Off the Road: Alexa Dirks' pandemic year

Alexa Dirks and her band were at a truck stop on their way to New York City last March, when her manager called. 

"He was like, 'You might want to turn around,'" recalls Alexa, who is better known as critically acclaimed singer-songwriter Begonia. She was in the middle of the biggest tour of her career, promoting her Juno-nominated album, Fear. 

The weeks before that phone call at the truck stop, Begonia had played a series of sold-out concerts - including five sold out shows in her hometown of Winnipeg - and things were going well. 

"It just felt like everything was kind of progressing in a way that I was like, 'Oh my gosh, things are finally kind of lifting for me,'" says the singer. "I would go to different places where I didn't even know that I had fans, and people would show up to shows...it was just so exciting."

Everything changed when the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on March 11, 2020. 

Alexa and the band never made it to that concert in New York. Instead she found herself home in Winnipeg, with no tour dates on the calendar, for the first time since 2006. 

She realized she had never had a home routine before, and suddenly she was looking for a way to define herself as the weeks stretched into months. 

First, there was the pressure to be creative and make the most of the time she suddenly had. On social media she noticed posts that predicted artists would create their best work during the lockdown.

"I was looking at that and going, no, no, no, thank you. Like, I'm sad!" says Alexa. "Respect to the people that did, but that's just not the way I felt." 

Then she tried to do a weekly live stream from her living room in an effort to have fun and connect to people.

"There came a time where I felt like I couldn't go on...I'd look at my calendar and see that I was supposed to [go live] that Sunday, and that I was meant to be this happy-go-lucky person that people were expecting, and I just couldn't do it anymore," says Alexa. She stopped those live streams and instead started therapy and working to create a home routine. 

I just felt like this was the first time I had really tended to some of my own mental health- Alexa Dirks

"I just felt like this was the first time that I had really tended to some of my own mental health…[and I was] trying to figure out other things that I can do with my body and my time, other than thinking about music and touring 24/7."

While recognizing her privilege as a white woman who is housed, with clean drinking water and food to eat, Alexa's struggle to navigate what she calls "high highs and low lows" feels like a second puberty.

"I'm the kind of person that will wake up with just a running dialogue in my head, and that will be running through my head until I go to bed. And like, the only time that is, like, totally silent...where I'm not just judging myself constantly is when I'm performing. That's the only time that those voices are quieted completely," says Alexa. 

The artist admits she's still coming to terms with not knowing the next time she'll get to pack a bag and get back on tour. She is working on a new Begonia album, but the writing process is challenging.  

It was during one of those tough writing sessions that she birthed a raw and intimate ballad about her life on the road. 

"I've been having a lot of trouble finishing some of these songs, because I've just been like, I'm not in the mood today. I can't do it," says Alexa. "And I'm sitting there trying to work...and then this song ...just came out of me in like an hour...I definitely was not trying to write that song that day, but obviously there were some things on my mind because it just kind of came out."

The result is Off The Road Again, a song she recorded on her cellphone and was encouraged by friends to release immediately. Alexa created the video herself using footage she had recorded during past tours.  

"I just can't wait for the day that it doesn't feel wrong to be in a group of people singing," says Alexa.