And they’re raising money for a charity very close to their hearts.
Back in October, Grayscale wrapped up their headline tour of North America in their hometown of Philadelphia, and they really made it a special occasion. In honour of the end of their tour and their hometown show, they gave ‘Tommy’s Song’ its live debut – and they’ve now shared some more detail about that important performance.
As well as sharing an emotional, live video of the performance of ‘Tommy’s Song’, Grayscale have shared, “The first (and possibly last) time we performed this song live was on October 5th, 2019 at the Theatre of Living Arts in Philadelphia, PA on our first ever headline tour. We only wanted to perform this song the way it was intended to be realized, which was with a full gospel choir. The 1,100+ crowd sang with the choir in tandem, ‘I heard Gospels singing in my head…’ to close out our most memorable show to date. The performance was exactly how we pictured it; beautiful and conclusive.”
They also shared the story behind the song:
“‘Tommy’s Song’ is a song written for Collin’s cousin, Thomas Patrick Walsh, who took his own life last April. Tommy was 20 years old. The song is told from Collin’s perspective of the event itself, and the grief experienced thereafter. It was challenging for us to write a song in a way that we felt captured the impact of the situation appropriately. ‘Tommy’s Song’ was written with the help of our friend, Skylar Patzer, who beautifully performed the piano track on this song, and also featured a choir singing the reprise and carrying the song through its grandiose ending.
“Collin has made it clear that this was the hardest song he’s ever written and recorded from a lyrical and vocal perspective. So much so, that during the time of recording the vocals, a lot of the vocal takes were so incredibly emotional that Collin was doubtful that they would even be usable. Our producer found a way to help him push through, however, and we ended up using many of these emotional moments on the final track. They helped contribute to capturing the raw emotional character of the story.”
In honour of Tommy, Grayscale are raising money for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention – you can donate directly HERE.
Watch the emotional live video of ‘Tommy’s Song’ below: