This song is special to me for the connection created, and surprises shown from exchanges in ideas and ourselves while working together on a sound for its beginning lyrics. I posted the original lyrics on a forum hoping for feedback and the possible blessing of finding someone to help bring the song to life.
By this, I met Fernando, a songwriter from the land of the Tango who self-describes as a country music lover. When we began working on this song, and another, it was the week of the Feast of Saint Andrew for Sunday mass (patron saint of fishermen and singers), and later that same week, there was a memorial to Saint Cecilia (patroness of musicians). I told Fernando it was “a good week to make a song!”
In talking of a sound for this song, I told him how I imagined it as something with an Americana feel, with washboard and spoon percussions–like something one would have heard at a “hobo camp” along a rail line back in the day. Speaking of “hobo camps” I learned Fernando loves trains and built a model train set in his own home and even had an article published about its design. Living in a dense city, Fernando built the model in multi-levels in a coat closet in order to save space; and he told me how the train model was his ideal of the countryside, which he does not see often living in a dense urban city.
In exchangings, I told Fernando about an old rail line that used to run into our hometown and how it was now a bike path. After this, Fernando sent me the article of his train set, and on the side of one of his buildings, I saw the name of a fictional town “Warshaw,” which I told him reminded me of a real town just down the road from where we live: “Warsaw.” I also told him that the red, wooden grain elevator he built reminded me of one nearby that I pass when taking cattle to a barn up north of us. To this, he sent me a Google Earth image of both the elevator, and name of the rail line he built from in inspiration. The rail line he recreated is the “Katy Rail,” now the “Historic Katy Trail,” and the red, wooden elevator in his model is the very one I imagined and know in Calhoun, MO.
In working together, telling and sharing of ourselves, and beginning with a small acknowledgment of saints overseeing a shared passion—music—I learned a then-stranger collaborating with me to bring a song to life had built my “almost backyard” inside his own home. If that’s not a divine sign, I don’t know what is.!
From this experience, sign, and start to a friendship, this song is special to me. I enjoy the story of its making as much as, maybe even more than, the song itself. In putting a few words into the Universe, hoping for the blessing of bringing a song to life, the blessing–backed with further signs–lived. I am grateful and hope you all enjoy our song as well!
Man I have the same feeling. I feel blessed with your friendship and for having the chance to create music together.