Local musician Erin Davis, who usually plays with her heavy metal band Beyond Driven under the name Erin Maiden, has released her first song as a solo artist dedicated to her stepfather, Rock Soucie, who lost a nine-year battle with bone cancer in November.
The song, titled Tough Being Tough, is one of the few originals she’s put out into the world, and comes in a slightly more melodic style than most may know her for.
“He always said to me, ‘It’s tough being tough,’” Davis said. “When things are going bad, it’s tough being tough, so suck it up and move forward.”
Soucie, who owned a music store in the Pontiac, was a big inspiration musically for Davis. She started singing at five years old and grew up listening to all the different instruments that her stepdad was able to play.
“He always told me that if I was meant to play an instrument, that I would just know how to play,” Davis said. “I think he wanted me to stick to singing.”
She said she wrote the song in 2023, not too long after she started playing guitar for the first time, and got to perform the song for her stepdad before his passing, something she described as very emotional because it was one of the first songs she’d ever written and completed.
“When I played the song for him in 2023, he bawled his eyes out. He loved it,” Davis said. “For me to sit there and play the instrument by myself and do the song by myself in front of him, it was such a crazy feeling. I don’t get nervous, and I was so nervous, and I was trying not to try.”
The song is was released Apr. 11 to commemorate him.
“Most people try to do something for someone after they’ve passed,” Davis said. “And for me, this was the way, because he loved music. I thought that this would be the best way to pay tribute to him, have him live on in the song and have it be heard by a lot of people.”
Davis said the lyrics came to her during one of the times Soucie was staying in hospital.
“I wrote the lyrics following an episode where he was hospitalized. I started writing it then it all came out at once.”
She said that the bridge is the part she thinks may resonate with people most.
“The [lyrics] are about him and how he fought his battle with resilience and great humour and strength,” Davis said. “There are heroes all around us that exemplify this type of behaviour every day that often get overlooked.”
Releasing the song marked a step out of Davis’s comfort zone.
“It was truly special to go from singing other people’s music to singing your own,” Davis said.
Given she usually performs in a hard rock and heavy metal band with her husband, Jeremy Williams, she wasn’t sure how her audience would react to a change in genre. As of Apr. 28, the music video had over 17,000 views on YouTube.
“I didn’t know what to expect from people because it’s much different than what I usually do,” Davis. “This song is very soft and sweet, and it shows a different side of me, and a vulnerability which took a lot of guts on my part.”
