STORY OF THE SONG

THERE WILL COME SOFT RAIN

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I guess the story of this song dates back a long time to when I was in the 8th grade, when, incidentally, I wasn’t much of a student or a reader. That summer, we were required to do summer reading, and as part of that assignment, I ended up exploring two books that changed the course of my life. The first was To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. The second, was The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury, which was based on a poem by Sara Teasdale. From that summer on, I became a voracious reader, which I feel has served me well over my life.

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Many years later, my son, when he was in junior high school, was assigned the short story, There Will Come Soft Rain, by Ray Bradbury, which was one of the stories in The Martian Chronicles. At the time, he, my daughter, and I would watch many shows and movies, with dystopian and apocalyptic themes, which ultimately led to discussions about “the end”. It was during this time, I rekindled my interest in music, and began starting to play around with songwriting again. The song, There Will Come Soft Rain evolved from this revisiting of the story from my childhood.

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I remember struggling with how to handle these discussions with my kids, not wanting them to be left with the hopelessness of many dystopian ideas and works. I tried to handle their concerns and fears with some optimism and remember making the conscious choice to do the same thing in the song. It has always been my belief that we as humans can handle and overcome a lot more than we think, and that includes these bigger issues as well as personal ones, so I incorporated this belief into the song, even though it was not present in the original works. The lines “we’ll meet again” and towards the end in the song, the theme of us rising from the shadows, came from these attempts, and represents a change from the works that inspired them.

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Some years later, I was putting together the production schedule for the first songs for the project, and the world had taken a darker turn. The COVID-19 pandemic, dissolution of what had become a global economy, and a war many had hoped would never be seen again emerged. When I came upon the song it reminded me of the saying, no matter how much things change, they stay the same. Here we were again, so many years after these great works were written and stimulated my imagination and thoughts, with the same struggles and their lessons gravely needed. I decided that it was the perfect time to remind people of what these great writers had cautioned us about so many years ago, and that as difficult as times can get, there is hope that we can prevail.

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One other part of the song There Will Come Soft Rain that I would like to mention, is that, because it originated during the pandemic, our initial songs were recorded via online studios. When I decided to fully produce it, I also made the decision it would be the first song that was produced in a “live” studio. Thus, it became my first experience doing so, one that motivated me to think of spending more time recording songs in an in-person studio, as it was a wonderful experience (thanks to Chris F!)