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TOPIC: Memorializing young Wyatt's life & legacy
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TOPIC: A Couple That Met on an "Eight Minute Date"
TIME TO GET HAPPY! Here's the story behind this joyful, celebratory, playful, happy song: I immediately liked Dorothy when she came to me with her idea for a song to celebrate her husband Mike’s birthday. We set right in and I learned that the two of them had met, many years before, on a date whose duration was exactly eight minutes long. Apparently there is such a thing as an eight-minute date! If you are looking to meet new people, you can sign up to have a series of dates that are (yep) eight minutes long. You quickly try to assess the person sitting across the table from you, and to help them assess you, and then, DING! The date ends and on you go to the next table, and person! Except that...(read on) TOPIC: 20th anniversary: young couple to older couple
TOPIC: WELCOME NEW BABY!
A Family Welcomes its Newest Member THE STORY Sandy came to me wanting a song that would serve as both a lullaby and a welcoming greeting to her new grandson Jonah. There were two unique challenges in creating this song: (1) Sandy (humbly, I think) requested that the song be from her but not use the word “I” (pretty much all of my songs, you might note, are written in the First Person because I believe that gives them the most intimacy—so this was new territory for me). And (2) this song was to acknowledge the fact that Sandy’s husband Lew had passed away and would not be present to greet Jonah, but this was to be done in such a way that this fact would not be overly obvious nor made an “issue” of in the song. TOPIC: First Father's Day
TOPIC: Inviting wellness Uncharted Territory Part 2: The Journey Forward
AUTHOR'S NOTES, 5/7/17: INSERT Note 1: This song, "Days of Your Opening," is "Part 2" to a previous song and write-up about uncharted territory (a cancer journey): "From the Inside." Note 2: In December of 2016, sadly, Marie Pechet passed on. At her request, I performed this song as the closing send-off number at her funeral. I was lucky enough to perform it many times with her present in the audience, as she outlived doctor's expectations for her own life expectancy by a good eight years. And I continue to perform and share it on honor of her memory and the way she touched so many lives. A Family Finds its Way Forward in the Aftermath of Death TOPIC: When a young family loses a mother/wife
THE STORY
John was moved when he heard my music, and was taken by the idea of commissioning a song for the One Year Anniversary of the death of his wife Janis. Janis had struggled off and on with cancer for over a decade, during which time she had, with John, raised two children into their teens. Her cancer took a turn for the worse when her son was off at college. Maybe her death came as a shocking surprise becuase Janis had always been so strong, and so able to keep going and keep going no matter what. Or maybe it came as a surprise because death always does somehow, no matter what. We are almost never ready to say goodbye to someone we love. And when that person has been the hub of a family, the sudden loss of their presence can hit over and over again in an unfathomable number of gigantic and microscopic ways. A stunning twist on my biggest story yet
Many of you may remember this story because it was so unusual and incredible: a father dying of Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS) who could no longer speak, commissioned a song for his young daughter. The CEO of the ALS Associoation heard the song and had me perform it live for his Board of Directors and then flew me to Washington DC to perform it for the larget-ever gathering of ALS pateints and their families.
Two years later, the girl for whom this song was commissioned, now a teenager, has comissioned a response song for her father. He is now completely immobile and kept alive by respirator. Her song, and her fahter's original song to her, are both here in music-video format, and below that you can see me interviewed on TV about the intense journey I made with this family on these two songs. TOPIC: Wife to husband: holiday gift
TOPIC: What would I sound like if I were my best self? A SONG IN CELEBRATION OF THE SELF!
I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE the way this uplifting, self-affirming song turned out! Please share this song with anyone who is good at celebrating themselves--or anyone who wants to get better at celebrating themselves.
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