If the group keeps a soft rhythm tapping their feet or hands-on-knees then it can hold the space until the next person feels inspired to tell a story. I sing it first time round and then someone shares a story of a person who was brave and then we return to singing the refrain. HN NOTES: I have used BRAVE as a way for people to tell stories in circle. Vocals Holly Near, Melanie DeMore, Pat Humphries, Sandy O SOMEONE WAS BRAVE BEFORE ME ©2017 and MOVE ON OVER ©2017 You and Nancy somehow convey it all… so, well… enough said! And therefore the song, the reassuring forever of their presence within us.
How we miss these giants of love and wisdom who gave/taught us so much how to face that sometimes brutal daily emptiness stemming from their utter absence, the finality of that. Nancy’s and your humility and musical sensitivities unlock the poignancy, that sense of mystery hiding somewhere out there on another plane… and, yes, more than a bit of sadness too. And I know the challenges (vocal phrasing that’s not-so-obvious and anyway requiring mighty breath control and…LUNGS getting across the lyric’s multiple messages the tender intimacy that’s also spatially vast the texture seemingly spare and simple but deceptively so, and very hard to pull off.) Once recorded with the wonderful pianist Nancy Hayashibara I played it for co-writer and long time friend, Jeff Langley. Only now, we got to see each other – for a moment. She said she didn’t think she would go any where, that she had always been here and would always be here. HN NOTES: When my mother was dying I asked her where she thought she would go. I sang the song a cappella! Thanks to all those years singing a cappella to the cows on the ranch, I pulled it off with flying colors – much to the amazement of a committee that was not familiar with a cappella singing. The rehearsal pianist didn’t show up for the audition and although the committee said I could reschedule, I was pretty sure I had better get it over with. Later, when I went to UCLA, I used that song as an audition piece to get into the theater program. Lenya and sang the haunting “Pirate Jenny”. In a San Francisco State production of Three Penny Opera oh so long ago, my sister Timothy played the same part as Ms. Some of those songs live on today, most notably “Mack The Knife”. He was married to singer Lotte Lenya who sang the lead in one his most famous works, Three Penny Opera, written with Bertold Brecht penning the libretto. There is almost an old world musical theater quality to the song, maybe in the spirit of Kurt Weill who was born in 1900 and died in 1950. HN NOTES: When Jan, Tammy and I first started learning this song together it seemed it cried out for lush instrumentation but in the studio we discovered it became too bombastic and it really benefited from simplicity.