Grief is a complicated and emotional process. People handle it in different ways. For Econoline Crush frontman Trevor Hurst, music is his therapy.
In March 2022, the Canadian rock band’s guitarist David “Ziggy” Sigmund died. Hurst learned of his close friend’s passing over the phone 15 minutes before he was to leave to listen to the final mixes of Econoline Crush’s upcoming album, When The Devil Drives, which Sigmund had a hand in.
The news broke Hurst. In the months leading up to his death, Sigmund had withdrawn himself from those close to him to avoid physical and emotional pain associated with his struggles, Hurst explained. The musician said he and Sigmund were as close as brothers, and the loss consumed him with a range of emotions.
“Ziggy’s death caused me to reevaluate my own personal struggles,” Hurst said. “I was angry that he was gone. I felt abandoned and lost with no relief in sight.”
He turned to the coping tool he had learned that treats him best: music. From that pain, "Locked In Your Stone" was molded.
“It served as an outlet, a way to express my sadness and my frustration,” Hurst explained. “Recording it after his death allowed me to unload some of my emotional baggage and move forward. The music for 'Locked in Your Stone' felt like it was meant as the outlet for my grief.”
In "Locked in Your Stone", Hurst opens his soul out over smooth, moody synths that simultaneously convey sadness, desperation, and confusion. The instrumentals came from fragments of songs left unfinished, pieced together by Hurst and Ian Alexander Smith, the former frontman for Miniatures who produced When The Devil Drives, Econoline Crush’s first full-length album in more than a decade. The lyrics just flowed, Hurst said, the complex cocktail of emotions pouring onto the page.
“‘You won’t open the door. Hold on,’ signified my frustration, my desperation, my inability to reach him,” Hurst explained. “‘The thought of your insanity complicit with this tragedy’ reflects my perceived guilt that even with all my training as a psychiatric nurse, I was unable to reach him. ‘So over life and all the hype. You took your toys and quit’ represents my frustration and anger at him for falling victim to addiction and self-loathing.”
The track is part of the band’s resurgence approximately three decades after it originally formed in Vancouver in 1992. Econoline Crush signed with EMI Music Canada in 1994 and debuted that year with the EP, Purge. It released a full-length in 1996 called Affliction, then experienced its major breakthrough in 1997 with the platinum-selling The Devil You Know. Four years later in 2001, the band put out its final studio album for EMI, Brand New History. Their newest album represents their comeback and is also paired with a documentary film, Flatlander, about a rocket from Brandon, Manitoba’s second career as a psychiatric nurse, which will come out in 2024.
More than 30 years after Econoline Crush’s start, Hurst is its last original member. Many have come through the band in its almost three decades of operation, but few left the impact of Sigmund, who first joined in 1996, stayed until the initial breakup in 2002, then returned in 2010 until his death in 2022. Music is what brought Hurst and Sigmund together in the first place, and music is what Hurst intends to continue their relationship even as half of their duo walks elsewhere than earth.
“Music is what connected Ziggy and I in life, and music is what continues to keep us connected after his death,” he said. “'Locked in Your Stone is the song that captures my grief and frustration, but in doing so, helps me release my pain and begin to heal.”
