I’m working hard to create some new content for you. Meanwhile, if you have the stomach to watch the HBO series “Orange is the New Black,” you’ll hear me singing a song I wrote with Danny Flower years ago in Season 6, Episode 2; in an early scene where two prison guards are talking in their car. That’s me singing on the radio in the background. The song is called “Angel,” highly reminiscent of the Springsteen and John Mellencamp songs of the era. Funny how it just sat around in our catalog all these years until our publisher started pitching it for film and TV along with some other old nuggets. I guess art never goes out of style and may eventually find an audience.
The durability of art is something I learned the hard way many years ago when I let a song lyric with some pretty amoral ideas slip out thinking it would probably never see the light of day. Turns out that demo made its way to Kerry Livgren and the band Kansas who kept most of our rhymes and all our music but turned it from a cheesy seduction song, “Stay With Me Tonight” into a thoughtful song about the price we pay for fame, “Play the Game Tonight,” which became one of their last big hits. I was already somewhat known in the Christian music world so I was, shall we say, a little embarrassed when Kerry told the story in his autobiography! Moral of the story to artists? Always be prepared to stand behind what you create because you never know how far it may go.
