Brian Daniloski estimates that he and wife Ann Everton played over a thousand shows with their “trans-apocalyptic galaxy rock” band Darsombra, touring together nationally and sometimes internationally every year since 2010.

Darsombra are beloved in Baltimore’s underground music scene. In the last couple of years alone they’ve played SubScape, the ShakeMore Festival and Two Fest — and were in fact the only band to play all three of those DIY festivals. And every time they toured, the duo found more pockets of music lovers who appreciated their unique fusion of experimental metal and psychedelic soundscapes.

“Once we hit a place where we feel like we found our people or where they really like us, we were like, ‘We gotta come back here,’” Daniloski said Saturday. “It was harder and harder each year to get back to every place we liked, because each year we’d find more and more places like that.”

On Oct. 3, Daniloski and Everton were back on the road, headed to Montreal for a run of shows in Canada, when the tour ended in tragedy before it began. They were driving up the interstate through Essex County in upstate New York when their van hit a stopped vehicle at about 65 miles per hour, Daniloski said. “It was a pretty big smashup.”

Everton died at the scene. She was 43 years old.

Daniloski, who was briefly hospitalized with minor injuries, including a slight fracture in his nose, returned to the home he shared with Everton five days after the accident. Speaking via phone a week after those events, the guitarist was still shaken up, but frequently able to laugh at the warm memories of their 12 years of marriage and musical collaboration.

“I am kind of a mess. I’ve had an incredible amount of support. Somebody’s been here at the house pretty much the whole time I’ve been here,” he said. “I’m just coping day to day.”

Daniloski’s sister-in-law Nicole Evanshaw set up a GoFundMe page to help him through this difficult time and honor Everton’s memory. “The response has just been unexpected and overwhelming,” Daniloski said of the more than 800 donations totaling over $66,000.

Everton grew up in the Homeland neighborhood in North Baltimore and had many creative passions from a young age: learning about photography from her father, taking piano lessons, running afoul of local law enforcement as a teenage graffiti writer and publishing her own zines. Eventually she began making films, including the “Bill Murray Life Lessons” YouTube vignettes inspired by the comedic actor’s filmography.

“She just was somebody who had incredible energy to just constantly be working on projects, doing new things, helping people, being incredibly generous with her time,” said Jane Vincent of the band Curse, who spoke about Everton onstage Sunday at SubScape 2025. “The way that her mind worked was so incredible. … She would travel all over the world and she would learn the language wherever she would go, it felt like.”

Daniloski and Everton met at Charm City Yoga in 2009, though Daniloski had no idea the beautiful red-haired woman in his yoga class was interested in him until he received a Facebook friend request. “After like a week of me not getting the hint, she sent me an email and asked me out,” he said.

When Everton started going on tour with Darsombra, she was still working purely as a visual artist, creating video projections that played during concerts. Darsombra’s 2012 release “Mega-Void” was a CD/DVD multimedia package, with Everton creating visual accompaniment for the entire album. “Ann’s video work really brought a new dimension to the music Brian was already making. Like, it clicked,” said intermedia artist Rahne Alexander, who met Everton in the Creative Alliance Movie Makers program. “And of course they ended up having this really, really generative partnership. Seriously, relationship and artistic goals.”

Around the time Daniloski and Everton got married in 2013, she became a more active musical partner in Darsombra, contributing synthesizer and vocals to every album from 2016’s “Polyvision” to 2023’s “Dumesday Book.” Rapper Dan “Height” Keech, who’d known Everton since 2002, suggested that her work in Darsombra was a natural outgrowth of her longtime love of ‘70s progressive rock. “She really just always was talking about Yes and Rush and those kind of bands,” Keech said. “She hadn’t thought of herself as a musician but really blossomed into such a crucial part of the band.”

“She was just unbelievable to watch when they would perform,” said Mary Spiro, who often booked Darsombra for concerts before and after Everton joined. “Once Ann was in that band, the energy between them was palpable. It just spilled out into the crowd.”

“Ann was committed to the art life and persisted long after most had moved on or ‘grown up,’” said musician and writer Nicky Smith, who worked with Everton on the 2013 DIY film “The Human Host Movie.” “Her dedication to her work was a model for how to live.”

Everton was, in addition to her many creative pursuits, a trained barber who would cut hair between tour jags, sometimes for cash and sometimes bartering for other services. “She grew up in Baltimore and stayed in Baltimore and found a way to live the life she wanted, even if it didn’t fit anyone’s mold,” said Kate Hicks, a friend and hair client.

Though nothing specific has been planned yet, Daniloski expects that there’ll be a “celebration” of Everton’s life next year involving many of her favorite Baltimore bands. “It’s gonna be amazing,” he said.

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