D.B. Tait makes a striking debut with the haunting alt-country ballad “Before You Go,” offering a heartfelt first glimpse of his upcoming album Losing Time.
As the latest artist to appear out of the fertile musical soil of Ontario’s Prince Edward County, D.B. Tait makes a powerful first impression with his debut single, “Before You Go.” A haunting cosmic country ballad with echoes of Jason Molina and MJ Lenderman, the song is a preview of a full-length album entitled Losing Time that is sure to establish Tait as a vital new voice within the alt-country world.
Tait explains,
“I wrote ‘Before You Go’ as a song about knowing there’s something difficult coming, in any sort of relationship, whether it’s romantic or platonic, and the anxiety and stress that comes with waiting to have that sort of confrontation—almost like waiting to hear if you got a job or if you made the cut on a sports team, but on a more personal and even existential level. The anticipation of that confrontation can be a real struggle sometimes.”
Tait recorded “Before You Go,” as well as the rest of Losing Time (release date TBC), largely in his home studio, tracking most of the guitars and vocals on his own. Close collaborators Ian Roantree and Mitch Cory from the band Kojak added overdubs, while fellow Prince Edward County singer-songwriter and Littleknown Records head David James Allen handled the mix.
Since co-founding Kojak in 2018, Tait has gradually embraced a parallel path as a solo artist in order to express different themes of life’s everyday problems and how facing them helps to break free of destructive cycles. His songs explore how these actions affect love, death, relationships with friends, and the need to gain control of one’s self-governance. In naming the album Losing Time, Tait is essentially taking up the fight for all of us against letting our personal hourglasses run out.
“By the time I finished university in Toronto, I knew I wanted to have music be a part of my professional life, and soon enough it became my main ambition,” Tait says. “Kojak has toured the country, and continues to play all over and release music, but in the past few years I started to get a lot of local solo gigs. This became my main source of income, and it’s been a lot of fun, but I didn’t have much original music to play. So I started to write and eventually this record began taking shape. I’m looking forward to the challenge of balancing life as a solo artist with being a member of Kojak.”
Along with taking inspiration from the current generation of roots-based singer-songwriters, Tait’s sound draws from a multitude of genres, from traditional folk and country blues to rock and roll-tinged Americana, resulting in songs that range from delicate acoustic balladry, to bouncy blues and shimmering folk rock—essentially everything covered by the Americana umbrella. Overall, it feels like a journey through the last 60 years of classic Canadian and American music.
“Leaning into roots rock, alt-country type of stuff has been fun, and it feels like a natural place for me to be,” Tait says. “What I love about a lot of that music are the imperfections and the humanity of it all. The lack of polish makes it feel real.”