see the light of day."
Instead of letting his artistic spirit remain a memory, however, Spencer's friends and family started an organization, The Spencer Bell Legacy Project, to honor their loved one's creativity and to raise money for adrenal cancer programs.
"The Spencer Bell Legacy Project has been up and running for the last three years," Jackson said. "We've been able to put out now three albums of Spencer's work posthumously. That to me is just incredible, the amount of people who have been supporting the cause for organ cancer awareness."
On April 24th, the Project is hosting a fundraiser concert in Dallas (called The Spencer Bell Legacy Concert) to benefit cancer research and awareness, headlined by Jackson's band, 100 Monkeys, and other friends of Spencer's (including Drew and the Medicinal Pen, The Stevedores, Evro, The Kissing Club and Tin Tin Can).
As a way to promote the concert, Jackson directed a music video (see it here) for a song of Spencer's called "Beautiful, More So." "It's a little ad for the Dallas show and the Spencer Bell Legacy Concert," he said. "Hopefully a whole lot of people will come out and rock out. A lot of bands are going to be playing."
The video was Jackson's directorial debut. "It was my first attempt at having an idea that coincides with a piece of music that I really love, and how I wanted to express that with the sentiment of a song, and also the lyrics. ...It was just funny because literally I had a day off, so I just kind of went in and went for it."
Music videos aren't the only thing Jackson hopes to do more of in the future. "I'd love to direct more music videos," he said. "I'm working on some stuff with the band that will hopefully be coming out once we're done with our tour [and I can] get back and try to work on a couple more of those things. I'm still into acting, some short stories, and short films I hope to direct and fully realize, after the tour's over and I get another day off."
And how does he manage to juggle all those projects at once? "The trick is to drink lots of coffee. That's what I do."
Will you be buying tickets to the Legacy concert? What did you think of Jackson's directorial debut?
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