An ode to a daughter…

Sunday morning early, feet fluttering,

the sun rising, youth in abundance…

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting

And cometh from afar”

 ~William Wordsworth

When my daughter Claire was six years old, she joined a little soccer team.  I was drafted to coach the squad.  As springtime emerged, on Sundays we’d gather this crack-crew to play their games.  Often the games were played over at a small park in my hometown named Virginia Park.  My watercolor memories were of the sun warming up the morning while the girls ran to & fro like sub atomic particles in oversized red jerseys…some kicking the ball; some just happy to run around with their new friends; while others would unexpectedly decide to just sit down to stare at the sky, a wrinkle in strategy I had not anticipated.

When I began to compose Virginia Park, I just remembered the sense of delight and those little legs running madly north/south & east/west with abandon…often at the same time.  The music is simply a testimony to all that whimsy in red t-shirts on those Sunday mornings.

I recorded the guitar at Big Sky Recording with one of my favorite engineers at the helm, Geoff Michaels.  I then enlisted my old friend Doug Howell to write a string arrangement, which was filled with the same sense of joy that I was describing with my guitar.

And off we went to Virginia Park…