Grant Boyer shares his latest single, “De-Evolution”
Grant Boyer is embarking on his career as a solo artist, giving voice to edgy alt-rock with a dash of humour. After years of success as a founding member of Canadian rock group Golden Gate Graves, Grant took time to enjoy the downtime and to also start his family – though he never stopped writing music.
Agreeing to disagree doesn’t seem to cut it anymore. The online arguments go nowhere. Grant searches for a solution to social media discourse and phone addiction in “De-Evolution,” his twangy new single. He’s not trying to change the world, but if he can inspire a pause to think, maybe that’s okay.
Listen to “De-Evolution” below, and learn more about Grant Boyer via our Five Questions With segment.
Care to introduce yourself to our readers?
My name is Grant Boyer. I’ve been writing and performing music since I was 14 years old. I live near Toronto with my wife and two kids.
Tell us a bit about your most recent release.
“De-Evolution” is a song that mostly jokes about the dumbing down of society with the help of technology. The song inspired an album worth of material.
My friend and bass player Troy asked me for months to come check out his studio and do some recording. Eventually, his persistence paid off, and I went in with De-Evolution. It was originally just an acoustic song. I would play it alone and run a loop of the verse chords so I could wank a solo for a bridge. However, it became evident that this was to be a hard rock song when our drummer friend Chance Labrie (who just so happened to be hanging out in the studio that day) offered to lay down some drums. With very little direction and having heard the song only a handful of times, Chance laid down the drum track you hear today. In maybe two or three takes. After hearing the song with drums, it was pretty clear that it would no longer be acoustic.
De-Evolution was the spark. It inspired me to write all kinds of new material and revisit some stuff I had written in the past with new energy.
Where do you tend to pull inspiration from when writing?
Sometimes it’s from personal experience, and other times I’m writing from the perspective of a fictional character. Once in a while, it will just be words that rhyme and sound good together. I won’t even understand the meaning of the song until some time later.
I find my newest batch of songs interesting because it’s like they take on a life of their own. I think music is very much open to interpretation, so it’s neat to write a song one day and not even know what it means, sometimes ‘till a year later. It’s like I got to sneak over to the other side and experience the creation as a listener. It’s like it’s Wayne’s basement, but it isn’t Wayne’s basement. That last thing is from a movie. If you know, you know.
Do you have any upcoming shows or festivals you’d like to tell us about?
We’re currently devoting our focus on getting the songs/videos out, but we’ll have some show announcements soon.
What’s your goal for the remainder of 2022?
It’s been amazing having a song on the Canadian radio charts this year. At the risk of sounding greedy, I think it would be really cool to have two songs charting at the same time. The team and I are just focusing on developing the brand and continuing to build momentum as we go.