The Someday Songs Project
Basically: Grandpa, spooked by COVID, records Standards for his granddaughters...
In mid 2020, COVID news and social unrest and political madness swirling about, I started thinking about how much of a bummer it would be if I got COVID-19 and (weird, but where my head's been for three years or so) suddenly couldn't sing anymore.
There was a LOT of information about "Long COVID" causing a lasting impact on lung health and capacity. I really started wondering about whether I should do something to record my singing--NOT FOR THE WORLD--but for my little corner of it, specifically, my five granddaughters. Anyone who's read this site or the blog associated with it (if you have, get a LIFE, people) has a sense of my intentional pursuit of learning more about and singing songs that fall into the "Great American Songbook" and "Jazz Standards" catalog(s).
The weekly work of learning two new songs and (now that COVID is diminishing) being able to go sing them at a live Jazz jam certainly informed my thoughts about recording. My own joy in discovering these songs as a child added fuel to the idea of recording some of them. I thought it would be a relief (for my COVID worries), but also maybe fun and educational. As I considered the idea, these goals emerged: communicate these sorts of songs as easy-to-hear, easy-to-understand examples of this amazing genre of music, and to pique the interest of my granddaughters to maybe learn more about these songs (and about their grandpa!).
Studio recording started late 2020 and finished early 2021. There are 19 tracks, a total of 63 minutes, performed with my vocals and with the brilliance of Sandy Williams on Jazz guitar.
Track List:
- April in Paris (3:19) / Vernon Duke and E.Y. Harburg / (Shapiro Bernstein o/b/o Glocca Morra Music, and Universal Music Corp. o/b/o Kay Duke Music) / Arr. Sandy Williams.
- Blue Skies (3:09) / Irving Berlin / (Irving Berlin Music Company) / ”Softly As In A Morning Sunrise” (instrumental) / Romberg/Hammerstein II / (Warner Bros Music a Div of Warner Bros Inc. and Bambalina Music Publishing Co.) / Arr. Sandy Williams.
- Count Your Blessings Instead of Sheep (3:15) / Irving Berlin / (Irving Berlin Music Company) / Arr. Sandy Williams.
- Desafinado (3:48) / Antonio Carlos Jobim and Newton Mendonca / (Corcovado Music Corp. and Wixen Music, Pub o/b/o Fermata International Melodies) / Arr. Sandy Williams.
- East of the Sun (West of the Moon) (1:59) / Brooks Bowman / (Chappell and Co.) / Arr. Sandy Williams.
- Exactly Like You (2:13) / Jimmy McHugh & Dorothy Fields / (Shapiro Bernstein and Co. Inc.) / Arr. Sandy Williams.
- Four (2:28) / Miles Davis / (Prestige Music) / Arr. Sandy Williams.
- The Frim Fram Sauce (3:01) / Redd Evans & Joe Ricardel / (Music Sales Corp.) / Arr. Sandy Williams.
- Home (When Shadows Fall) (4:29) / Harry Clarkson, Geoffrey Clarkson, and Peter Van Steeden / (Geoffrey Clarkson Music Co c/o Clearbox, Advantage and Songcastle Music c/o Clearbox Advantage) / Arr. Sandy Williams.
- How Deep Is the Ocean (2:53) / Irving Berlin / (Irving Berlin Music Company) / Arr. Sandy Williams.
- I Can’t Give You Anything but Love (2:39) / Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields / (Shapiro Bernstein and Co Inc. o/b/o Aldi Music and EMI April Music Inc. o/b/o Cotton Club Publishing) / Arr. Sandy Williams.
- I Thought About You (3:02) / Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Mercer / (Range Road Music, Inc., WB Music Corp., Silver Seahorse Music, LLC, and Jerry Leiber Music) / Arr. Sandy Williams.
- I’ll Be Seeing You (3:03) / Sammy Fain and Irving Kahal (L.Lee Phillips, Trustee, Sammy Fain Trust) / Arr. Sandy Williams.
- I’m Through With Love (3:58) / Fud Livingston, Gus Kahn and Matt Malneck (EMI Robbins Catalog Inc.) / Arr. Sandy Williams.
- Stardust (4:57) / Hoagy Carmichael / (Songs of Peer, Ltd.) / Arr. Sandy Williams.
- Straighten Up and Fly Right (2:40) / Nat King Cole and Irving Mills / (EMI Mills Music Inc.) / Arr. Sandy Williams.
- That’s All (3:42) / Alan Brandt and Bob Haymes / (Warner-Tamerlane Pub Corp.) / Arr. Sandy Williams.
- This Is Always (3:16) / Harry Warren and Mack Gordon / (Four Jays Music Pub. and WB Music Corp.) / Arr. Sandy Williams.
- When Sunny Gets Blue (4:22) / Jack Segal and Marvin Fisher / (Sony/ATV Tunes LLC.) / Arr. Sandy Williams.
The concept is called "Someday Songs" because the music and lyrics of these sorts of songs have the creative equity to be entertaining/engaging early on, and to grow in meaning and value through life's experiences. They mean something today, and will mean even more someday. "Someday Songs" was released digitally on May 1, 2021 via CD Baby Distribution. Physical copies were produced via Disc Makers and were released May 15, 2021.
Vocals: David Glen Ponce. Guitar: Sandy Williams (Alexander "Sandy" Williams). Engineering: Ben Vawter, Aire Born Studios, Indianapolis.
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DePauw University Lunchbox Concert Series, February 7, 2023 Performance of Someday Songs
Greencastle BannerGrahic Newspaper Article, by Jered Jernagan, February 3, 2023
Tuesday is ‘Someday’ for lunchbox concert by Poncé, Williams
By JARED JERNAGAN, Editor
David Poncé is not the first person to record an album of standards.
To say there are hundreds of such collections drawing from the Great American Songbook might be an understatement.
But Poncé might be the first to record an album of standards specifically for his grandchildren.
Yet that was the purpose of “Someday Songs,” a release with Sandy Williams, at the outset.
There’s more to these songs, though, a fact that Poncé acknowledges in the liner notes written directly to his five granddaughters.
“I came to this concept of ‘Someday Songs’ because these songs gain meaning as we learn and grow,” Poncé wrote. “What might be enjoyed now for the engaging notes and rhythms will be more someday, as lyrics and melodic movements echo and validate experiences.”
What Poncé did not anticipate was how much meaning his renditions of these classics might take on to other people. He’s been learning since the album was released in May 2021.
On Tuesday, Poncé and Williams will have the chance to reach a new audience with a lunchbox concert at Music on the Square, 21 N. Indiana St., Greencastle. The 11:30 a.m. event is free, though spots may be reserved at https://tinyurl.com/2p93dtv5, as well as reserving a lunch for a charge. The first 20 senior residents to register may choose a free lunch.
Poncé emphasizes he is not a working musician, but a sixty-something father of four living in Lafayette who grew up singing these songs. His passion for music came back to the forefront in a discussion with his wife.
“I’d like to hire a small group of professional musicians and sing some of these songs like I grew up listening to on my mom’s Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra records,” Poncé said at the time.
“You mean like a jazz jam?” wife Jennie countered.
“What’s that?” Poncé asked.
He soon learned, attending infrequent jams in Lafayette before learning that one such event takes place weekly at the Jazz Kitchen in Indianapolis. He soon became a regular participant, trekking from Lafayette to the northside of Indianapolis each Monday.
Then Covid happened.
Even when the Jazz Kitchen reopened in Novemver 2020, Poncé had fears of what an infection might do to his rediscovered love of singing.
“I was feeling pretty vulnerable about the daily crises that came as hailstorms of information and misinformation, battering all of us during this divisive, difficult, dangerous, sometimes depressing period,” Poncé wrote. “It occurred to me, ‘What if I’m struck by this lung-wrecking pandemic, left incapable of singing? What if my granddaughters won’t remember how much I have loved singing?’”
