Old Meets Young Meets Old 2

In January, I had been revisiting some of the melodies I had tracked for Janine. Still no luck moving forward. There were new compositions in the queue without a voice. The project was shelved.
A few days later Janine shot me an email. She explained that her grandfather was a poet and that she’d like to make a song with his poem. Her words were “I wanted to be able do this for him, it would mean a lot to him.”

Oh my, his song has great meaning to someone already! I couldn’t refuse. “Alright, send it over!”

The next day I received the poem. I was touched. It is a poem about a dream. The dream involves the act of being baptized…a very intimate, personal moment in a person’s life. I tried to imagine this older (than me) gentleman writing this down. We’ve got to do this.

I created a first iteration….just a simple chord progression that had been bouncing around my head. I laid down a vocal track and sent it over to Janine. She liked it and also mentioned something about country music or something. Dwelling on that, I produced another composition. This time it was a simple three chord blues-type.

And, it just worked.

It fit the song so much better, and Janine liked it. She was coming down (from L.A.) to visit her family so while she was in town we recorded it (we also met for the first time)! Janine did great! We made a few tracks and it was done. Her voice is still very “pure”. It resonates simply…and is real. I could tell she had been practicing it before she came over.

So there it is —full circle. I was looking for a blues singer to sing blues. We ended up with a blues-centered foundation with a very personal, impassioned story. Who would have thought?

Best of all, Janine made a loving connection/tribute to her grandfather. He was very happy over her efforts she tells me. Nothin’ better than that.

The Song: