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I started writing Goodbye Farewell at the beginning of the year. Like with most of my songs the music came first. I had wanted to write something about mum, who died of bowel cancer in 2016, but after writing a few lines the lyrics weren’t really coming. I decided that perhaps it would be a better idea to step back a little, and write something more generically about loss rather than from my own specific experience. I decided to park the song for a while.
I came back to the song following the tragic loss of Kelly Smith aka kickasskell to bowel cancer in June. It is a song about saying goodbye and losing someone, but also knowing that one day your paths will cross with them again. I kept my head space to the generic idea rather than about Kelly herself, but she was an inspiration behind the lyrics, and with her mum’s blessing the song is dedicated to Kelly.
I never met Kelly. Like many people who knew her we were friends on social media. Her Instagram account had over 10,000 followers, and she gave a unique and wonderful snapshot of someone living with cancer, bringing up a young child, and her everyday life. Kelly was a great supporter of my recent book, The Record. She not only told me her story for the book, but also wrote a brilliant foreword for it.
The 4-track EP features four different versions of the song recorded by various artists, all of whom have given up their time and worked extremely hard to produce a wonderful piece of work for me to release. All profits raised from sales of the EP will be donated to Bowel Cancer UK. The CD costs £5, and is available exclusively from my website rivers2cross.com and you can pre-order it now. It would be brilliant to raise as much money as possible and also to raise awareness about this awful disease, so all support is really appreciated.
