EIL NA (A PRAYER FOR HEALING) (2020)

Like many songwriters, some of my songs are direct responses to what I’m dealing with in life. And in 2020, we were all thinking about COVID-19 and everyone suffering from it. I wanted to draw from the traditional text of the Mi Shebeirach prayer (the prayer for healing recited during the Torah service) — no reason other than that’s where my heart was.

The finger-picked riff that plays like an interlude at the beginning and before each chorus was the first part I came up with. I was on a Zoom call and idly finger picking my guitar while I listened to the presenter, and as soon as I heard what I was doing I grabbed my phone and recorded a voice memo. Sometimes that’s all it takes to spur a whole song.