MAGNET Exclusive: Premiere Of Anyone Awake’s “Late Night Driver”

With last year’s Thanksgiving dinner in the books, Cassius Coleman’s grandfather asked his grandson if he wanted to see his favorite picture.

“Before I could even respond, I was following him to the closet, where he kept his scrapbooks, pictures and other sentimental things,” says Coleman, the 17-year-old co-founder of Rigby, Idaho’s Anyone Awake. “He pulled out this image of him holding my grandma in the doorway on their wedding day.”

The stories followed in short order—and as Coleman absorbed the first-hand details of how his grandparents met, he knew he had the foundation for at least a song or two. Then, this past February, his grandfather suffered a stroke. “He was able to listen to our words and goodbyes as we let him go,” says Coleman. “My little sister gave him a hug, and he mustered up all the energy in his body to put his arm around her.”

Coleman was just 13 when he started writing the songs for Anyone Awake’s new self-released debut, A Bushel And A Peck. But it’s his grandfather’s passing that provided the emotional continuity for the album, lending heartfelt authenticity to the band’s rugged, warts-and-all indie rock. With “Late Night Driver,” domesticity kicks in, and kids are in the picture.

“The timeline is coherent, but it does have certain time jumps,” says Coleman. “My grandfather didn’t really believe he was going to be married—or that he would live a happy life. But when he met my grandmother, everything changed.”

We’re proud to premiere Anyone Awake’s “Late Night Driver.”

—Hobart Rowland