Songs in the Key of Big C (Album/Compilation)

We are here to feel and be well.

Songs in the Key of Big C is the 10-track collection of songs that helped me stay the course after being struck with environmental illness in 1996, and then melanoma in 2001. Finding myself dealing with serious long-term health issues – much of the time without health insurance – – its tracks surf across many emotional waves: fear, hope, triumph, anger, joy, disgust, depression and relief among them.

Each song on SitKoBC was borne of the insatiable and human need to feel…better. To vent feelings of frustration and anger. To feel connected. To feel productive in the face of dream-crushing fatigue. To relate my feelings of being sickened by the for-profit medical system. To feel like dancing! To provide myself comfort in response to the feeling of fear. To express feelings of love against the shattering loneliness of illness. To artistically render feelings of alienation. To feel I was getting somewhere in my own spiritual, intellectual and physical pursuits. Or even to simply feel alive! And, last but not least, to be well.

Accordingly, if you listen closely enough to all the songs on the project, you will hear the lyric, “be well” at least once in every song.

This spawned a small trial contest back in the 2018-2019 holiday season, the “Be Well Listening Contest,” where listeners were asked how many times they heard the vocal lyric “be well” in the song “Fate,” and lo and behold, some entries came it. My dream going forward from 2020, a very fucked year in many ways, is to hold a much bigger contest for the entire extended version of the project, Skin in the Game, which includes four additional bonus tracks.