Saturday, June 13, 2009

New Zealand musicians create song for Dyslexia Week

From 3 News in New Zealand. The song also has a music video (pictured).

Singer Don McGlashan, producer Sean Donnelly from SJD and Derek Browne from D-Dub have combined their creative talents to produce a song for Dyslexia week.

This unique collaboration has been six months in the making as has the meeting of the musicians behind it, Don and Derek only meeting June 11 for the first time.

“I've seen Don, obviously, perform a few times. I think I've said ‘gidday’ to him once,” says Derek.

The reason they have only just met is because Don wrote the song in December last year before handing it on.

The song is called ‘The closer you get the bigger I look’ and was written for Dyslexia week.

Don says his children were a big inspiration for the song.

“I've got two fairly unconventional kids, so I know what it's like when the world jumps to conclusions about somebody that you love - so I had a reason to write it,” he says.

D-Dub's Derek says his reasons to perform the song were to focus on something other than himself and his own music.

“It takes your attention off looking at yourself, from the song-writing and looking outwards a bit more,” he says.

Producer Sean Donnelly from SJD was the go-between for Derek and Don.

Derek says Sean was great to work with in the project.

“He's a genius, he really is. It was great, we had heaps of fun,” he says.

Don says the song is not directly about learning difficulties.

“We don't need protest songs. There's too many of them out there,” he says.

“It could be a love song. It's just a song basically saying don't judge me till you know me.”

‘The closer you get, the bigger I look’ will be made available to the public via free download from next June 15.