Double Vision’s Road to Hollywood: New Tattoo and the Rock ‘n’ Roll Dream

by Vy Le | January 3rd, 2025

All images are from Double Vision’s - BTS music video shoot on 1/3/25.

Double Vision is the new rock band you need to keep on your radar. With New Tattoo gaining momentum on local airwaves, their first music video on the way, and a Hollywood debut set for May, this group of brothers is taking their first big steps into the spotlight. James Barnes, Ace Barnes, C.C. Ford, and Danny Ford are channeling their sibling energy into songs that capture raw emotion and classic rock vibes. In an exclusive conversation, they shared the story behind their breakout single, the challenges of filming their debut video, and their dreams of making it big.

Double Vision is built on two sets of brothers. How does that family connection come into play during high-pressure moments, like filming a video or performing live?

James: It definitely amplifies both the bond and the anger that comes with having a brother. I can't speak for Danny and CC on that, but I know me and Ace, in particular, are always one word away from beating the absolute shit out of each other. So anything... you look at me funny while I'm pushing a case or I'm tuning up or something, and I'm going to snap on you
Ace: Yeah. I mean, as siblings, you can get away with saying a lot more stuff to each other, so it's pretty heinous. But it definitely doesn't help because we know how to get under each other's skin, and doing it on purpose is definitely not cool.
C.C: Yeah, I'd say in our situation, it's the same deal. It's easy to just go at each other because you've been around each other your entire lives. But in the same respect, a lot more gets done because we also know each other. We know the kinks, we know what sets each other off, how to get each other to cooperate. So just being on the same page is something that, as brothers, is a lot easier and definitely helps when it comes to getting stuff done.
James: Me and Ace, over the years, have perfectly crafted the art of acting like it didn’t happen. Yeah, just two seconds later—what were we fighting about?

What’s the vibe behind the scenes? Who’s the perfectionist, and who’s the one bringing the humor?

James: The perfectionist is Ace
C.C: For sure
James: Humor? That’s Danny
C.C: Yeah
James: Whether he's actually being funny or not, he's going to try. He's definitely going to try and break a tense moment, and that, I'll say, 80% of the time backfires. Yeah, but Ace is a "my way or the highway" kind of guy for sure. Whether it comes to the setlist or where the mic stand’s going to go during the video shoot, every minute detail is planned out, and there's a vision that's been there.

New Tattoo has already made waves on the radio. What inspired you to take it further with a music video?

Ace: Well, the video was planned before it went on the radio, which was really interesting. We were just going to do the B-side to the New Tattoo single, which is a song off our record called Rattlesnake Shake. We were going to do that because it had, you know, a little bit of a different vibe—it’s more of a party song kind of vibe. It’s very reminiscent of the ’80s metal that we like. And then New Tattoo came on the radio, and I immediately thought, no, we have to do that one. We have to put a bunch of press around it. Now, that way, you know, when we go to California and stuff like that, hopefully, we’ll be able to circulate it to the powers that be over there. But definitely, this was our first single off the record, so we wanted to keep leaning into it because it was the first single for a reason. So, yeah.
C.C: I think the numbers also kind of led us there. I think it had 50,000 hits this year. That’s our top-streamed song of the year.
James: Yeah, it was the highest-grossing track we ever had in its first week. The data speaks for itself—it was the high priority for the group.

Can you give us a glimpse into the video’s concept? What kind of vibe or story are you creating?

Ace: I just wanted it to be reminiscent of old ’80s [music videos]. A lot of them, you know, came out when MTV first started, and making a video was really expensive. So, a lot of it was about cutting corners—just footage of the band playing live, like in a concert or in a dingy, personal studio. So we leaned into that and thought, OK, let’s act like we’re on stage. I mean, we are on a stage, but you know—like there’s an audience and stuff like that. So let’s just do what we’d do live and capture that, because that’s what we do best.
James: We're taking the elements of, you know, videos specifically like Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Hanoi Rocks or the Paradise City video by Guns and Roses where it's they're on the stage—and that’s the video..

Is this your first time shooting a video?

Yeah, it's really cool.

What’s been the most memorable, or chaotic, moment during filming?

Ace: The load-in was really annoying. That was tough—getting all this gear into the building. I think that’s all.
James: I’d even take it back an hour before that—packing everything up from storage and getting it here. There were some words thrown, some fights to be had during that.
C.C: I was fortunately out of the way for those moments, but getting started and dealing with the backing track was tough. You know, when the speakers cut out and you can’t hear what you’re trying to play along with, it definitely makes it difficult.
Ace: It was good vibes, though. I mean, once we got into the shoot, it was really fun. Getting there was just the hump we had to get over.
James: ’Cause we had such a wonderful director doing our video for us. That really makes things easier.

