Monday, February 10, 2014

A Song That Left Us Speechless

Song 185: Yesterday I posted Kelly Flint doing her song Drive All Night as this week's addition to my favorite songs playlist. When I started the playlist in June of 2013, posting a song every day of the week, Friday was Friend's Day on the playlist, so now that I only post 1 song per week, I post a song by a friend once every 7 weeks, and this song is one of those. Kelly and I were never close friends, but we were both part of the Fast Folk songwriter circle in the early 1990s. I well remember, somewhere around the turn of the '90s, the first night Kelly Flint walked into the Thursday night song swap that Jack Hardy used to host at his apartment on Houston Street in Manhattan, because when the circle came around to her, she sang this song. When she finished, it took a few moments before anyone said anything, I think because we all felt that it was one of the most moving songs any of us had ever heard. Kelly didn't talk about the story behind the song, and if she ever shared it with anyone in that group, they never confided it to me, so I don't know that story, but I'm quite sure that she wrote this song about something that happened to someone she knew. Songwriters can sometimes write strong and moving songs purely from imagination, but I don't think I've ever heard a song conjured up from a writer's imagination that conveys the depth of feeling I hear in this piece.

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