Premiere: Will Carter recalls father’s memory with ‘Red Sunrise’
The Texas troubadour honors his late father with a new cut from his upcoming album.
“Grief is a place we all shall visit, a familiar yet foreign land,” Broadway actress Alexandra Silber concludes in her emotionally-engaging memoir, 2018’s White Hot Grief Parade. Her words cut like a scalding kitchen knife through butter, but it is such a startlingly simple reflection that connects every fiber of the human existence together, a vibrantly woven, yet beaten and torn, tapestry. Grief, and the spiraling out, more importantly, is a constant we all must endure, sooner or later. Texas country singer-songwriter Will Carter has certainly dealt with his fair share of it, and with his new song “Red Sunrise,” premiering today, he exposes the darkness swelling up inside him, as a way to finally release the pain into the rose-tinted rays of light cresting the horizon.
“I’m sitting here watching this red sunrise / That breaks through the darkness between you and I,” Carter sings on the opening line, setting the tone of chest-pounding yearning and ache. But his voice never wavers. Instead, it’s soaked in sweet memories of a time long fading in the rearview, and he only carries those moments in his pocket for safe keeping. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen your face / Long since I’ve been back to the place / Where we rolled out our hopes and dreams / To take on the world and conquer everything…” reads as a handwritten note, a eulogy of sorts to finally lay the pain to rest amidst the sun’s gentle ripples.
“Red Sunrise,” the first song Carter ever wrote, is painted with a commercial sensibility, but there’s never a moment Carter compromises the emotional weight of it all. “I close my eyes / And I can see your face,” he later sings, tenderly provoking himself to finally let go. “The thought of you, it carries me through / And after all this when you’re on my mind / I can break through the darkness like a red sunrise.” Electric guitars gust in waves across the wasteland of loneliness and misery, but he soon emerges more capable to weather the storm and far stronger than when he first began his journey.
“My father Trey Carter passed away from cancer when I was 13. He was my biggest supporter and role model growing up. I wrote this song as a dedication to him and the support and encouragement he gave me to pursue my dreams,” Carter tells B-Sides & Badlands over email.
“Red Sunrise” samples Carter’s upcoming new record, Good Bad Idea, out everywhere April 12.
Listen below:
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