I first shared this recording I did with pianist Doug Hammer of John Bucchino’s song “Grateful” eight years ago.
I included it in a blog post about gratitude (which you can read by clicking here if you are curious).
That blog post turned into a long list of people and things I was grateful for.
I am still grateful for everything I highlighted eight years ago — ranging from health insurance, to my rusty old bike, to music, to the web of friends and family who give me support and offer me inspiration (including my fellow bloggers), to all the people (most of whom I will never meet) who plant, cultivate, harvest, sort, package, ship, unpack, display, sell, cook and serve the food I eat, and on and on…
And since then I have learned that the more one is able to slow down and give thanks for the blessings in one’s life, the more blessings one tends to start noticing!
To my 2015 list I add the ability to distribute my music worldwide via streaming platforms; my most recent musical compatriots Molly Ruggles, Carole Bundy, and Brendan Shea; and the expanding web of grassroots political activists all around the USA who have woken up and realized that the time for participation with our political process is NOW.
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
As longtime readers of my blog know, I remain hugely grateful for all of the songwriters from the past 100+ years who have created an extraordinary catalog of songs for the rest of us to learn and share and perform and savor.
John Bucchino is one of them who is still very much alive and has written a bunch of terrific songs over the past 40+ years.
When I recently shared my recording of “Grateful” on Facebook, one friend left a comment that she only knew about John as Holly Near’s longtime accompanist.
So in this blog post I will share a little bit about John — as well as a link to his Wikipedia page.
Holly Near is just one of the many people — including Julie Andrews, Art Garfunkel, Judy Collins, Romanovsky & Phillips, Ronnie Gilbert, Stephen Schwartz, Liza Minnelli, Harvey Fierstein, and Patti Lupone — John has worked (and become friends) with during the course of his career as a songwriter, accompanist, singer and producer.
I found a very comprehensive three-part interview John did in 2009 which you can read by clicking here.
From this interview I learned all sorts of stuff about John, including how the song “Grateful” came to be written.
“The way the song happened,” John explains, “is that I was cleaning house on a Saturday and all of a sudden found myself sitting at the piano singing the chorus of ‘Grateful,’ kind of full-blown. It just kind of happened… And then for probably the next two months I would go to the piano and sit and play the chorus and cry, but it was so perfect and so simple and so inspired, that I couldn’t bring myself to try to write anything else ’cause I thought, it can’t possibly be as good and it’s not going to come from the same place. But eventually I forced myself… to write the rest of the song, which at the time felt… kind of cobbled together. And that evening I was going to be having dinner with Art Garfunkel, who had become a friend of mine. And I said ‘instead of meeting at the restaurant, can you come over here, ’cause I just finished a song, and I think it’s kind of good.’ And he came over and leaned on the piano… and I played it for him. He was the first person to hear it. And he said, ‘Don’t give that to anyone; it’s mine,” which is always what you want to hear Art Garfunkel say when he listens to your songs. And two weeks later he had it in his show, and he toured Europe and closed his show with it, and then recorded it. And…that is by far the most recorded song that I’ve ever written.“
I first met John when I booked him to perform a solo show at the Cambridge Center For Adult Education in Harvard Square during the same weekend he was performing with Holly Near at Sanders Theatre (about ten blocks away).
He was friendly, low-maintenance, and okay with how primitive our technology was — a few track lights, a very basic sound system, and a battered old grand piano — in the 70-seat performance space we had on Brattle Street (a block from the American Repertory Theater).
After that I introduced him to my friend Steve Sweeting — or maybe Steve met him independently since they were both songwriters living in NYC at the time? — and Steve ended up being one of the people who proofread John’s first collection of sheet music.
The three-part interview contains all sorts of anecdotes — one of which fleshed out a story I had once read about how Stephen Schwartz first learned about the Gregory Maguire’s novel Wicked.
John and Stephen had become friends after Stephen had accompanied Ronnie Gilbert singing one of John’s songs at a benefit performance.
A few years later John was performing with Holly Near at a music festival in Hawaii, and John invited Stephen (who was then working on the animated movie The Prince Of Egypt in Los Angeles) to fly over and join them for some rest and relaxation.
During this trip, Holly told Stephen about a great new book she was reading — The Wizard Of Oz story re-told from the perspective of the Wicked Witch Of The West.
Stephen read Wicked, immediately negotiated for the rights to created a musical based on it… and the rest is musical theater history!
John continues to write songs — and in recent years has collaborated with Harvey Fierstein on a Broadway musical called A Catered Affair as well as a children’s musical with Julie Andrews called Simeon’s Gift.
I will end this blog post with a few more of John’s thoughts — which may help to explain why his songs have touched so many people over the past four decades.
“I think that (my songs express) whatever I happen to be going through in my life… I am on a spiritual journey, and I’m trying to absorb things and learn about how to grow as a human being, how to grow as a spirit, how to grow and evolve in every way. And I think that progression, that journey, that learning curve of mine… plays out, to one extent or another in every song that I write, (and)… who I am certainly pours into everything that I do… There is a spiritual perspective which I’m proud of, and I think is resonant for people — especially nowadays when we’re looking for some rhyme or reason and some progression toward a greater spirituality in (our) own lives.“
I hope this taste of John Bucchino’s songwriting and tiny glimpse into his life may inspire some readers to click on the links I mentioned above to learn more about him and his music!
Here is a link to my version “Grateful“ in case you might like to listen to it on a streaming service.
As I have explained in previous blog posts, if you “like” it or “heart” it or add it to a playlist, that will improve the algorithmic sharing of my music.
Thank you to the John Bucchino for writing such terrific songs.
Thank you to Doug Hammer for playing so whole-heartedly on my version of John’s song AND for being such a patient engineer/producer.
Thank you to Stephen Fischer for his skillful graphic design work.
Thank you to whoever took the photo of me from when I worked professionally as a child which we incorporated into the graphic design for my version of “Grateful.”
Thank you to the photographers at Pixabay for their great images.
And thank YOU for reading. and listening to another one of my blog posts!
What are YOU thankful for these days?
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