The Seasons Project

I’ve been a fan of Christine Lavin’s since I first discovered her music in the early nineties. She’s insightful, sings and plays beautifully, and she is incredibly, side-splittingly funny (often ending her concerts with a baton-twirling routine).  A great entertainer, and, as I’ve discovered more recently, a wonderful human. I kind of guessed that last part, because I saw over the years how she was constantly working to lift up other musicians, and pointing people toward music that she loves.

One of the ways she did that was by creating two beautiful compilation albums, When October Goes, and On a Winter’s Night, both originally released in the nineties. As you can guess from the titles, the first was on an autumn theme, and the second on a winter theme. Recently, Christine decided to round out the seasons and produce two more compilations, as well as adding a few songs to the first two. She calls it the Seasons Project, and describes it as “80 songs recorded by some of the best singer/songwriters of the 20th and 21st centuries.”

I created this collection with an eye firmly fixed on the future — expecting 50 – 100 years from now folklorists will find it useful.”  — Christine Lavin

Christine and I met at an online music event, The Greenwich Village Folk Festival, where I played three songs.  One of them was my song Coming Alive Again, from the most recent album, Still.

Then an amazing thing happened. Christine sent me a note after the show to tell me how much she loved the song.

Then another amazing thing happened. She sent it to another songwriter I greatly admire, and forwarded me her response, which was, “Just when you think all the great songs have been written…” (I haven’t asked that songwriter if I can quote her publicly, so I will leave her name off here).

Then another amazing thing happened. Christine told me about the Seasons project, and asked if she could put Coming Alive Again on it (obviously, I said yes, enthusiastically).

Then another amazing thing happened. Christine told me that she wanted to make my song the title track of the album!!!

Right.

The spring compilation is called “Coming Alive Again.”

The four albums are only available on a gorgeous wooden USB drive, packaged in a beautiful hand-crafted wooden box made by a Ukrainian artist named Mykhailo Chaban. Only 300 of these are being made, and about a third of those have already been sold, so if you would like to pick one up, I highly recommend that you do so quickly, through Christine’s website.

Thanks for celebrating this beautiful thing with me!

Now check out the list of songwriters (including many of my musical heroes and influences):