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Songbird (For Eva)

by John Hamilton

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The first time I heard Eva Cassidy, I was standing in Tower Records on Mass Avenue in Boston. Bill Clinton was still president, 9/11 was still a year away, and — yes — people still bought CDs.

The song, playing over the speakers, was “People Get Ready.” The voice: pure as distilled honesty, rough as fresh-hewn wood, an alternating whisper and clarion call that bore down into the heart of the song.

I was transfixed.

Eva Cassidy’s voice wasn’t just unique; it was always in service to the song. Oh, she had all the chops, for sure. But when you listen to her sing, you don’t get distracted by that. You can’t, because her voice is an arrow to the heart. And, like St. Teresa in her ecstasy, the pain is both sweet and unbearable.

I didn’t know then, when I bought the CD, that she had died at the impossibly young age of 33. And that the work she left behind was but a small amount, a good deal of which was poorly recorded.

But maybe that just makes it more precious.

I don’t listen to her often these days. I can’t. The emotion she conjures from a song like “Fields of Gold” or “Time After Time” is too pure, too powerful.

So this song is for someone I didn’t know. But she, Eva, knew every single one of us. She knew where we lived, in our hearts, and went straight there.

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released October 5, 2022
All instruments & vocals by John Hamilton

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John Hamilton Richmond, Massachusetts

Vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and multi-genre songwriter, living in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts.

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