For weeks and weeks now, in every spare moment I could find, I have been listening to old cassette tapes hoping to hear a song I once wrote, called “Early Winter’s Morning”. A sweet song about a young girl’s first kiss. I went through every cassette I could find and I never came across the original version of me singing the song onto a tape. To my recollection, I was 19 or 20 and it was the holiday season, when I found myself singing a piece, from the Opera, “Amal and the Night Visitors” by Gian-Carlo Menotti. I think I was vacuuming or cleaning at the time. Anyway, I heard this new song emerging from what I was singing and I followed it, just letting it go where it seemed to want to go. It kept going and going… There were so many stances. At some point it hit me, I should be recording this before it decides not to play with me anymore and goes away. I did. But I did not ever find the tape. Luckily, I remembered the tune and the gist of the story. So, at the top of last week, I rewrote it.
I have to hand it to Dan. He and I really struggled with it and it was difficult for him to play. We did multiple, little practices of it because it hurt his hands to play it over and over again. In the end, he voiced it through guitar perfectly to what I was hearing in my head. When the song originally emerged, my imagination ran wild and I could hear an orchestra playing it and visually, I imagined it with ballet or ice ballet performers and also imagined it could be adapted for school children’s winter performances, as a non-denominational seasonal thing to bring people together for the holidays. I imagined the whole arts wing finding it, an opportunity to perform together. I likened it in ways to “Peter and the Wolf”.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. I would like to point out we had help with the art on the wall. It was created by aj_furey who can be found on Instagram.
Other music, I think I may have been inspired by: Suzanne Vega’s "Night Vision", Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”, Moody Blues “Knights in White Satin” and “Walt Disney’s Presents A Children's Garden of Verses” album. (<— at least these were the thoughts that came to mind while working on it with Dan last week.)
These, were just things that came to mind while we worked on the song that you may appreciate: Edward Scissorhands the movie and the ballet by Mathew Bourne. Also “Rusty the Skate Maker” by Rasputina.