My First Song

Song story & origins

Introduction

My First Song appears on Refuge (2017). It’s not literally my first song; it’s a song about my first song—and in the middle I sing that first-grade piece verbatim, like a little collaboration across fifty years between the kid I was and the man I became. The story matters to me as an artist and as a lifelong educator: it’s about the fragile moment when a child risks bringing something of themselves to a teacher, and what happens next.

Where the song came from

I’ve always treated songwriting like a more public version of journaling. I’m not one of those artists who refuse to listen back to their own work; I go back, like you do with old notebooks, and I remember where each song came from. This one comes from first grade in a small Midwestern town. We were brand-new to school life back then—still mostly formed by our nuclear family—and my first-grade teacher had issues I didn’t yet have words for. As a kid I only felt the tiredness behind her eyes, the shuffle in her walk, the way those disappeared when anger flared.

That day she handed out lined paper and a few minutes to “do the assignment.” Maybe I missed the instructions; maybe I was anxious; more likely, I had a song I had to write. I was already recording little things on a cassette at home, already pretending to be Sendak or Seuss with word-play and rhyme. So I wrote a goofy, catchy little verse—street/meet/feet/seat—and turned it in full of joy, hoping it might make her smile, maybe even sing it with us.

Instead I got NO, NO, NO in big red letters across the top. That moment taught me something (unfortunately) durable about school: how much to show of yourself, what not to risk, how to tuck the creative part in where it’s safe. But it also planted the seed for who I became. I became a teacher—first high school English, then university teacher-education, and for the last dozen years working with adult learners through TIE (Technology & Innovation in Education) out of Rapid City. The song remembers that first wound, but it also reframes it: the chorus insists on YES—on seeing the human first and inviting their voice.

What the song is saying

At heart it’s a classroom parable. A child brings you a piece of themselves. You can stamp it with NO, or you can recognize the human in front of you and start with YES. I’m not against data or skills—kids do need to practice the letter K sometimes—but lead with being human. Acknowledge the person and their offering; then, inside relationship, teach the skill. That’s the philosophy behind a project a colleague and I are building called Being Human—a presentation (and maybe a book) about leading with humanity rather than letting “data-driven” dehumanize the people we’re trying to serve. The final chorus turns that conviction into an anthem designed for sing-along: yes, yes, yes… you are the best when you are you.

Music and arrangement

Refuge was cut with a self-imposed constraint: I recorded the entire album on an iPad—mic and all—then did the mixing and mastering on a Mac. The track itself sits in my Americana lane: acoustic at the center, story-first, built to let the lyric breathe, with the arrangement swelling into the YES-chorus so it can carry a room. It’s the kind of song I imagined using in my work with educators: a true story, a tune you can lift your voice to, and a refrain you can take back to your classroom the next day.

Why it stays with me

Because it turns a small childhood hurt into a lifelong commitment: to see the person in front of me, to say yes to the song they’re trying to sing, and to help them find the skills that let it be heard. It’s also a grace to have the grown man sing with the little boy—to let him have the middle of the track, silly rhyme and all, and say: that counted. It still does.

Source: New Music Memoir (1).docx

From the Being Human journal

My First Song actually contains my first song in the little stanza near the start. The song is based upon an experience I had in first grade. I do have great empathy, as an educator, for my teacher that year—I’m sure she was dealing with her own stuff. But her stuff was deeply impacting our first-grade stuff… and for years to come. It took me awhile to really know that “I am best when I am ME” I don’t think I’m alone in that. We all have a song to sing that’s no one’s but ours!

Source: Being Human: The Songs — Album & Journal (2020) · p. 42

Being Human · The Songs

Reflection & journaling

Theme: Identity

Choose a question or word or line(s) from the lyrics to guide your meditation or journaling as you listen.

1. What is my song?
2. Do I sing it?
3. Do I hide it?
4. Am I ashamed of it?
5. What kind of space do I give others so they can sing their songs?
6. How might we work together to make schools, work places, every place a place for singing our true songs?

Source: Being Human: The Songs — Album & Journal (2020) · p. 42