The story behind "Everything Must Go" begins in the ashes of a town that was once thriving, a forgotten roadside place swallowed by time and debt. Long ago, there was a pawn shop at the heart of it called Harlan’s Exchange, where people didn’t just trade things, they traded pieces of themselves. Love letters, wedding rings, instruments, military medals, even urns, everything had a price. Harlan, the owner, was said to have made a deal long ago: in exchange for eternal wealth, he’d allow the souls tied to those items to remain trapped within his walls.

Over decades, the shop became a graveyard of regrets. People who pawned away their memories felt emptier than before, haunted by whispers that followed them home. And when the town’s economy finally collapsed in the late 1980s, Harlan’s Exchange shut its doors overnight. Everything inside was left untouched, locked behind boarded windows, until the fire.

No one knew how it started. Some say lightning struck the old neon sign. Others say Harlan, consumed by the weight of what he’d done, set it himself. But the fire spread fast, swallowing every relic, every memento, every trapped echo of the people who once lived there.

That night, the sky over the town turned red, and witnesses claimed they saw faces in the flames,  smiling, crying, screaming. When the fire died, nothing was left but a twisted metal sign: “Everything Must Go.”

Years later, Mesa Babe found a photograph of that same sign while exploring an abandoned highway stop. The image became the inspiration for the song, a brutal reflection of letting go, whether of things, people, or identities. “Everything Must Go” isn’t just about loss,  it’s about purging everything fake, everything hollow, until only truth remains.

It’s the sound of the band burning their own past, piece by piece, until only what’s real survives the fire.

Everything must go

Mesa - a table for offerings
Babe – the innocent we feed to memory