Carson Ferris Can’t Drive, But “Drive Alone” Still Slaps

_{By Zach Collier}

For a 12-year-old kid, Carson Ferris shows a surprising amount of self awareness. His latest single, “Drive Alone,” features lyrics about a GPS-led drive through a starlit night. However, he’s the first to point out that he won’t have his license for at least another 4 years.

The marketing materials for the new track feature brilliantly tongue-in-cheek imagery: from reels and photos of Ferris driving a child-sized electric Land Rover to sledding, dirt biking, or riding shotgun instead of driving a car, everything proves that this kid has a solid head on his shoulders. He’s clever, he’s smart, and he’s h*ckin talented.

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Ferris has been singing for as long as he can remember and started taking guitar lessons at the age of six. Dave Wilbur’s Rock Lab in Orem taught him how to perform contemporary music live and gave him opportunities to collaborate with local musicians his age. He also sang in the acclaimed One Voice Children’s Choir. On the surface, this young singer draws parallels to an early Justin Bieber. But his music is more strongly influenced by the likes of OneRepublic, Ed Sheeran, and Alec Benjamin.

As a young singer/songwriter, Ferris has to sift through often-contradictory advice on what he should do with his music and future. “Drive Alone” is a song about finding his own path. “It’s a song about making hard decisions and having lots of people telling you that you should do this or that,” he says. “And you just have to do what you know is best for you.” Case in point: beginning in 2020, Ferris switched to all-online school to give him more time to work on his music.

The track was co-written by Ferris, MYKYL (the nom de plume of local musician Michael Van Wagoner), and LA songwriter Jasmine Crowe. This is the first of Ferris’s songs to be recorded at Provo’s June Audio. It was engineered by Maren Gayle, with Jen Marco handling vocal production. The song was mixed by Adam Turley and mastered by Eric Disero.

Ferris plans to release a new song roughly every 6 weeks in 2023. “Drive Alone” dropped today. Make sure to follow Carson Ferris on Instagram. You can check out the music video for “Drive Alone” below.