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Once again my blog has seen another drought, this time the reason being that since my last post till this one I have relocated from Spokane, Washington to Simi Valley, California (a 1,200 mile trek), and I am now settled in and starting to make my self at home in my new habitat. Thus once again to make up for my blogging neglect I have sought to share something new in this latest post.
If you’ve visited before you’ve probably noticed one of a continuing series of posts containing great songs that I have sung and have been obtained by way of a “5 finger discount” from another popular artist. I’ve entitled them the “Bootleg Renditions” which is now three parts in. You can learn more about them here - Part 1, Part 2, Part3. While my bootlegging ways have by no means come to an end, I think its about time I shared another one of the 15 songs I have both co-authored and performed during my high school and college years (I wrote about this briefly in my “About” page and in my post “The Last Chapter Files”). The song I’m sharing with you this time is entitled “Grateful For You” and actually has a bit of history behind it.
The story of this song finds its inception during my sophomore year in high school. Me and my homeboy EAN (the brother with whom I have co-authored most of songs I have written & performed) were asked to perform as one of the special numbers at our high school banquet, and as was our custom at the time we sought out to write our own love song for the event rather than do the unconscionable and loathing acting of performing (bootlegging) a popular song written by someone else. This assignment though was a bit out of our comfort zone as most of the songs we had written thereunto had been religious/gospel in nature, and if my memory serves me correct I think it is safe to say we didn’t really know much about true romantic love at the time either (although times certainly have changed!). But despite these challenges we bravely forged ahead. Unfortunately our brave crusade brought us to the very day of the banquet with no certain piano melody, no vocal melody at all, and no lyrics. You see the typical format for us for writing songs was that I would come up with the vocal melody and the lyrics and EAN would cook up the piano melody (although sometimes we would help each other out with our respective roles), but we were just stuck and neither could help the other out. I spent the entire day at EAN’s house from morning till the afternoon, and like a horror movie when the fearful Vampires and Warewolves come out at night or perhaps when you know at the strike of 12 your beautiful Cinderella carriage was going to turn to a pumpkin, we beheld the oranging sun steadily approaching the horizon with knowledge that we had only a couple of hours before our goose was officially cooked and the banquet festivities would begin. But in accordance with the strange manner of inspiration, just mere hours before the event a song began to take shape and we were able to complete in a little over an hour what we were unable to accomplish several weeks in advance, and thankfully that particular Cinderella story also ended happily ever after.
At the time the chorus of the song read:
“All my dreams came true, When I first laid eyes on you. And though sometimes its hard to see — I’m grateful for you”.
But this wasn’t our song’s final appearance. During the summer of that year we adapted the love song for our guys singing group “The Last Chapter” that excluded the bridge and we sang an acappella version of it for the Quinceañera of a mutual friend of ours in high school. Because we liked the song so well the group decided that we wanted to make a religious adaptation of it so we could sing it at the church venues we were frequently invited to, but I had already been thinking along those lines, so by the time the idea came surfaced I had a gospel version of the lyrics already written up. The lyrics to this version is what I have posted today in this recording.
At my last visit to Maryland (where EAN lives) during the New Year’s season, EAN put down a recording to my computer of the song in its original iteration intended for solo and piano accompaniment, but with the intent of me using the gospel lyrics in place of the love song lyrics. Just a few weeks ago though I had to adapt the bridge of the song to match the rest of the spiritual lyrics since when we first adapted it in higschool we omitted the bridge altogther.
Let me know what ya’ll think. As with every other song I’ve put on here the recordings is rough since I have zero experience or know how in professionally mixing and mastering music recordings, so please forgive me on that front. Also as you listen think about the wonderful privileges and the hope we enjoy because of the great sacrifice of mankind’s Savior and best friend, and how these marvelous graces and blessing should affect the way we live our lives — the only gift we have that He deems precious enough to receive in return for he sacrifices He made in our stead.
