TOPIC: WAKING UP INSIDE YOURSELF

This week I completed the 200th song I've written and recorded in the studio! And I wanted to share with you that I've discovered that the one song I listen to the most of all, out of all of those two hundred--the one I am moved by, on a regular basis, is one I created just last year, entitled, "Of Grace and Gratitude."

TOPIC: A Father Dies of Lou Gehrig's Disease and Leaves Behind a Song for his Daughter

TOPIC: Reaching to connect with a sibling

My Sister Amy - I jumped off this dock without a life preserver and she jumped in after me 

What follows is the story of me and my sister. Of all the songs I perform live in concert, these two "Sister Songs"--a matched set--are the most frequently requested. When I play the first song, half the room tears up. When I play the second song, the other half of the room gets all watery-eyed. (The non-teary people know better than to come to my concerts, I guess). Each of us, it seems, can relate in some way to one side or the other of this equation: siblings who grow apart--and one who maybe struggles with it more than the other.

GROWING APART
When we were young, Amy and I shared a room, a bunk bed, and many late night conversations, giggling and doing imitations of the voices (and imagined gastrointestinal releases) of all of our neighbors. We had secret glances and little pieces of shorthand. Everything she did, I wanted to do. But when we grew up, Amy and I grew into different lives. And we grew apart. She seemed okay with it. I spent a lot of years, when I stopped to think about it, feeling somewhat tortured by our apartness. I came up with no end of stories, explanations, reasons, justifications, and excuses for what it all meant. On the surface, I am not sure what it looked like, but inside of me, down below the surface where no one could see, there were a lot of approaches, and a lot of retreats. I was hurting, and I didn't know where to go with that hurt, or how to give it a voice. 

"John" came to me, deeply concerned. His wife was thinking about leaving him after many years together, and he wanted a song that would celebrate her and persuade her to stay. What we ended up with, though, was a surprise to both of us. Our song-interview journey pointed the way to an unexpected question: What if John stopped trying to persuade, and instead sought to deeply understand his wife's predicament by "walking a mile in her shoes."  What emerged was profoundly moving to him, and to me as well. And wait till you see what international harpist Deborah Henson-Conant brought to the mix when we took the song, and Deborah, into the studio!