The song is the latest from his new instrumental solo album
Tesla founding guitarist Frank Hannon releases the cinematic new music video for “This Is Goodbye,” a standout instrumental from his latest album Reflections, out now. Filmed in the historic 1849 Bryant Cemetery in Northern California’s Gold Rush country, the black-and-white clip captures the song’s quiet elegy and Western tone, underscoring the personal losses that shaped the record. The video features a collaboration with up-and-coming filmmaker Brandon Gullion and a poignant performance by Christy (Betts) Hannon – Frank’s wife and the daughter of Allman Brothers Band guitarist Dickey Betts.
Hannon collaborated with Gullion, a talented 36-year-old guitarist who recently turned his passion toward cinematography, to create the video for “This Is Goodbye.” The two first met at a local rehearsal studio, where Hannon immediately recognized Gullion’s natural eye for film. Over the past five years, they’ve developed a creative partnership built on spontaneity and shared vision, producing a series of cinematic, film-style music videos together. Working with minimal gear – a Canon EOS camera, gimbal, and a few lens filters—Gullion captures Hannon’s ideas with remarkable speed and clarity.
“Brandon will take my idea and turn it into a beautiful song video almost instantly,” Hannon says. “He has a gift for translating sound into imagery, and every time we collaborate, it comes out looking like a movie.”
Using very basic photography equipment – a Canon EOS, a gimbal, and a few lens filters – Hannon and Gullion leaned into speed and feel. Their partnership has also yielded several TESLA live videos and helped a young artist, JT Loux, land a Nashville deal through simple, performance-forward promos. “There is something magical about spontaneous creativity, and working with Brandon Gullion always captures my visions and ideas in our music videos,” Hannon says.
Set among weathered headstones and open sky, the Bryant Cemetery location captures the essence of the Old West, and the poignant western sound of a guitar mourning in pain. In keeping with Reflections’ “movie-soundtrack” character and Western guitar stylings, the idea to shoot in black and white “came to life in just one afternoon of shooting and editing.
Reflections is Hannon’s most intimate, Western-tinged statement yet – raw first takes recorded on his phone during a season of loss, return, and renewal. It places the guitar as the sole voice, moving through cinematic melodies, soulful slide, intricate fingerpicking, and moody chord progressions. Recent singles include the bluesy “One More Time” (with a ranch-shot video) and the contemplative “Our Father’s Love” (paired with a Sierra Mountains performance clip). Raised in rural Sacramento among horses, chickens, and goats, Hannon’s lifelong connection to the land and Americana spirit courses through the album’s wide-open feel.
