DSA will hold it's annual membership meeting and elections on November 13, at the Center for Community Cooperation, 2900 Live Oak, at 7PM. Please plan to submit your nominations for your governing Board of Directors.
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Following elections our guest speaker will be Helene Cronin, who has a song called LUCKY ME that has been played on YouTube over 120,000 times!
LUCKY ME--SOLDIER SONG BRINGS ADMIRATION, AND MAYBE A HIT?
Suggested story for week surrounding Veterans’ Day Nov. 11. Story idea is two-fold: 1) The creation of a song that movingly portrays the relationship between civilians and soldiers, and 2) Its journey and struggle, along with countless other great songs, to become a hit. Will it happen for “Lucky Me?”
News element: Helene Cronin will speak to the Dallas Songwriters Assoc. Nov. 13 to discuss “Lucky Me—I Might Have A Hit.” Doors open at 6:30 pm, program starts at 7 at the Center for Community Cooperation, 2900 Live Oak, Dallas.
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It happens this way sometimes to songwriters. A chance meeting at an airport counter in Nashville. A soldier in desert camo and a woman in line strike up a conversation. He tells her he's returning to active duty “somewhere in the Middle East.” As the conversation winds down, he asks, “Where are you headed?” Tired from her trip, she shrugs, “Home.” He smiles back and quietly says, “Lucky you.”
Helene Cronin was living a moment in a song, and she knew it. She had no idea that the gestation period would take more than a year before she sat down with a yellow pad and told the story. When she did, “It just came out,” she says.
I thought lucky me, he’s right
I sleep in my own bed at night
I lie there safe and warm
When he’s wide awake in a uniform
Lucky me, while he fights a war
I live the life he’s fighting for
He is the brave, I am the free
…lucky me
Copyright Helene K. Cronin
Helene’s sister liked the song. She made a video and put it up on YouTube. So far, on YouTube, CNN iReports and on Facebook, “Lucky Me” has been viewed more than 150,000 times.
The YouTube community responded:
“My boyfriend of a year and a half is halfway around the world :( I miss him very much, but I’m proud of him for choosing to fight for our country. I love my Marine. Thank you for this song, it gets me by when I’m feeling lonely. It makes me realize how lucky I really am, not only to be one of the millions of people he dedicates his life to save, but also to be honored to be the one who he falls back on when he needs the saving :) ”
ElevenThirteenNine
“i have spent 42 months deployed... and this song SAYS it all... the pain and regret i feel... reflect in this song... all my ‘peers’ that didnt serve, that met the girl of their dreams while attending college, and i was over there... lucky you”
thrillmill4
YouTube popularity of “Lucky Me” led to a performance on the Mike Huckabee show on Fox. (Huckabee, “a great man, immediately put me at ease,” played bass.) Helene has played the song at veterans’ events that included actor Gary Sinise (who gave “Lucky Me” a standing ovation), country star Darryl Worley and pop star Tony Orlando. She’s played it at Nashville’s Bluebird Café.
Where is the bridge from YouTube to a Nashville hit? The song is still great, still timeless, but what’s next? “I try to stay optimistic,” Helene says. “Someone will stop to tell me how the song has affected him, and how he’s shared it, and those people love it, too, and that is what matters most. It could still happen. ‘Bless the Broken Road’ became Song of the Year 10 years after it was first cut. You can’t quit on a good song. That’s quitting on a gift.”
So, she drives, every month to Nashville, to touch base with her publisher, to stay active in this mysterious, hit-making community, this unfathomable industry that consumes thousands of songs, and sometimes spits out a good one to share with America.
Lucky us.
