The Great Dying
Dark country from the DeltA | Oxford, MS

Will Griffith, aka The Great Dying: Mississippi Delta-born, songwriter. Will doesn’t see his dark country musings as directly blues influenced. "I want people to celebrate sad music because of its beauty. Sad songs help you laugh at your own sadness.” Punk rock felt like Will’s blues and was devoid of the phoniness and commercialism that drove tourism in his hometown of Cleveland, MS.

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Tour - Fall 2024
Great Dying - wiley gaby

Oct 23rd - $5/9pm
Sam Bonds Garage - Eugene, OR
with - Wiley Gaby, Belltower, Najas

Oct 24th - Doors 8pm, Music 9pm
The Crypt - Olympia WA
with - Wiley Gaby, Lana Rae Jarvis, Coven Dove

Oct 25th
Antidote Tap House - Longview, WA
with - Wiley Gaby

Oct 27th - $10 presale online/$15 cash at door
Doors 1pm, Music 2pm
Tim's Tavern - Seattle, WA
with - Wiley Gaby, Jjanggoo, Ask Carol
Ticket Info

Oct 28th - $10/7pm
Alberta St Pub - Portland, OR
with - Wiley Gaby, Hearts Of Oak

Oct 30th
The Hotel Utah Saloon - San Francisco, CA
with - Wiley Gaby

Nov 3rd
The Escondite - Los Angeles, CA
with - Wiley Gaby

Nov 6th
Gene's Place - Bisbee, AZ
with - Wiley Gaby

Nov 9th
Raven Café - Prescott, AZ 
with - Wiley Gaby

Nov 11th
Armadillo Den - Austin, TX
with - Wiley Gaby

Nov 13th
Old Pal - Lockhart, TX 
with - Wiley Gaby

Nov 14th - $15/Doors 8pm, Music 8:30pm
Old Quarter - Galveston, TX
with - Wiley Gaby, Julie Nolen
Ticket Info

Nov 15th
Intracoastal Club - Houma, LA 
with - Wiley Gaby

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Bobby Matt Patton - Dial Back Sound

Bio

The Great Dying’s latest release, A Constant Goodbye, was released August 30, 2024, on Dial Back Sound.

 
 

The Great Dying
A Constant Goodbye

The music of Will Griffith’s The Great Dying is a mix he likes to call dark country. He grew up in Cleveland, Mississippi, where D.I.Y. punk house shows hooked him, and his early bands played The Farmhouse and legendary delta juke joint Po’ Monkey’s.

Songs from The Great Dying’s new album, A Constant Goodbye, were born from playing hundreds of shows supporting Bloody Noses & Roses (Dial Back Sound 2018), and it continues where the debut left off. The ballads are still sweet and menaced, the rockers are still hair-raisers, but the new record pushes in new directions, infusing sounds of classic country with faint traces of The Replacements and what was once called “alternative rock.” The tracks are layered and varied: wall-of-sound arrangements grind against flange-bass and fiddle, with Griffith’s barebones acoustic guitar and vocals at the root, and heartbreak all over.

Griffith sings songs with lyrics drawn from relationships gone both good and bad and hard-won struggles for sobriety and connection. “New Methico” portrays a young couple, running to California with only their dreams and drug problems, who make it to New Mexico before finding themselves drifted apart yet stuck together in dependency. It ends with the harrowing refrain, “Find a way out.”


“The Sky Over Tennessee” is a true story of meeting your high-school sweetheart, who’s become a pilot, at LaGuardia on your thirtieth birthday. This fleeting moment set between Nashville and New York opens into a meditation on the transience of love. The flip side of this romance is “New Year’s Day Blues,” a song grasping at the particular loneliness and isolation that follows a move to another town after a breakup, when it’s just you and an empty house.

“Arterial Rain” is a drunken honkey-tonk number that centers Griffith’s warm-and-tender yet rough-hewn vocals. He claims it’s based on Merle Haggard’s “Silver Wings” but the title is a subtle nod to Slayer. Coming from another artist, this blend of influences would tank, but somehow it suits The Great Dying just fine. Pick any number on the new album—it’s a winner.

Dial Back Sound will release A Constant Goodbye on August 30th along with a video for the first single, “Truck Stop.” Dates from Mississippi up the East Coast will follow, with a wider North American tour in late summer and early fall.

Promo ImageS

 
 
 
 
 

VIDEO

“The Great Dying’s A Constant Goodbye is compelling from start to finish. It is a wonderful showcase for Griffith’s vivid storytelling, all set against an engaging Southern-flavored indie rock backdrop.”
— twangville.com