[audio:http://timcoons.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/01-Edelweiss.mp3|titles=01 Edelweiss]

Can you remember the first song you loved? Being a little kid and having an experience with a melody?

My mother had a jewelry box that was fascinating to me.  I would go through it’s contents with my 4-year old hands, which thrilled my mom, I’m sure. I vaguely recall losing a pair of her pearl ear-rings. I think I buried them somewhere with some other treasure I’d found!

When you opened the drawer of her tiny jewelry box, it would play a simple, toy-chimes version of “Edelweiss” from “The Sound of Music”. My young self had never  seen the musical or heard the song in any other way… but that song was captivating to me. I loved it. And I would wind the box and listen again and again. All while losing more and more of my mom’s stuff.

I decided to record “Edelweiss” for this “Frailty After-Party”. “Frailty” is an album about life and death- something I was compelled to write about after I encountered my own mortality with the birth of my daughter. So it seemed fitting to go back to a song from my own childhood. For me, it’s a bitter-sweet and wonderful contrast: while pondering death, bringing back the wonders of my childhood.

The song still holds resonance for me- of discovery and a melancholy I didn’t yet have words for.