Posted on September 10, 2011 at 3:43 pm

There isn’t much I can say about this song or the events that inspired it. I don’t perform it very often anymore because it now feels like a promise that wasn’t kept. But for several years after I wrote it, I had the great good fortune to have Adriane Lenox join me and share her heartbreaking empathy and understanding and extraordinary vocal power. The concert from which this recording is drawn was one of the most emotional and memorable nights of my life as a performer – me, Gary and Randy, and 60 singers (many of them my dearest friends) in the Great Hall at Cooper Union one year after 9/11. Outside of the 500 people who were there that night, I think I’m the only person who’s ever heard this version, and I offer it here as a thank you to Adriane, and as a perhaps naively hopeful blessing and memorial.

Recorded live at the Great Hall at Cooper Union, 25 October 2002 (Recording engineer: John Guth)
Lead vocals: Adriane Lenox, JRB
Piano: JRB
Acoustic guitar: Gary Sieger
Fretless bass: Randy Landau
Concert produced by Howard Stokar
Choir conducted by Joel Fram
Choir: Sopranos: Suzanne Adams, Diana Brownstone, Lisa Capps, Alissa Dean, Elizabeth Faulkner, Jill Geddes, Laura Griffith, Leslie Henstock, Emily Klein, Tracy Michailidis, Aysa Morehead, Jessica Paschke, Emi Ridenour, Kari Swenson Riely, Robin Sneider, Jen Vaden, Jessica Wright
Altos: Mimi Bessette, Julie Dingman, Julie Foldesi, Angela Howell, Shira Kirsner, Katie Kozlowski, Cindy Marchionda, Jen Piech, Janina Reiner, Sonya Robinson, Caroline Sorokoff, Jade Stice, Georgia Stitt, Landon Westbrook
Tenors: Roy Chicas, Tim Edwards, Dan Everett, Daniel Frank Kelley, Charles King, Keith Byron Kirk, Ian Knauer, Adam Korn, Robert Krahen, James Marino, Scottie McLaughlin, Randy Redd, Kwame M. Remy, Lawrence Street
Baritones: D.B. Bonds, William Holab, Mark Kressel, Gregory Marlow, Andrew Meidenbauer, Ron Morehead, Tracy Paul Muchesko, Brian Nash, Tim Salamandyk, Caesar Samayoa, Tally Sessions, Tom Story, Patrick Taylor, Grant Wenaus, Correy West