Songs from the Attic
Last week a friend said, "I've been singing your song 'Spring Rain'. I can't get it out of my head." It's a song I wrote when I was twenty years old.
I said, "Wow. I remember the song, but I'm not sure I could recall the melody..." A few minutes later I got a text with an mp3 attachment. It was my friend singing an a cappella version of the song. How thoughtful!
In my upstairs office, I have a binder filled with songs -- a whack of tunes from the early eighties. But then life -- marriage, kids, career, mortgage, (no dog) -- happened and music took a backseat for around twenty years. Until two friends tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Hey Rocco, would you like to do Sunday school music with us? Play some guitar and sing songs for the kiddos?"
I said, "Sure!"
That was the late nineties, and what started as music in the portable of a small church we attended ended with me and my two amigos doing weekend and summer, travelling, gigging and being children's musical performers for ten plus years. It was a great run with three CDs, a music DVD, and two Canadian Christian Music awards in our wake.
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| Our first CD released in 1999 |
And that was my second phase of writing. Dated from 1998 to around 2004, my binder is filled with a slew of songs -- many forgotten but some which were recorded and performed for children and in church services.
By 2010, the children's band, Outside the Lines, had run its beautiful course. And so too did my songwriting. Until a few years ago (which puts it at around twenty years later).
In 2019, my wife, Doris, and I moved to Kitchener, Ontario from Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. When we tell this to people in what we call the K-W area (Kitchener-Waterloo), they say, "You moved from there to here...?" They can't believe we would leave the vineyards and the great lakes to be here. Also, as my mother often likes to remind me: we're usually two or three degrees colder.
But, for the record: a) K-W with all its outlying farm country has its own beauty and charm and b) all of our kids and grandkids are here, so the draw was pretty powerful.
As we all know -- who could forget? -- 2020 saw the start of Covid which, with its fits and starts and quasi stops, lasted for several years. During this time, my wife and I were attending -- and still are attending -- a small church that meets in a community centre. During the more intense parts of Covid, we weren't allowed to meet in person. We had Covid church on Zoom, with a husband and wife team leading all the singing from their living-room.
As soon as we were able to meet in person, because I'd let it slip that I was musical, I was asked to help out with Sunday morning music -- which I did gladly because in retirement I was looking for things to do. And so I added music to grand-parenting, sourdough baking and book club.
I upped the ante in 2023 by setting a goal of writing twelve songs. It started with our pastor telling us that we were doing a sermon series on the Psalms. The musicians were encouraged to find songs that were based in the book of Psalms. I thought, Why not write one? "Forever" a song based on Psalm 89 was the beginning of a new writing phase that has seen about a dozen new songs come forth in the last three years. I've had the privilege of using our church as a testing ground and have presented several of my original songs for our beautiful people.
One song in particular has gained a fair bit of traction. It's a song which I found in the attic of our first home on Spence Street in Niagara Falls, Ontario.
Let me explain: our first home was a small a-frame bungalow built in the 1920s. It had a walk up attic with slanted ceilings which was itching to be finished. We improved the insulation but got no further. We bought our next home 2 years later just before the birth of our first child.
Our first humble abode was purchased from a widow who had lived in the home her entire life (and for many years alone after her husband died). She was a church lady. I can still close my eyes and picture the attic. The middle length was floored by beautiful old planks of hard wood. The lengths of floor next to the roof and the roof proper were completely unfinished.
On the planks, were four old chairs and a narrow wooden box -- like the one in the photo above -- of old hymnals. We gave some to a musical friend and brought some to a thrift store. But we kept one for no other reason than it looked cool. It was a very old tattered book: Alexander's Gospel Songs.
So during my 2023 goal to write 12 songs I dusted off this book and started flipping through it. My eye caught this title, "I am with You." I gave the lyrics a read and was immediately drawn to them -- it reminded me of a song I'd recently heard (and loved): "Always with Me" by Iamson (Orlando Palmer, who is also part of The Porter's Gate).
In fairness to the original writers of the song, I should've covered their version. I scoured the internet and couldn't find a recorded version. I'm not adept at reading music, so it would've taken me forever to discern the melody; I decided to put my own melody to the words instead.
As I said earlier, I had some extra time with the double whammy of Covid and retirement, so I used GarageBand and recorded my take of "I am with You." I recorded some other songs as well and posted them to SoundCloud. I was pretty happy with my work and was okay to share these songs with a few friends and family. To a lot of ears, these songs might even have sounded legit/non amateur. But to anyone with a musical and/or recording background, the flaws would immediately jump out. But that was alright. I was recording and posting these songs for me and my close circle.
But then one day I was reconnecting with a friend whom I've known for over forty years. Rob Critchley is a songwriter, music producer/engineer and all-around great guy. He has been writing and producing music for decades. One day, I was curious, so I searched a song -- "What a Faithful God" -- he'd written on *CCLI because I wanted to sing it in church. Not surprisingly, I found his songs in CCLI. What was surprising and remarkable was that the song was available in several different languages.
When I reconnected with Rob about a half a year ago, he had just completed building a beautiful studio in his home in Deloraine, Manitoba. I congratulated him and said that if I lived closer it'd be great to do some recording with him. Or maybe I could do a road trip sometime... I was bucket-list dreaming.
Rob said, "I'm going to be in Ontario in April. Maybe I could bring my portable studio to your house and we could do some recording."
The photo here is of my upstairs office converted into a makeshift recording studio where we recorded my guitar, vocals, my wife's background vocals and my friend, Dave Telford's classical, slide and Telecaster guitars.
The other studio musicians, whom we recorded remotely were, on "The Lord's Prayer" Fergus Marsh on bass and Greg Critchley on drums.
In my home, Dave Telford recorded classical and telecaster guitars. Doris Maiolo did background vocals.
On "I am with You", my remote musicians were Mark Dunn on upright bass and Mark Rogers on drums.
In my home, Dave Telford played Dobro slide guitar.
Rob Critchley recorded all keyboards remotely from his studio in Manitoba.
The guitar you see in the photo, which I played on both songs, is a 1980 hand crafted David Wren acoustic.
It is with great joy that I share these songs with you, my friends -- I hope you enjoy them!
Here they are on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Music.
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