New Single by Everett LaRoi : ‘Out of Town Off the Grid’ (releases July 28, 2023)
So happy to announce the release of my new single ‘Out of Town Off the Grid’. I have been working on a new album, slowly but with abandon, over the past while. This is the first song to be released from it. The new single features drummer Mike Silverman (Deep Dark Woods, Kacy & Clayton), bassist Tom Murray (Old Reliable, Pal Joey) as well as background vocals by songwriter Alice Kos (Goldtop, Mark Davis).
After my mother passed away in 2017 and then, shortly thereafter my father in 2018, there was this crushing weight of grief I was carrying around. For some reason, the thought of getting out of town and going camping, where we could smell the pine needles and hear the creek in the distance, where cell phone towers couldn’t reach us for a few days, was really soothing. I needed to sip a cold beer, poke at a campfire with a stick and listen to the crickets and the birds. In the song ‘Out of Town Off the Grid’ I tried to capture the longing I felt for that.
The genesis of this song was actually fairly typical for me in the sense that a large chunk of it came to me really quickly in a burst of inspiration, but, then I had to work at it for a while to finish it. It was February in Edmonton, in the later half of another cold and sometimes harsh winter. It’s time of year when lot of northern dwellers get a bit stir crazy and in search of some relief catch a cheap to Mexico. At very least a person might fantasize about what one might do in the spring when the prairies will turn green and be fragrant with the perfume of canola flowers again. To be honest, I’ve always seen the isolation of winter in Edmonton as a sort of secret weapon for all manner of artists living here. Everyone gets so sick of everything and gets so bored that they actually start working on their art.
In any case, at this point in time, you could say that I was in a bit of diminished state as not only was I despondent and still mourning the loss of my parents but, I had also been appointed with the task of settling the affairs of their estates. It turned out this was actually an exceedingly complicated task. I had started logging long hours on a daily basis for months on end, trying to deal with everything that needed to be done. In the meantime, I had to keep the money coming in for the family and put the time into being the best Dad I could be for my kids. Something had to give, and that something was playing shows and recording songs. I knew would get back to it eventually. I also knew my priorities were intact. Family and friends first, music comes after that.
I was overwhelmed but one thing I was NOT going to do was to STOP writing songs. I am always working on songs. It’s ingrained in my way of life it’s not negotiable: It’s something I actually need to do – not really a hobby for me. So anyway, songs started to pop out, perhaps as a way to help me to process where I found myself in my life.
Part of me just wanted to run away from everything I was facing, just “get the fuck out of Dodge” as my friend Abe likes to say. That was not an option, except perhaps in my imagination.
Originally, I think I just had the one line and a melody: “Need to get out of town get off the grid“. The two verses that would end up in the final song came to me very quickly one evening and almost in their finished forms. This served as what I would describe as a song seed, that could be planted later when I had a bit more time on may hands. Song seeds are usually a combination of a few scrawled lyrics and maybe a short voice recording on my iPhone. Although I had two verses, the chorus section still eluded me. I wasn’t even thinking about a bridge at that point.
Here is the actual song seed from my iPhone, recorded on February 13, 2019. It’s obviously not finished, but, in some ways, I actually prefer this to the final single!