Jenny Lou Drew will release her sophomore solo record, Rockbiter, on August 10, 2019 at Portland House of Music and Events in Portland, Maine. Special guests Lauren Crosby and Earl Mac will share the stage for an unforgettable evening of Maine music.
The album’s title track is an epitaph of sorts, crafted over the course of several substance related losses within Drew’s circle of friends. Drew describes the song as a rhetoric aimed at friends lost and those who could be struggling under the radar.
“…we’re living in a world that’s half ethereal and we’re keeping connected in ways we never could have imagined a couple of decades ago. And at first you start seeing the news, you know, marriages and kids, people buying houses, Instagram pictures. And then one day it’s an overdose, a suicide, and you hear about it online. It really takes the ground out from under you.”
Drew wrote the first verse of Rockbiter after seeing a Facebook post announcing the accidental overdose and death of a friend from high school. The second came after a fan, who’d been reaching out to her in messages online for years, was found dead from a substance related suicide.
The song gives a nod to the 80’s film, The Never-ending Story, in which the character coined ‘Rockbiter’ laments the loss of his friends while staring into his hands. The hook of the song is a paraphrase of that scene,
“I played it off, now a record is playing,
over and over again
in my heart
how my hands
just couldn’t hold on to my friends”
“You’re always going to wonder what hand you had in that outcome, though it’s almost certainly entirely out of your control. Was there something I could have said or done? I think the answer is just to be present and responsible when you do see the signs. I’ve had people reach out online, I’ve had to call family members, the cops, and I don’t hesitate for a moment."
Drew's performance of the album title track in Studio Z with Brian Farrell aired December 19th on 98.9 WCLZ. The session and interview is available to stream in the Studio Z archives at www.989wclz.com/studio-z as well as on Soundcloud.
