Michael West is one of my favorite vocalists.  He has a natural easy delivery and a smooth voice that I could listen to all day.  His presence and emotive qualities really bring me in as a listener.  He's the same on stage.  He deserves to be heard.  Anyway,  Michael got Freddy Freeman to work up an arrangement of a Christmas tune I wrote and it's now posted over on his site.  Click on his pic in the friends section of my site and let he and I (and Fred for that matter) know what you think.  Here's the story of the tune.

Last year (2007) the Sterling Awards had their annual benefit fund raiser in December like they always do.  The Awards are for professional theatre in Edmonton and the awards are held in June to honour the season just past.  The fund raiser is to acquire money for the awards, pay for a theatre setting which can accomodate the five hundred or so folk who come and assist with costs of the awards banquet.  Anyway, Judy Unwin, a local theatre stalwart here in Edmonton and someone who I've sound designed for in the past, gave me a buzz and asked me if I would write a Christmas song for the show.  I laughed at her and asked her if she had ever listened to any of my material as I'm not quite a Christmas song kind of guy.  She said she didn't care and wanted me to try anyway so I thought "ok, I'll write something, she'll hate it, they won't want to use it and that will be that."  I came up with something which has agnostic and existential leanings and called her.  She got me to sing a bit of it to her and I did.  Well, long story short, she loved it, asked to sing it with me as a duet, folk in the audience asked me to come and play it at other Christmas shows that they were arranging and it still went over gangbusters.  I thought, 'that was fun' and I assumed end of story.  Not quite....  I played the tune for Michael West and Freddy Freeman when we were all scheduled to be playing the Milwaukee Pride festival cause I thought it was the kind of tune that Michael could really deliver.  Michael liked it and unbeknownst to me when they got back to Nashville, they decided to work up a version of it with Freddy producing and Michael singing.  It's really a seasonal song for the rest of us.  It's now posted over at Michael's site.  Hope you enjoy it and best of the season to all.  Let us know what you think.  cheers and the season's best to all of you.  I certainly hoped you're all feeling loved because you most certainly are......andy