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TRIPI Connects Personal Grief With Collective Support on His Final ‘Close to Fire’ Single

By Kath Galasso on September 18, 2026

TRIPI’s Close to Fire began with one family’s loss, but it did not remain confined there. As Tony Tripi worked on the album following the death of his newborn grandson Roman, nearly two dozen musicians entered the project and brought their own experiences of grief into the sessions. What started privately gradually became a collective act of remembrance.

The album’s final advance single, “Can’t Keep a Good Man Down For Long,” is available now with an official lyric video. Written by Danny Brooks, the song introduces perseverance into a collection that examines how people live with absence, pain, anger, faith, tenderness, and love.

Its connection to Tripi reaches back years. During a particularly dangerous period in his life, Brooks’ song gave him a reason to keep moving. Tripi later met its writer and described what the composition had done for him. Brooks, who had not performed it in years, recovered the song after Tripi sang its opening lines and played it that evening in Sarasota.

The recording follows “Charlie’s Song” and “Life Without You,” featuring lead vocals from bassist and producer Jack Daley. Together, the singles avoid presenting grief as a single recognizable feeling. They move from keeping a loved one’s name present, to confronting absence, to finding the resolve to remain engaged with life after it has changed.

That range extends across Close to Fire: Roman’s Anthology Release Part I, due October 30, 2026. Tripi considers grief a flame capable of appearing as visible rage or a low, persistent burn. The album stays close to that experience, examining what happens when grief is carried with others instead of treated as something to conceal.

The roster reinforces the communal nature of the project. Daley serves as executive producer, while Johnny Gale, Ken Wallace, James Maddock, Emily Grove, Aaron Comess, Rob Clores, Marc Ribler, Jesse Wagner, Tommy Byrnes, Mike DelGuidice, and additional guests appear across the ten songs. Recording was centered at Dug Deep Production, with work also completed at three other studios.

On release day, that collaboration will move from the studio to the stage. Close to Fire: A Grief Support Benefit Concert will take place October 30 at The Cutting Room in New York City, during International Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month. TRIPI and many of the album’s contributors will perform the full record, with special guests and shared performances planned throughout the evening.

The concert’s mission is to support families, caregivers, and communities navigating infant loss and grief. By bringing those experiences into a public musical setting, the event creates an opportunity for remembrance without demanding that sorrow be resolved or neatly explained.

Information about the album and benefit concert can be found through TRIPI’s website and Instagram. “Can’t Keep a Good Man Down For Long” arrives as an appropriate bridge between the record and the event: a song that once helped one person survive now enters a wider space of connection and support.