Before the sold-out rooms, Antonio Larosa had a weekly gig at an Italian restaurant on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive and a steady supply of rejection from the music industry.
He kept showing up anyway …
That stubborn streak is the heart of “Burning Bright,” the blues-rock focus track on Tried & True, a nine-song album from the Vancouver roots-rock artist and three-time BCCMA Roots Artist of the Year. The song is about holding on to the thing you love when the odds feel stacked against you, and Larosa wrote it from experience.
“I was hearing a lot of no’s back then, and it could get pretty discouraging. But every week, I’d show up to that restaurant, pick up my guitar, and forget about all of it. I just loved playing music. For those few hours, none of the other stuff mattered. That’s really where ‘Burning Bright’ came from. It was a reminder to myself that no matter how many doors close, nobody can take away that feeling or the reason I started playing music in the first place.”
Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and a bar in East Vancouver
Larosa grew up on Johnny Cash, B.B. King, The Allman Brothers and Roy Orbison. He wanted every one of them to have a place on this record, and you can hear it in the way the album moves between country soul, vintage rock and early rockabilly.
The bar gigs taught him the rest. Playing those early rooms gave him space to try things, figure out what he loved playing and learn what actually landed with a crowd.
The album cover takes him back to The Princeton in East Vancouver, the first bar he ever played.
At the wheel
Larosa made the record with producer and longtime collaborator Marcus Ramsay, cutting most of it at Afterlife Studios in Vancouver. The goal was to give it the same pull as his favourite records, the kind of energy you only get from musicians in a room together who mean what they’re playing.
He’s clear that this one is his. “Tried & True is the first record I’ve made that feels completely like me,” he says. “It’s taken years of playing, writing and figuring out where I fit to get to a point where I trust my own taste this much. With this album, I feel like I’ve been at the wheel creatively and haven’t compromised what I wanted it to be.”
The title carries a second meaning, too. It’s a nod to the people whose love and support have stuck with him. Larosa loves being on the road, but the songs make room for the other side of it: missing home, feeling pulled in different directions, and being grateful for the people who make the whole thing possible.
“Wicked Games” goes somewhere darker. It digs into temptation and consequence with a mix of country-rock, rockabilly and hazy ’60s psychedelia. Fan favourites “I Don’t Shine” and “Right Side of Over You” round things out.
Listen To Our Conversation with Antonio Larosa
Rooms that kept getting bigger
The songs on Tried & True landed in front of a growing audience. In 2026, Larosa took his full-band show across Canada on tours he booked himself, and his first-ever Toronto show at the Cameron House was one of several sellouts.
Festival season brought a couple of moments worth mentioning. On Sunfest’s main stage, the crowd watching his set included that night’s headliner, Nate Smith.
And at Cavendish Beach Music Festival, Matt Lang liked what he heard enough to invite Larosa up for a song on the main stage.
Tried & True tracklist
- “Tried & True”
- “Burning Bright”
- “Close To You”
- “Right Side of Over You”
- “I Don’t Shine”
- “Turn Me Loose”
- “Wicked Games”
- “Drivin’ My Life Away”
- “Playing the Pretender”
In country music, the Front Porch has long been a place of reflection. A place where you can look at the life you have inside that front door. A place where time almost seems to stand still, where you can get away. It’s also a place where you can go to observe the world as it passes by you. To think about your place out there beyond the driveway.
