Over the past few weeks, I have been playing my hand at Artist Management. A role I have always been hesitant to engage in, as I tend to find the line between manager and friend difficult to healthily intertwine. In attending a music-centric university, I'm actively learning to identify the difference between a musician, and someone who "does music". Avery Gipson is a true musician, and as soon as I heard this release, I knew I had to be apart of it.
I am so excited to announce the debut of Avery Gipson's latest single, Roots.
Let me give you a quick Avery run down, for if you don't know her yet, you will very soon. The world knows her as a 20-year-old award-winning singer-songwriter from Atlanta, GA. She is the winner of the Eddie’s Attic 49th Bi-Annual Songwriters’ Open Mic Shootout and a three-time National Young Arts Merit Winner in Voice-Singer/Songwriter. I know her as a goofy capricorn, who also happens to have the words music and dreamer written in bold across her heart.
Avery has been one of my closest friends over the past year, and she exemplifies what it means to be an artist in every way. She is an incredible songwriter, better said storyteller. She has a way with words that envelops you into a brand new world, and Roots does just that.
In Avery's own words, "I wrote this song in my freshman dorm with just me and my guitar and the thoughts of someone who had just recently left home for the first time ever...
I thought about that feeling that you’re never truly separated from the place you grew up and those roots you were raised with are buried deep within...
I left the song unfinished for months, but when the Pandemic hit, came back to it and decided it was time Roots was finished"
Roots showcases the good, the bad, and the "scream this song out the window of your car in the middle of a traffic jam".
The first time I heard this I was driving home with a 103 degree fever, and even then felt like I was on top of the world.
The release dwells upon the internal paradox of wanting freedom from adolescence, but also missing the security blanket of the life you've deemed home.
I am so proud of the work that Avery and our team has put into this release. Please check the links below, and throughout this article, to listen to Roots! This song means so much to me, and I can't wait for it to impact you in the same way. We did it Aves, I am so proud of you, rejoice in the beauty you have created.
Lyrics:
© 2021 Avery Gipson
Verse 1
Round here the water gets cold
Feel it deep in my bones
Keeps me here growing old
Round here the mountains meet the sky
Have a kinship and I
See their mold in my mind
Pre-Chorus
I was raised by, by the water all my life
Ripples run through my eyes
Share a pulse keeping time
And now I fear I’ll never find the light
There’s a force in those pines
Dark and deeply divine
Chorus
I’ve been waiting for this day to come for my entire life
When my soul starts beating, when I come alive
Now the day is here and I’m so very terrified
Thought it’d go down easy thought I wouldn’t fight
But the water’s rising up and God I think I’m drowning
Oh I think they got to me while I was fast asleep
And I’m screaming out but no one hears me, God, I’m shouting
Oh I think these roots were buried way too very deep
Verse 2
Round here the whispers get loud
Silence all other sounds
Resonate through the ground
Round here the neighbors are cruel
Warnings rise from the tomb
“Fall in line, follow suit”
Pre-Chorus
I was raised by, by these voices all my life
Ripples run through their lies
Share a pulse keeping time
And now I fear I’ll never find the light
There’s a force in their cries
Dark and deeply divine
Chorus
I’ve been waiting for this day to come for my entire life
When my soul starts beating, when I come alive
Now the day is here and I’m so very terrified
Thought it’d go down easy, thought I wouldn’t fight
But the water’s rising up and God I think I’m drowning
Oh I think they got to me while I was fast asleep
And I’m screaming out but no one hears me, God, I’m shouting
Oh I think these roots were buried way too very deep
Oh I think these roots were buried way too very deep