The idea grew from there. He mentioned it to musicians Fred Withrow and Bob Wilson, who said, “Call Sandy Williams.”
Yes, that Sandy Williams — Greencastle native Alexander “Sandy” Williams, perhaps still best known locally for his work with the Average House Band, but whose wide-ranging musical bona fides include work with John Mellencamp, Michael Feinstein, Steve Earle, Liza Minnelli, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, Carrie Newcomer and Bill Gaither, among others.
It quickly became clear that Williams was the guy when Poncé mentioned his vision was based on four albums Ella Fitzgerald made with Joe Pass between 1973 and 1986.
“The first thing Sandy did was send me a picture of his best friend and Joe Pass standing on Joe’s patio,” Poncé said.
That’s a Greencastle story, as Williams’ lifelong friend Denny Hardwick came to know Pass well before the jazz guitarist’s death in 1994, with Williams even meeting Pass several times.
“Denny Hardwick was actually really good friends with Joe Pass, used to house sit for him and even wrote a book with him,” Williams recalled.
Acknowledging he is no Joe Pass, Williams set about pouring himself into the project.
“It was fun,” he said. “It was the middle of the pandemic, and I was playing a lot by myself.”
Williams would read the sheet music only to realize it wasn’t the same as the Bing Crosby recording, for example. Then he would figure out the arrangement.
“I did a lot of homework,” he said.
The album was recorded over the course of several months, three or four songs at a time, at Aire Born studios in Indianapolis. Poncé is still amazed at the care Williams put into it.
“I didn’t think this would be interesting to anybody else, and by anybody, I mean Sandy Williams,” Poncé said. “I paid him for his work, but I still owe him so much.”
Once the CDs were pressed and sent to his granddaughters, Poncé got an even better surprise when he arrived for a family visit in Texas, where granddaughter Lucy was waiting.
“She met me at the door and said, ‘Grandpa, I want you to sing to me,’” Poncé said, clearly emotional. “That moment I thought, if nothing else comes of this, this is a win.”
Much of the week that followed was spent in a hammock, singing with Lucy.
The meanings of the songs are getting through as well. One of Poncé’s other four granddaughters, who live in eastern Indiana, made an observation recently.
“That song, ‘I Can’t Give You Anything but Love,’ it’s just not true,” she said. “You bring us lunch, you take us to the children’s museum, you give us gifts.”
Thrilled to be discussing the meaning of the song, Poncé explained that those weren’t his words, but it was true for the narrator of the song.
It’s a big reward for someone who thought they would get the album, look at it, listen a little and then put it in a box, only to rediscover it someday.
“I got what I wanted through the project,” Poncé said. “The long Covid fears have hopefully gone away. What remains is the project I did with this wonderful, friendly, super-talented person.”
His collaborator had a different idea.
“Sandy wouldn’t let this go until we got to do a gig with this somewhere,” Poncé said.
Enter the DePauw School of Music, where Williams remains a guitar instructor.
“We’re really grateful to the DePauw School of Music for giving us the chance to play publicly for the first time,” Williams said, adding that he’d like to have future gigs with more of a band.
At this point, Tuesday is someday for this collection and its first live set. The plan is to do more than half the album during the 50-minute set.
“I told Sandy that one of the things that I might do for a couple of these songs is to tell the stories,” Poncé said.
“I’ll try not to tell 60 years worth of Greencastle stories when I’m there,” Williams said, “like not saying how I remember riding in the cart in this building when it was the A&P.”
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Would you like to book a performance of Sandy Williams and David Glen Poncé performing "Someday Songs" and encores (90 minute program, featuring the CD selections and song history/stories) in 2024? Reach out to discuss fees and available dates.
Someday Songs Links
I've established a BandCamp artist web page for the sake of contact and continuity. The link below takes you to that page, but there's really nothing much going on there! As events unfold (or don't) I'll update this...