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I wrote a song about 3 years ago for the local mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But it's actually a song for everybody with a desire to serve and help and teach and be an emissary for God.
It's call "SEND ME", and I'm excited to finally make it available on my website next week. With solo and SATB versions. Watch for it on Thursday, October 18th.
Here's a sneak peak of the lyrics:
All of the courage I can summon / Each drop of faith that I can bring / All that I have to give, I offer it to thee / Here I am, Lord / Send me.
Also, I've written a new song called "MY OWN SUPERHERO," inspired by Emotional Superpowers, a global effort to teach hope and resilience to children everywhere. Though it's not my usual faith-based song, I hope you'll sing it and teach it and share it with as many children as you can. We all need to believe that when we need a superhero, we can be one!
See you next week!
What do you do when @MasaFukuda, your all-time arranger / director / producer / sound engineer / and gatherer of amazingly talented singers / is on a book tour in Japan during the time when you absolutely have to record your new Father's Day song?
Well, you call your friend, Daniel Blomberg (musical genius and co-writer of this song) and he calls his friend, Dave Zimmerman, at Noisebox Studios. And then you think:
Great! Now we had a track to sing to, and someone to professionally record the song, but -- just one little problem here -- we don't have any singers!
What do you do then? Well, I reached out to some of the best kids I know: my piano students. I could imagine the conversation:
"Hey, do you want to help record a new song in a professional studio for me?"
"On the piano?"
"No."
"On my violin?" (Some of them play strings also.)
"No. I want you to sing."
Silence....
Pardon the terrible picture quality. But that’s my dad, and I’m the one he’s holding. He died nearly 10 years ago now, but I am thankful for him every day, and for all he did to love, teach, guide, protect, and provide for me. I thought about him a lot while I was writing this song.
Can I just give you a little background on the song that I think is important to know?
This was one of the hardest songs for me to write! Because I am painfully aware of all the kids who don't have dads at home, or live in neglectful or abusive environments. So I started out writing a song about how every family is different, and how everyone is loved, whatever their situation. And I spent a lot of time working on that idea...which is still be a good idea for a song some day, but not for this one.
While working on the first idea, a question kept running through my mind: But what about the dads who ARE there? What about the dads who give of themselves in really heroic ways every day? Should we avoid honoring them because of the dads (or the parents) who don't do that?
So in the end, this song is for all the dads who really are the everyday, unsung heroes in our lives. Like my dad.
NOW -- for how I would teach it..
I'll be honest. This has been one of the hardest projects to get right. And I'm not convinced it's completely there...(though I shouldn't be saying that about my own song. Yikes!) but I'm releasing it anyway.
The sheet music, recordings and video will all be available tomorrow (May 11th) by noon. That would still give you 5 weeks to teach the song before Father's Day.
And I'll be posting more about the song tomorrow. See you then!
For more about the process, read on...
HOW TO TEACH “TO BE HIS CHILD”
To start with, the first line pretty much sums up how I felt when I was writing this song: “It’s impossible to say” everything it means to be a child of God.
I didn’t realize how difficult it would be until I actually tried squeezing the idea into 2 verses and a chorus.
So I had to choose something to focus on, and I chose this:
Our Heavenly Father has given us part of His love and light, (“For I know who I truly am inside” -- my childlike way of saying we have the seeds of Deity within us), and that ought to change the way we act – every day of our lives.
Okay, I promise I'm getting to how to teach it...