Hello friends, family, musical folks! I’ve been busy teaching at CHS and being dad at VialBurg! But music has been happening. A fourth single is releasing on Alton’s birthday, June 9, 2025, and it’s a song about Alton! “Lost Dog” is a song about Alton and I finding a lost dog during the first year of the pandemic. I then flash forward and imagine becoming a lost dog (like an empty nest parent), when Alton graduates high school in 10 years:
On Spotify: click here.
Note, three singles have been released last year: “Verona,” “Free to Dream,” and “Do You Know Your Fears by Name?” as I slowly release the next record, All the Colors That Your Are. Each piece of artwork is done by Ginny and Alton during their elementary school years. You can find all of the new songs on streaming sites or Bandcamp: https://mikevial.bandcamp.com/
“The Song Remembers”
1.
A song cannot be touched,
yet it is felt.
When you write a song,
you feel like you have another
valuable stone in your pocket,
even if your fingers only find
sand when you next seek it.
Songs continue to exist,
even if they disappear.
When they are unsung,
they are as real as the wind,
yet more mysterious—
Unpredictable.
They find their form,
yet stay intangible.
They offer structure,
yet can come from chaos.
Songs are not currency,
even if we sing them for our supper.
They are not poems,
even if they borrow a poetic figure.
I have concluded—accepted rather—
that songs are the highest form of art:
the calm of the lullaby,
then the beat of the death rattle.
A song is more powerful than politics
even if it does not judge, nor legislate,
nor sign an executive order.
It reigns above and lifts below; it has always,
and always has.
Our mother’s heart beat echoes in our newly
formed ears as the choir in harmony fills
the great hall of a cathedral.
We often forget the power of song,
when we need it most.
Fortunately, the song remembers.
The rest of this collection: click here
New Songs: “Free to Dream” & “DYKYFbN?”
In 2024, Ozzie Andrews, Sara Gibson, and Stuart Tucker joined me in the studio to record a song that’s waited for 20 years. I wrote “Free to Dream” after my first year teaching, and David Roof (producer) helped me make this song a nice moment to mark the end of my 20th year in education. The song is no2 on all streaming options and Bandcamp: https://mikevial.bandcamp.com/track/free-to-dream-single. We also cut a piano song called “If You Know Your Fears by Name?”: click here.
