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Jan 20 2007

The quirky and coincidental history of the songs for “Resurrecting the Champ”

by Julianna Raye

1) Alan Alda has been a family friend since I was a little girl. The Aldas convinced my parents to move to the mile square town of Leonia, a suburb of NYC, where I was raised.  My recollection of Alan from a child’s perspective is that he was one of those adults who made me feel important, like I had something to say. When he was around, the world was a magical place full of adventure. Later, I had aspirations of becoming an actress. I began to understand what it meant to be a celebrity and I realized that Alan was one! I got very shy. I can remember awkwardly telling him how much I liked his work and running out of the room. I also wrote about his biograply for a school project when I was 10. The fact that we are both involved in this movie is a wonderful coincidence and it makes me appreciate the poetic symmetry life sometimes has.

2) Years ago Rod Lurie hired me to write a song for a film of his that never got made. The song was “Heaven is In Your Eyes” and it was the first time I worked with my current producer, Ethan Johns. That song ended up on my CD Restless Night and Rod then licensed it for his critically acclaimed ABC series Line of Fire. Rod is one of those rare individuals in this industry with fierce loyalty and integrity about his work and his professional relationships. Whenever he has an opportunity, he involves me in his projects and I always feel proud to be a part of them. For Champ, he came to me with two sets of lyrics and asked me to write the music for them. The lyrics reflect the central themes of the movie, one being more anecdotal, the other more poetic. He gave me some loose guidelines with how he wanted the music to sound but pretty much left me free to do my own thing. Again, a rare and wonderful opportunity in this business. Rod wanted my voice on the end credits and a male voice in the body of the film since the protagonist is a man. I knew just the guy for the job. I’ve known Chris Stills for years. He’s a lovely human being and he has one of my all time favorite voices. I was really pleased it all worked out. This is Rod’s first foray into the realm of songwriting and he joined BMI as a result of co-authoring these tunes.

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