More SMAS’ing!

Debs:  We’re stoked to announce that we have achieved a SMAS hat trick, with our third song for the Sing Me A Story Foundation going live on their site today! 

We’ve talked about SMAS before (seriously, that’s the best acronym ever), but for those who might not remember (musicians especially – pay attention!), it is an amazing charitable organization that works thusly:

 

1. Children in hospitals, children’s homes, vulnerable youth organizations or hospices across the country and around the world are given the opportunity to write and illustrate stories about ANYTHING they want.
2. Those stories are then uploaded to www.SingMeAStory.org through the collaboration of the partnering organization and The Sing Me A Story Foundation.
3. Participating songwriters view the stories, turn them into songs, record them and send them back to the children by uploading them back to the site. By doing so, not only is it on the site, but the partnering organization gets an email with the song attached as an Mp3.

So far, we’ve written a tune for a spunky girl named Kate in Tennessee, and songified a story by 12-year-old Ricardo in Bolivia about a bald man who wants to grow his hair back.

The special thing about this latest song is that it’s literally close to home. While most of SMAS’s organizations are in countries that are not as developed as Canada or the States, they recently announced the addition of the  Young Carers Program at the Hospice of Toronto. Austin (the co-founder of SMAS) emailed us the news personally in late summer along with a plethora of exclamation marks and Errol and I were just as excited as he was – a partnering organization in our own backyard! 

This song is called My Grandfather’s Cottage and it’s based on a picture and story by 6-year-old James. I wrote it last night between 1am-2am, and was pretty loud because I thought I was the only one home. It turned out Ja-Mez had gotten home from Errol’s way earlier than I assumed he would and was actually trying to sleep through this (* cringe *). I think this one could have gone off in a few directions musically but because it’s for kids, something singable with energy was definitely the way to go, and a slight jazz lilt doesn’t hurt.