Don't Go Throwing Roses In My Grave Gregor Barnett

• 1Oh Lord, What Do You Know?03:30
• 2Driving Through the Night04:10
• 3The First Dead Body I Ever Saw04:14
• 4No Peace of Mind to Rest04:17
• 5Talking to Your Tombstone04:09
• 6Don't Go Throwing Roses In My Grave03:59
• 7Hurry Me Down to Hades04:12
• 8Anthem For the One I Love03:04
• 9At a Greyhound Station, Desperate04:12
• 10Guest In Your House04:55
• Total Runtime40:42

Info for Don't Go Throwing Roses In My Grave

Don't Go Throwing Roses In My Grave is the first solo record by beloved frontman of The Menzingers, Gregor Barnett. Devoted Menzingers fans will love its electrified Americana riffs, yearning melodies, driving beats and indelible lyrical imagery. The Philadelphia based singer/songwriter is telling his stories with a folkier style then he does in The Menzingers, but his stories are just as moving and compelling.

“It was this perfect storm,” says Menzingers guitarist/co-vocalist Gregor Barnett. “The band couldn’t tour, I was going through a really difficult time, and I was stuck at home watching my family struggle with illness and death and hardship. The only thing I could do was write my way through it.”

And yet, despite all the turbulence surrounding its creation, there’s something deeply hopeful and reassuring about Don’t Go Throwing Roses In My Grave, Barnett’s debut release under his own name. Written and recorded in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the collection is a sonic departure from Barnett’s more punk-leaning work with The Menzingers, drawing on the gritty, off-kilter Americana of Tom Waits or Warren Zevon as it faces down loss and doubt in search of relief and redemption. The songs here are lean and powerful, with unfussy arrangements driven by simmering guitars and driving percussion, and the performances are raw and direct to match, cutting straight to the heart of things with tremendous empathy. Take a look at the tracklist and it’s obvious what’s been on Barnett’s mind of late (“The First Dead Body I Ever Saw,” “Talking To Your Tombstone,” “Don’t Go Throwing Roses In My Grave”), but drop the needle and you’ll quickly come to understand that this isn’t so much an album about death as it is about life. If the past year-and-a-half has taught us anything, it’s just how much we take for granted—our health, our country, our families—and how quickly it can all disappear. Don’t Go Throwing Roses In My Grave is a reminder to cherish the ones we love and the connections we have with them in what precious little time we’ve been given.

“Writing’s always been my way of making sense of the world,” explains Barnett, “so when I started working on these songs, I wasn’t thinking about albums or audiences or anything like that. I just needed some kind of release.”

“With ‘Don’t Go Throwing Roses In My Grave,’ I found myself thinking about all the times I’ve been to funerals and seen flowers laid down in memory of the deceased,” says Barnett. “It’s a beautiful way to honor the people we’ve lost, but I think a lot of times we forget to appreciate our relationships with those people while they’re still here. I wanted this song to be a celebration of life and what we have before it’s gone.”

Barnett’s characters are frequently in motion, often in the midst of some epic physical or metaphorical journey (chalk it up, perhaps, to his quarantine resolution to read James Joyce’s Ulysses cover to cover). The towering “No Peace Of Mind To Rest” descends into a world of fear and paranoia, while the jittery “At A Greyhound Station, Desperate” muses on what it means to leave a place behind, and the searing “Hurry Me Down To Hades” goes through Hell to make its way back home. And home, in the end, is what it’s all about: not the place, but the idea, the feeling you get when you’re surrounded by the ones you love.

“The idea of family is all tied up in this record,” says Barnett, whose brother and partner were both closely involved in the creative process with him. “It’s at the heart of all of these songs.”

It’s no coincidence, then, that the album ends with the bittersweet “Guest In Your House,” which recounts Barnett’s early days at his grandparents’ home in the wake of his parents’ divorce. The imagery is visceral, each scene as fresh in his mind as the day it happened, and though illness and death and hardship all make their inevitable visits, what remains is love and memory and gratitude. What remains is family.

Gregor Barnett, guitar, vocals

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