Singled Out: Versa's Flew The Coop

Canadian progressive/post-rock troupe Versa just released their new album "A Voyage / A Destination, Part 2", and to celebrate we asked Matthew Dolmage to tell us about the single "Flew The Coop" feat Ross Jennings (Haken). Here is the story:

I originally sketched this song out in 2011. It was one of the first songs I'd written that was intended from the start to feature more vocals. I struggled a lot with writing lyrics in those days, and the original lyrics for the song, that was used for probably a year, were inspired by webcomic 'Wigu', about a little boy and the adventures he'd go on with a magic horse named Sheriff Pony, and an anthropomorphic potato named Topato.

We recorded a version of the song for our 2012 Common Things EP. Compared to the version we've released from "A Voyage / A Destination, Part 2", the song is quite different - the instrumental section is more conventionally structured and the vocals do not come back at the end. It's much more a 'post rock' song than a progressive rock song.

I was never fully satisfied with the 2012 version of the song, and not a lot of people heard it, so when we started working on the "Voyage/Destination" project in 2021, I decided to revisit and extensively re-write Flew the Coop. I re-wrote some of the lyrics to make the theme of nostalgia for childhood more explicit, and altered the instrumental section to have a shifting meter with alternating bars of 10/8 and 12/8, giving it more of a progressive rock feel. I met Ross Jennings of Haken in 2022 and he agreed to sing the song for us, and his vocal performance really elevates the song, as well.

We're very proud of the final recording, and think it's a much stronger work than the original rough draft recorded in 2012. That version of the song is still on Bandcamp and YouTube, so you can listen for yourself and see if you agree. The song is about nostalgia for a childhood that's never coming back, and may never really have been what you remember it to be, anyway. The music video, filmed with our friend Lindsay McDonald, is about a woman who goes for a hike in the woods and is swallowed up by those feelings and struggles to escape them. It turned out quite well for a zero-budget production!

Versa has a lot of different elements to our sound - instrumental post rock, progressive rock, and more vocal-driven indie rock and folk music - and "Flew the Coop" really summarizes all of those elements of our sound in a single song.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more here

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