EXCLUSIVE: Liam St. John signs to Big Loud Rock, shares single

Nashville’s rising blues-infused rocker Liam St. John had plenty of opportunities to call it quits, to put his dreams as a singer/songwriter on hold.

He had worked as hard as you could, and yet somehow it felt like things kept popping up that put him in the most unenviable position yo could imagine. The Spokane, Washington-born artist first started to make waves back in 2020 when he appeared on The Voice with his bluesy take on “Sex and Candy,” wow-ing over Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton along the way. But, of course, this was mid-pandemic and all momentum quickly got halted, before ultimately being knocked out of the battle rounds on The Voice.

What followed next was St. John taking the ultimate bet on himself and making a move to Los Angeles, where he honed in on his craft and the world discovered a little song called “Dipped In Bleach.” “I’ve been pursuing this career for a long time, but what clicked so prominently was the vulnerable song,” St. John explains. “‘Dipped in Bleach’ felt like the first song I did that featured me completely vulnerable and telling my story. That’s what resonated with a large audience. I’ve been influenced to keep doing that because the relationships I’ve created with my fans and with other songwriters has been so rewarding. The best way to connect with others, funnily enough, is to tell the story only you can tell.”

“Dipped in Bleach” was his most vulnerable song to-date then, and despite the success he had originally found on The Voice, St. John was struggling harder than he ever had been before appearing on the show. “After The Voice, it was an entire year of just absolute trench grind, broke as fuck, advancing my credit card to pay for rent. That was the lowest I’d ever been,” he explains, mostly because he was so close to some of the success he dreamed of and worked so hard for, but it felt further away than ever. A revelation helped him change course. “I realized I had been shit-talking to myself thoroughly and I just had a lot of shame. One day I woke up and I was like, ‘I need to stop doing that to myself, speaking to myself this negatively.’ I started writing affirmations down.”

This practice released much of the pressure he felt, and it allowed him to dig into a deeper place in his writing than ever before. “That’s when I wrote ‘Dipped in Bleach,’ because the song is very vulnerable, and it goes into parts of my life I would’ve never spoken about before this time.”

And now, it all has seemingly culminated to this exact moment we are in today: Liam St. John has announced his signing to Big Loud Rock. Not only has the signing been announced today, but the new partnership between the two is wasting no time with putting out new music, as he has shared a new single “Landslide Over the Highway,” and announced that a new EP, Believer, will be out on June 28th.

“Landslide Over the Highway” is a hard-charging rock and roll song built around choir vocals, shredding guitar solos, and his powerful yet raw voice. The song, lyrically, is about a relationship that’s doomed because St. John’s passion is singular, entirely obsessed with music and making it by any means necessary.

““Landslide Over the Highway’ is an ode to rock ‘n’ roll. It is a song for the free-spirited, untamed, wild, and reckless souls out there, and as always, this song is honest and intimate to my personal story,” says St. John. “I may have started as a ‘rolling stone,’ but this life I live has morphed into something much larger than that. Something I don’t think I could stop even if I wanted to. It’s a singular focus on what I feel my life’s meaning and purpose is. What is set in motion can’t be stopped; sometimes that means detaching from the side of the mountain and taking out an entire highway.”

Additionally, St. John has revealed the accompanying music video for the track, which was directed by Zeb Griffin of Columinati Films. The video features him and his band rocking out, interspersed with a modern-day Bonnie & Clyde narrative that paints the love tragedy in this song perfectly. St. John and his lady cruise in a vintage car on a spree of corner store robberies, pass a flask back and forth, and get intimate before the mood changes and Liam is by himself, running from cops trying to figure out where everything went south — with the story sure to be continued in a future video from the EP, Believer.

Believer digs deep into St. John’s emotional past, exploring struggles with faith, substance abuse, difficult relationships and more, while expanding his sonic range, and teasing out new strands of the roots and rock and roll that fans have grown so enamored by over the years. “I’ve been pursuing this career for a long time,” says St. John, “but…being candid and telling my story…That’s what has resonated the most with my audience. I’ve found that the best way to connect with others is to tell the story only you can tell.”

“The idea of a rolling stone is nothing new in rock and roll, but it’s pretty destructive,” he continues to explains. “This music is just never going to change. It’s as powerful as a landslide.”

Watch the music video for “Landslide Over the Highway” below, where you can also find the full track-listing for Believer. Stay tuned as more music comes ahead of the release of Believer, and get ready to get more and more familiar with St. John.