Demo Track
FAMILY PORTRAIT
"This song is a masterpiece! Every word resonates deeply,... so much power and meaning to the message."
"This was a really fun one to listen to. I would listen to this one a ton!
"This song is beautiful... I really appreciate the values it represents and espouses."
Guys, sometimes our relationships break up because we're insensitive to the unexpressed needs of our wives or girlfriends. If she lets us know, we often react in unhealthy and disrespectful ways. This acoustic country ballad describes the day a husband's insensitivity to his woman's simple needs for attention and partnership drive her away, leaving him with little but precious family memories -- and a challenge he has to meet if he hopes to get his life back.
Listen to a sample:
THE BACK STORY...
A few years back something happened that often does when I don't expect it; a phrase or an idea or an image came to mind that caught my attention and triggered my imagination... what if? When I'm smart (and not lazy) I write it down - or enter it into my iPhone - to develop the thought later when I can give it some time. In the recording industry, the thing that catches your attention is called a hook. For a songwriter, that could be a a couple words that fit together, a short melodic riff, an usual turn of a phrase, an ironic thought, the rest is where "the craft" comes into play. That's how this song started. The hook was the last few lines of the bridge, The rest flowed pretty quickly from there.
I've been blessed to have a strong marriage (of 36 years so far) and great kids (and now grandkids), but it hasn't always been easy. When it wasn't, it was usually me that made it that way. I've had to grow up a lot--thank God I found a woman who would stick around while I did.
Of course, country music is known for its sad, two-timin' break-up songs. I never want to write those (for one thing, anyone can do that). I'd prefer to write songs that are gut-level honest, that address conflicts we all have to face but that do so with a sense of hope, of personal responsibility and a reliance on others and on God -- if I do what I have to to make life work. This is one of those songs.
(I wrote it some years ago (I think it was 2012), but it took a while to "incubate.")
Dave