ISHues 77 min feature documentary
co-director, director of photography and co-producer.
Big Apple Film Festival 2026: Feature Documentary Finalist
Depth of Field Film Festival 2026: Best in Show
Ishmael Herring is born with raw musical talent. Grows up damaged in foster care. Neither his gift nor the trauma are his choice. Moving to Hollywood was inevitable: his singing is the one thing that can't be taken away.
20 year old kid from Kansas City gets on a bus bound for LA.... It doesn’t go well.
Phil writes a few songs and needs a singer. Herring answers an online ad. The result is undeniable and Ish’s chance at destiny. Over seven years, Phil becomes the mentor and father figure Ish never had. Together they navigate the bliss of musical collaboration and hardest part: when the tape stops rolling.
Most people don’t have a 5 minute chat with a homeless guy, let alone a 7 year working relationship. Ish aged out of foster care at 18. Was living on the roof of a restaurant near Hollywood Blvd when we met him.
The Orange Couch interview: I pulled out childhood memories that horrified me while he laughed about it. Stories, many just fragments, of this family and that home... his best guess is roughly a dozen.
He’s articulate, inconsistent, frustrating and funny. Probably hasn’t slept in 2-3 days. Phil helped him get off the street, get a job, doctors, all of it.
650 hours of footage, three albums of original Americana/Roots music as William Pilgrim and the All Grows Up (Spotify/Apple Music) engineered by Grammy winning Bob Horn. Guest artists include Hip Hop legend Darryl McDanniels (DMC of Run DMC), punk royalty Exene Cervenka and 5 time Grammy: Blind Boys of Alabama. We worked in Studio One at EastWest on Sunset, a room designed for Sinatra and later had the Stones, Madonna, Elvis, U2, Michael Jackson’s Thriller… you get the idea.
The plan was to build a suite of dovetailed pieces called The ISHues Project. Original music with the band, music videos, video shorts attached to 20ish min webisodes focused on themes, guest speakers and organizations we aligned with. Kevin Alexander Gray is a perfect example. His life’s work as an organizer, writer and thinker brought depth and history to Episode 4: Rock & Roll Models.
Personal favorites are Cheating the Devil and a little used intro to Episode 2: Power of Word where I arm twisted a gifted copywriter friend, (also named Scott Montgomery - there’s a ton of us out there) to riff on 26 Letters. The childhood reenactment scenes based on Ish’s memories were powerful and at moments incredibly hard to shoot.
We didn’t know what we didn’t know. Our webisodes did top out at 150K viewers, but in the online ocean... I'll steal from the great Steven Van Zandt: Nobody Heard It. Drop a note, love to hear your thoughts.
Coda: everyone asks… where is Ish now? After we stopped, he moved to Nashville and fronted a punk cowboy band. Then met a girl online who moved him to Sweden: their marriage lasted two years. He's near Mexico City now and doing well. You can’t make this shit up.