Starlight Radio

Starlight Radio

I wrote this song my senior year at Kenyon College.  I had read a long article in the New Yorker, and which had to do with broadcast media, and the article mentioned that the American people own the airwaves in this country.  They are a public resource.  That got me thinking... 

When I was very young, like maybe 4, 5 or 6, I would put myself to bed.  I would often go to bed early.  I remember it was still light outside many nights.  I did this so I could listen to the radio.  I had learned how to use the sleep mode on my clock radio.  I don't think I had any need to set my alarm, because I typically was the first person up in my house.  I wanted to just lie in bed and listen to the radio until I fell asleep.  

There was something magical about the idea that I could just lie in bed, and music would play to me as I drifted off to sleep.  Before I knew anything about how radio worked, I imagined a place where people programmed dreams via the radio and sent them out to pull all over the world, and all you needed to do was to tune in.  

This was in the late 70s, and the music sounded thick and rich.  I honestly couldn't tell you what songs I listened to, but when I hear music recorded around that time, it awakens something deep inside me.  The radio comforted me.

My early childhood seemed fraught with peril.  I had managed to fall out of a two story window, drive a car into telephone pole, and deal with a lot of upheaval with my family, and I didn't really know what was going on.  I was just a little kid, and the world seemed chaotic and scary.  Somewhere during that time I learned about death. The radio comforted me. 

Fast forward 17 years or so, and I had a whole story in my mind about a woman who uses music to to communicate to all the lost souls.  She had overcome a mountain of struggles, and she was there to say that it would be alright. I imagined a small station- like WKCO at Kenyon- broadcasting to a small town, and she upset some powerful people who didn't get her message, and they had to take her off the air.  

I don't think I thought much of the song when I wrote it, but every time I played it for people, they seemed to like it, so it often found its way onto the set list.  I think that people like the idea that you could tune into a station that can bypass the corruption, and pre-programmed media in the world- that you could tune into something real.  

I recorded this song with Colin Brown on Drums, Dave Humphries on Bass, Meredith Noel on Viola, and Susan Hardy and Bill Greene on backing vocals.  I think it was when we added the backing vocals that the song really came together for me.