When The World Stops Ending

Over the past few days, I have received several emails and requests via social media to write a song in response to the Customer Service incident on United Airlines, involving passenger Dr David Dao, who was forcefully removed from United Airlines Flight 3411 on Sunday April 9th. This is my response…

Watch United Breaks Guitars Song 3

Before my folks got married their relationship hit a little bump in the road and, for a short while, my mom entertained another prospect. My Dad didn’t appreciate this other gentleman caller and eventually, neither did my mom. Max and Sharon patched things up and the rest is history.

During ‘The Dark Period’ however, my dad wrote a song to win my mother back, called ‘I Cried.’ That was 52 years ago and Don and I grew up hearing Max play it occasionally at home and, many times, he’d say “I’d like to hear someone record that sometime. I could hear that on the radio.”

He said it again recently and so I said “let’s do it.” We recorded the vocals at my place with Max singing lead and Sons of Maxwell singing background. Ross Billard did everything else at his studio in Halifax and, 52 years after writing the song, my dad finally got to record his first single, at the age of 73.

The icing on the cake is that, just this past weekend, Paul Kennedy at 105.9 Seaside-FM in Halifax did a live on-air phone interview with Max and debuted his breakout single while my parents enjoyed their first dance to “I Cried,” playing through their radio.

Download I Cried:

DaveCarrollMusic
http://bit.ly/BuyICriedMC

 My grandmother Doreen Daley was a big influence over my entire family and although she lived in several places during her life, she spent her last few years here in Halifax with my parents.

She was a British war bride arriving with my dad and his sister at Pier 21 in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1944 and raised 3 children, the youngest of whom died from tainted blood received in hospital in the 1980’s.

A very proud and humble woman, she lead a seemingly normal life surviving my grandfather and a second husband of over 25 years each, but as she was coming to the end of her battle with cancer I decided to attempt to summarize her 88 years in a four minute song. That’s an impossible task but I decided to try, and focused on the essence of the person she was at three stages of life: her beginning and childhood with her maiden name; as the wife of a soldier traveling alone to a new country as Doreen Carroll and finally near her end as woman with a third last name, Daley, with a life well-lived.

One thing I learned from her was how to be proud of who you are and where you come from without feeling ‘better’ than others. For my grandmother her family, God and The Queen were the three pillars she rested her story upon and so I had a most powerful experience sitting her down in my studio chair and playing this recording for her a few weeks before she died.

I’d never seen her cry until that day, and if I had to say there is one song I’m glad to have written, it is this one. It’s called ‘God Save Doreen.’