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about
Back in December 2015, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Even in the midst of championing several environmental and human rights campaigns, she organized a GoFundMe to raise money for a specific type of treatment. As thank-you to donors of $200 or more, I offered to write a song in any style or subject matter. One of my mother's supporters, a researcher for a foundation called I-Care, already had a title in mind: "April Showers". I sat on this idea for almost a year (procrastination is one of my weaknesses) and finally, after starting and abandoning two drafts, came upon the driving piano accompaniment that became "April Rain."
I was lucky enough to play the song for my mother when she came to visit me in LA, only a week before she passed. When I came back to West Virginia for the Thanksgiving holiday, I decided to record it with an engineer I had worked with before, and who was a friend of mom's: Seth Maynard at Lone Wolf Studios in Elkins, West Virginia. I also got the help of my talented brother, Thom. He recorded, mixed, and contributed to the backing vocal harmonies (that's his voice on the lowest harmony at the very end on the word "grooow").
This song flowered into much more than just a thank-you to a donor. It became an anthem to a woman who fearlessly stood up for the state she called home, West Virginia, and the state of our world today. A woman who encouraged and nurtured me and my siblings for almost 30 years. A woman who was always unapologetically herself.
I invite you, the listener, to listen to this song with your own mother (or father) in mind. Allow it to remind you that parents are, at least in the beginning, our greatest supporters, though their efforts can easily be taken for granted. But a good parent is a really special force of nature. She or he is the rich soil from which "flowers grow."
-December 2019
lyrics
Somewhere, back there,
Back roads, long hair,
Almost heaven, West Virginia.
Music, from her mother's piano
Soft words, from the trees and the shadows
Sunrise, sunset, on the country line.
She said, "You can be who you want to...
"Don't let them tell you that you can't be true.
"Always see, how you are to me, and that's
How it should be. I only you want you to be free..."
Times, they always change, but still
Love remains the same.
Progress marches on,
But flowers grow in April Rain.
Somewhere, back there,
Back roads, long hair,
That's where you'll find her, West Virginia.
Music, from her mother's piano
Soft words, from the trees and the shadows
Sunrise, sunset, on the country line.
Children, they show up, they grow up and leave home
It's easy to forget, it's easy to throw stones
But children, in time, will
Be mothers and fathers too.
She said...
Times, they always change, but still
Love remains the same.
Progress marches on,
But flowers grow in April Rain.
for April Pierson-Keating 1967 - 2019
credits
released January 1, 2020
Music, lyrics, piano, and vocals by Pierson Keating.
Engineered by Seth Maynard at Lone Wolf Studios in Elkins, West Virginia.
Vocal harmonies engineered by Thom Keating.
Bass and shaker by Seth Maynard.
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