Sing Me A Story: Kate’s Song
Debs: Back on May 26th, we posted a comic about our first song for Sing Me A Story‘s Inner Circle and now that it has been officially uploaded to the SMAS site, we can publicly tell you about it. Huzzah!
First, the background spiel with apologies to those who have heard it before. Sing Me A Story is a charitable foundation that connects children in difficult circumstances to songwriters around the world. Those songwriters then turn the stories they into songs. It’s an awesome way to give kids a voice and we love, love, love it!
Last week, we were contacted directly and asked to write a very special song for a very special girl named Kate. Kate is a smily, sparkly girl who loves macaroni and cheese, yogurt and the color pink. She also has Niemann-Pick disease, a metabolic disorder stemming from lack of a specific enzyme that processes certain lipids in the blood. Kate’s story is best told by those her know her best, and with her mother’s permission, we are sharing a link to it here.
The most important thing to know about Kate is that she is seriously, SERIOUSLY loved. So loved that her entire grade three class wrote stories about her. This is where Errol and I embarked on a time-sensitive mission…
Errol: Believe it or not, Debs and I don’t write that many songs together. We have two or three songs, however the majority of the songs I have written with someone else, or she wrote on her own.
Thing is, our skills compliment each other. I love writing lyrics, she is much better at me at writing music. So when we were asked to write this song, we fell into our natural skill set. We were given three stories and if you take a look at the SMAS site, you will see one of the stories I pulled from for the lyrics.
Debs: You know that a lyric is good when a tune jumps out at you the first time you read it. It took me maybe a half hour to put the whole thing together and demo it so that Errol could arrange it properly. Huzzah!
Errol: The one thing that makes things difficult is that I will fit lyrics to music if need be. So… I like to have the music first. However, Debs would rather have the lyrics first. I could write about some epic battle between us, but… I just gave in… again. 😀
We wanted to say hi to Kate in person, so we decided to make her a video and play the song live!
Debs: Yes, I know perfectly well that Nashville is not in Texas. I just had a momentary lapse in US-geography skills. Yes.
Errol: … I even tried to cut most of that out of the video.
Debs: We recorded it last Thursday while I was on my break from work. We hadn’t tried it together live before, and it was the first time I’d even attempted it on guitar. I think you know where this is going…
Errol: Debs wanted me to make a Blooper Reel. So I did. She has no idea how hard these things are to do. 😀 Admittedly, most of the mistakes during our vid were made by me. I would say… all but one mistake was made by me. Poor Debs.
Debs: Yeah…umm..I don’t why I kept laughing and laughing. Okay, I do. My emotions were bubbling a little close to the surface and I felt a little bit like I could either laugh, or cry.
Errol: While Debs deals with her emotions again, let me just say we both had a great time! The response we got from the family was wonderful. If you are a songwriter, you should seriously look into writing songs for this organization. It’s a chance to use our powers for good. 😀
Debs I suggest that next time you simply use a bigger toe!