What sets New Tattoo apart as a standout song?

James: Everything about New Tattoo was different. The way we wrote New Tattoo was completely different. Usually, me and Ace’s process was—we were always together. He’d come up with a riff, and I might have some lyrics written or something for it, and we’d just put it together. But for that first year or so, we were all away—all four of us. I was doing a lot of writing myself and not sharing it with Ace. He would call me on the phone and play me a riff, like, “You got something for this?” And I’d say, “No, I don’t think I’ve got anything for that.” But with New Tattoo, it was different. He said, “I’ve got this riff—I’ve got to call you right now and show you this.” We wrote it over the phone. I wrote the lyrics that day, and then over the next couple of days. It just flowed out of me. I didn’t even have to think about it, which was very odd. We ended up with a full song that we could present to the rest of the guys after just a short phone call. Adding it to our set while we were still touring our first record, we knew there was something different about it. We all dug it, and it led to what became our second record, Piece of the Action. So yeah, New Tattoo was... everything.
Ace: Well, I want to speak about the timeline too, because it was written about five months after our first record had come out. So it still had the residual vibe we were trying to capture from that first record. Every other song on Piece of the Action doesn’t quite have that same vibe—it’s a little different. For the rest of the writing process, we were like, “OK, let’s go and make a new record,” and then we sat down and wrote songs for it. But this one (New Tattoo) had already existed. That’s what was really cool about it. It captured a vibe from when we had first started the band. We’d been together for a couple of years by the time the first record came out, but New Tattoo definitely had that old-school, first-album vibe.
James: It bridged the gap between the two [records] for sure.

Is there a particular lyric or moment in New Tattoo that you think resonates most with your audience?

James: A lyric? There’s a lyric in the third verse, I think: “Ink and needles don’t give you no blues.” For a lot of people in the tattoo culture, whether you’re an artist or a patron, tattooing can be very therapeutic. Some people use it as therapy. Tattoos help people through breakups, through grief—they can bring a lot of peace, whether it’s getting tattoos, drawing tattoos, or anything else. I think that speaks a lot about the tattoo culture itself, and it might even say more about art in general—how it helps people find themselves through something greater than themselves.
Ace: Yeah, I mean, personally, my tattoos hold so many memories. I know exactly what my mindset was like when I got each one. They’re really cool—like a moment-in-time kind of piece for me. I remember we had written the song, and then we went and got our Double Vision tattoos, which then became the album cover.
So even with that timeline, it’s like this song—it wouldn’t have led to that tattoo without the song. And that tattoo, it’s a really special thing because it’s got all four of us on it. It’s like, you know, that’s...
James: Yeah. And even that, like you said, is a moment in time. It’s capturing this part of our life right here.
Ace: And no one can ever take that away from us. I mean, whatever we do in the future—whether we split or whatever—they can’t take that away. I’ll always have that memory. I can look down and be like, That was cool. We did that. It was really cool, you know.

With New Tattoo gaining attention and the video on its way, what’s next for Double Vision in 2025?

James: The tour! We’re on a short little run right now, East Coast to West Coast. We’ve got the Stone Pony coming up again in Asbury Park, and obviously, we’re going to rock that shit like we did the first time—no questions asked, no problem. Then we fly out to Hollywood in May to run with the big dogs at the Whisky a Go Go—a dream come true. It’s the same stage where Guns N’ Roses, L.A. Guns, Faster Pussycat, Van Halen, and even Def Leppard played a couple of years ago for the first time. It’s like, Mötley Crüe—everybody who was anybody—their footsteps are somewhere on that stage. It’s going to be a surreal moment, just like it was with the Stone Pony. To be part of that culture, part of that zeitgeist, and part of that Hollywood thing that we drew so much influence from. So, yeah, I think the big thing right now in 2025 is making sure we give the product we want to give when we’re out on the road.

How do you see this video shaping your journey as a band, especially with performances at The Stone Pony and in West Hollywood on the horizon?

Ace: I guess we kind of just wanted to do it because that’s what bands do. They make music videos. You put out a record, you make a video for your single, and that’s it. For me, I wanted to be able to go to Hollywood and have someone look up our song, whether it’s on streaming or on YouTube—because a lot of people do that. You go on YouTube, find the music video for the song, and it’s like, I wanted them to be able to see us, put a face to the name, and think, Oh wait, that’s the band I saw, instead of just hearing a random song called New Tattoo. So that was a big thing for me—making sure we have a product to give to people. Like, Here’s our music video, you know?

If you could feature any celebrity cameo in the New Tattoo video, who would you choose and why?

James: So we had a lot of different answers—we did think about that one for a while. A few meanings came up. We were thinking about someone whose artwork is part of them—it’s part of their personality and really reflects the true purpose of tattoos. Tattoos share your journey; they tell your story. One of the names that came up, of course, was David Lee Roth from Van Halen. He has this traditional tuxedo tattoo, fully hand-tapped over six years. Just that in itself is a story. But I also thought about people like Angry Anderson from Rose Tattoo. He’s got beautiful Japanese traditional work—two full-color sleeves of Japanese designs on his arms. Somebody like Kat Von D, who’s both a tattoo artist and a musician, came to mind too. She kicks ass, and if she wanted to, she could definitely be in it. Then there’s Dave Navarro from Jane’s Addiction. For those who don’t know, he hosted Ink Master for God knows how many years, and for a while, he was like the mascot of the tattoo industry. We all agreed on that. But our non-celebrity cameo would definitely have to be Mrs. Tiffany Ormsby, who’s our tattoo artist. She’s the one who tattoos CC and me, and she’s the one who designed our Appetite for Destruction-style cross for Double Vision that we ended up using as our album cover.

What’s the most rock ‘n’ roll moment you’ve experienced as a band so far?

James: I have one. Our first real year together, we played the Hard Rock Cafe in Philadelphia, and at that point, that was the top for us. We were like, “Oh man!” It was a multi-band bill throughout the night, and we were just wedged in somewhere.
Ace: Yeah, we played after like School of Rock or something like that. They threw us in after those people. It was insane.
James: So Ace is on stage, shredding, killing it, and this little girl walks up to him after the set with a napkin and a crayon. She asked if she could get his autograph.
Ace: I thought I made it at that point. I was waiting for a line of people asking for my autograph. She got a picture and everything—she even got a guitar pick. Moments like that are so cool. It’s the only time that’s ever happened, but yeah, it was pretty awesome. I think maybe playing the Landis Theater was another big thing for us. That was a bucket list venue. It’s our local theater that hosts all the rock shows. A lot of our favorite bands have been through there.
James: It was the first time we played at a venue where we’d previously seen a show. The year before, we went to see Vixen there, and we were rushing the stage like, “Oh my God, we’re going to play here one day!” And the next year, we were on that stage—and then again the next month. It was surreal. You go from being in the seats, watching the show, to being the show. It was very serendipitous.
C.C: Another big thing about the Landis was that, when you start in a band, you’re putting so much into it—time, money, emotions, working together, and negotiating—and you don’t always see a return. I remember playing the Landis for the first time, and they brought us backstage. We were like, “What is this? There’s a backstage? We get to be backstage?” Then someone came back and asked us what kind of pizza we wanted for dinner—without any cost to us.
Ace: It was like, “Can we get you water?” And we’re like, “Yeah, you can!”
C.C: It was just such a cool feeling to get something back after we had given so much to get on our feet and perform at places like that.
Ace: Even the music video was a pretty cool rock ’n’ roll moment. It’s our first real music video. Before our first record, we shot one on an iPhone for our demo record. We had four songs—our first originals—and we were circling them around to make it look like we were farther ahead than we actually were. We shot a video for one of those songs in our garage with an iPhone, but that doesn’t count. Having a real music video, a real album, and real radio play with our song—that’s rock ’n’ roll.
James: We’ll forever be indebted to everyone at WMMR for that. Casey Boy, Preston Elliott, Steve Morrison, Kathy Romano, Nick McIlwain, Marissa Magnatta—especially everyone involved with the Preston & Steve Show at WMMR—for taking a chance on us and letting us do that. I'll forever be indebted for that.

To wrap things up, Do you have anything you'd like to share with The audience

James: Double Vision fucking rocks. Don't forget that.
Ace: Buy a Stone Pony ticket. Wire Me money just 'cause. Like one of those. Pretty cool
James & Ace & C.C: Go listen to New Tattoo. Stream New Tattoo.

Double Vision is just getting started, and their journey is already one to watch. With New Tattoo showcasing their unique sound and a music video on the way, James, Ace, C.C., and Danny are gearing up for an exciting year ahead.

LISTEN HERE!

Check out New Tattoo M/V!

Double Vision’s Road to Hollywood: New Tattoo and the Rock ‘n’ Roll Dream

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