The self-titled debut album by Going to the Sun is an aptly named musical memoir, even if it’s as much about where Kalispell native David Young and his family have been as it is about where they’re headed.
Six years ago, the Minneapolis-based musician and his family endured a devastating tragedy when Young’s sister-in-law, Erin Thompson, died in a car wreck in Kalispell along with her 13-year-old son, Caden Odell, and her unborn child.
The teenage driver of the car that collided head-on with Thompson’s Subaru was convicted of deliberate homicide after prosecutors proved in court that she had crashed on purpose in an attempt to kill herself following a fight with her boyfriend.
The family’s grief – exacerbated by the publicity of the trial and dragged out during a lengthy legal process – took years to metabolize, and while they continue to mourn the loss, David and Amber Young, David’s wife and Thompson’s sister, say their lives have begun to feel full of Erin’s and Caden’s love again, and the album represents that catharsis.
“Even after the coldest winter, spring still comes,” Young said. “We miss Erin and Caden and we love them and would never want to part with them. But it gave us some sense of solace knowing that as much as this hurts, our grief is connected to our joy. The level of hurt is an indication of how much we love them.”
David graduated from Flathead High School in 1995, and while he’s spent most of his adult life carving out a career as a musician in Minneapolis, his and Amber’s connection to the Flathead Valley runs deep.
That much is evident from Young’s new band’s name, Going to the Sun, an homage to the beauty of his hometown mountain playground of Glacier National Park as well as a tribute to the cyclic nature of life, grieving and healing.
To be able to express their gratitude musically was profound, Young said, and in this album – the first he’s recorded under the “Going to the Sun” moniker – he was writing for family and his local community, and channels his relationship with Northwest Montana and his family here to audiences in Minneapolis.
“It’s a heavy album but it also has a lot of levity, and it’s been really powerful to share this with people, not only people who knew Erin and Caden, but any time you go through a dark place you think maybe you can hold a light for others going through the same thing,” he said. “The older I get as a musician the less I care about whether something is going to be perceived as cool and the more I care about how much heart is going into it and whether it empowers people.”
Amber Young said the album appeals to “anyone who’s ever loved, lost or lived,” and that it represents the “soundtrack to our hearts’ healing.”
In the album’s liner notes, a quote from the philosopher and writer Kahlil Gibran reads: “Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”
For he and Amber, the quote characterized the depth of their pain as well as the joy and gratitude that welled up within them when they grasped the enormity of Erin’s and Caden’s presence in their lives.
“That quote made us realize that our cups were being carved out by grief and it gave us that hope that that hollow space would be filled with joy again, an even deeper joy than we had known,” he said. “It was like a light at the end of the tunnel for us. And miraculously we have found that to be true. Our cups have been filled back up again.”
“Any time you have a tragedy you try to ask ‘why did this happen,’” David added. “And it feels senseless and in a lot of ways it still does feel senseless. But anything we can do to take those bits of shattered glass and create a mosaic and turn something painful into something beautiful is important.”
The album “Going to the Sun” is available in Kalispell at Moxi Salon, 37 Fifth St. E. #100, where Thompson’s and Young’s brother Thad works. CDs and digital downloads are also available online.
Learn more about David’s band online and on Facebook.