Corey Hart - "Sweet River" (rough demo)

Happy birthday, River Malachy Hart.
Words and music by Corey Hart.
Edited by Marc Lostracco.
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/ten...

Following River’s birth in late 1999, I made a life-altering decision to step away from my recording career. For personal reasons, it was simply impossible for me to reconcile the two colliding worlds of parenthood and the music business.

I wanted to be a full-time father and something had to give. I wanted to be there to witness India, Dante, River, and Rain grow up. I would never trade a moment of it for any Grammy or hit record or missed career opportunity.

One evening, while working at Compass Point Studios on some rough demos I started to mess around with a drum machine and keyboard, laying down a rough idea of a new song I had recently written for my daughter River.

I had the remnants of a nasty cold so my voice was not in top form, almost giving me a nasal tone in the upper regions of the melody, not to mention a few pitchy bits as well. Bruce Brault (my long-time tour manager) told me there was something wonderful about the way
I sang the song. So there you go. Sylvain Quesnel played an absolutely exquisite guitar solo. He brought out the expressive musical arc of a Clapton or Robbie Robertson. This solo is one of my all-time favourites.

This is definitely what one would label a “work in progress,” but somehow I did not want to return and fix the demo or improve any of it. I never imagined it would ever be released, but here she is on Album Nine [TEN THOUSAND HORSES]. The raw, natural undiscovered flow like a river itself.

I have often used the metaphoric images of a river in so many of my songs, so it was an obvious name choice for one of our four children. A river is always there, and yet the water flowing through it is never the same water because it’s never still. How mesmerizing and captivating a concept. Always shaping, on the move, constantly widening or deepening, coursing its way through land, or ploughing a valley of bold creation. Everything changes but the change.

Lest we ever forget how the water cycle and the life cycle are one. In rivers, the water you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes anew, following the universal rhythm of what we know as Mother Earth.

I love you my precious River Malachy Hart with every fibre of my being. Your middle name is from St. Malachy (1095–1148 AD), the Archbishop of Armagh, who adopted the name from the Hebrew prophet Malachi, whose name means “my angel.”

– CH

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