In October 2011 when I was raising money for my album on Kickstarter a man I had never met before emailed me. He wrote, "my daughter Christina is 28, pregnant with her first child, and was just diagnosed with lymphoma (cancer of the blood). She's decided to do the brave thing and hold off treatment until she has her baby girl Marie. I would love it if you could write a song for the two of them for Christmas." Over the next month we exchanged multiple emails while I had the privilege of learning about their family. Eventually, I reached out to Andrew Dixon (who I had just recently met at the time) and asked him to produce the song. We finished the track and I mailed it to them for Christmas.



This is Marie listening to "Marie":



 



























and this is Marie and Christina on Christmas:



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Since then, Marie is now a healthy 1 year old baby and after going through chemo and remission Christina has a clean bill of health. I got to meet Marie and Christina last August and gave Marie a tiny toy keyboard. She tried to eat it at the time, but I hear since then she's been learning to play. 

































"Marie" was the first song recorded for the album and is track #7. I loved working with Andrew so much (he's from my hometown in North Carolina, but we never knew each other growing up) that we hired him to produce the rest of the album.