It’s been years since Curt Siffert came to my house and played She Believes for me, and I still cry every time I hear it. I can’t listen to it with other people in the room, or in the car, because of all the slobbery weeping.
Related: get tinted windows on car.
See, Curt wrote She Believes about my great anxiety in raising a daughter. I’d confessed to him that I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, that I was afraid I was messing her up, since all I knew about were boy things. We’d read Star Trek stories and play Transformers and G.I. Joe stuff, all the tropes and triumphs of my own youth. I was afraid she’d grow up worshipping John Rambo. I should say, I was afraid and excited that she’d grow up worshipping John Rambo.
So Curt wrote a song about it. Apparently, cementing a young parent’s anxiety in song is something friends do for one another.
And today, that song is on his first official CD. And it’s about damned time. The whole CD is fantastic, apart from my favorite song. I’ve never met someone quite so attuned to music — and his work at the piano exemplifies this effortlessness. But the surprises for me, as someone used to hearing this thing straight piano and voice, are in the robustness of the arrangements. His collaboration with Jake Oken-berg (producer) and the cast of musicians filling out his session band yields an incredibly rich take on what I hope many others will add as standards in their own jazz collections.
That means that you should all click here to go over to Curt’s website and buy the CD right now for $10. SO CHEAP.
PLUS! You will NEVER guess who did the photography on the thing. Never in a million billion years.
Please… IT WAS ME! So, you get all of Curt’s great music and some fun photography, too! For $10! I dare you to beat that with a stick.
There you go: my pitch for you to make your lives better with great music and Curt’s better by selling it to you. You’re all good people. You should get together on this.
I suppose I should add, regarding my daughter, I’m dutifully raising her as a fan of fantasy, science fiction, and nerdery, just like her old man. She can track, smelt, and quote from every series of Trek. Plus, she knows how to go outside and get dirty. I couldn’t be more proud.
Sometimes, we just don’t know things until we hear our own words rattled around back at us in song… everything’s perfectly all right now. We’re fine. We’re all fine here … now … thank you. How are you?