2/21/26

The story of a song.

I wrote Snow Globe Winter in 2017 while teaching a songwriting class at UOP college in Stockton, CA. While the students worked independently on their songwriting ideas, I waited in the empty piano practice rooms of one of the campus music buildings. I would walk the hallways, peeking into the rooms where each student was every 15 minutes or so, to see what song seed each of them might be tending to. 

One day while twiddling my thumbs in between the check ins, I started writing this song on one of the beautiful grand pianos. The verse lines, “I’ve been wandering these hallways, always reaching forward to the final ending, just like the beginning, I can’t wait to see where words will take me,” was in direct reference to the bubbling emotion and inertia an artist feels when a creation first appears inside of them. It was a gift to witness young people create and debut their own songs, some writing and performing for the first time in front of others. 

I always felt like a bit of a fraud, “teaching” songwriting, because it is so personal to each creator, so very “yours” and never mine. How does anyone teach anyone else how to express themselves? The best I could do was be a witness.

I dedicate snow globe winter to all songwriters. You are ambassadors of the soul, soldiers for the sacred, armed with a melody and a feeling.