Premiere: Tearing Up Share Video For Highway Bandits

Graham Caldwell is a longstanding creative force whose previous musical endeavor, Billy Moon — aka Christopher Robin’s nickname as accounted in A. A. Milne’s Now We Are Six (or When We Were Very Young) — saw him release a number of acclaimed, multi-genre’d singles and eclectic full length LPs such as Punk Songs (2018). Over the years, he additionally shared the stage with acts such as Nada Surf, Day Wave, Will Butler, Born Ruffians, July Talk, and Ty Segall, among others.

Today, Graham feels as though he doesn’t “have the energy to dress up as anyone besides [himself] anymore,” leading to the “death” of Billy Moon, and the rebirth of Graham Caldwell as Tearing Up.

Explained Graham of the name choice: “Growing up, I loved punk bands that sneered in the face of authority, demanding their voice be heard. They made me feel like I was stronger than I was. I was the kind of person who avoided conflict since I’d lose every fight I’d end up in, but there’s still a part of me that itches to get its hands dirty, hence the name: Tearing Up.”

Today, Graham shares his brand new project’s second single, “Highway Bandits,” the newest track off his recently announced debut EP Billy Is Dead (due October 14 via all DSPs).

Graham said about the song: “This song is for my brother. The year he graduated university I flew out to Kelowna, BC to help him drive his truck and all his other belongings back to Ontario. It was a 5-day drive where we talked about his experience in Uni and waxed poetic about what the future held. At that time, we knew that our Dad was dying, and that the home we were returning to was a far more complicated place than it was when he had left.

We don’t really look like brothers. People will meet us and they’ll be genuinely shocked that we’re related. In some ways our personalities are polar opposites. I usually describe it by saying I was in my high school musical, while he was co-captain of the rugby team.

I think about that drive as a moment when I realized that we were bound together by something, maybe it was the weight of what we knew was to come: that we would spend the next two years carrying our father’s life on our backs, trying to discover what our own lives would look like once we found a place to set it down. Now that the years have passed I think he’s done a pretty good job, and I don’t know why but for some reason, I think he’d probably say the same thing about me.”