For the Love of the Song

As much as I love to teach yoga, I love to sing even more. There are many with better voices than me, but I can assure you, I can't imagine anyone finding more joy when they sing than I do.

Songs are an amazing art form. Songs connect to your memories, they take you to places of the heart. I love to ask people what their favorite song is, it says a lot about them.

So many people remember songs from important times in their lives.......high school, their first love,

their first heartbreak, sad times, good times, happy times.

I take writing songs as a serious responsibility, because of the connections that people make with songs. I want the songs I write to help create memories, to take on lives of their own, to continue to live even after I am gone. I want my songs to inspire, to bring joy and sometimes tears, I want

people to cherish my songs like old friends.

I remember the first time I ever sung in public, don't remember what I sang.......it was a rather traumatic time actually. I was six years old, I had long blonde hair down to my waist.

School was about to start, and my mom decided she had no time to brush my hair every morning. She took me down to the local beauty parlor, and had my hair chopped into a "poodle"

cut, yep......it was about two inches long and permed into god-awful curls all over my head.

As I was sitting under the hair dryer, crying, I sang as loud as I could. There I was a chubby

sad little kid with "poodle hair".

As the years went by, I sang with my sister as we did the dishes after supper at night, we listened to the radio, and sang as loud as we could. Somewhere around nine or ten, I began to sing in church. Then in Chicago when I was around eleven, our art/music teacher auditioned some of us in class one day. Seems the city was putting together a group to sing at assemblies

all over the city every Friday. She loved my voice. I had three solos! It was the beginning of my love affair with songs. It didn't matter that by then, I had gone from chubby to stick thin, or that I was the tallest girl in the class.( I am only five foot three, but I did all my growing in one

short year) all that mattered was when I sung, I felt like I was the most beautiful girl in the world. It still makes me feel that way.

For the love of the song.........I have sung when I was brokenhearted, when I was happy, grieving, in love, and devastated. Songs have lifted me up, made me laugh, and brought tears

to my eyes. When my lungs were burned by paint stripper and I thought I would never sing again, for me life was over if I could not sing. I am so grateful I found a doctor who was there in my darkest hour, who assured me I would sing again.

For the love of the song.......it is a gift, one of which I am forever grateful, never to be taken for granted. I have notebooks full of "hooks", pieces of songs, rewrites of songs, songs that will probably never be heard, and a few that will.

We played in Lynchburg, Tn today at the Jack Daniels BBQ Festival. I watched peoples

faces as we played and sung, they smiled and clapped, and some stopped in their tracks as they walked and listened. Music is magic.

I am a singer. I am a songwriter. I am a yoga teacher. I am blessed.