Hello, NashWest Besties!
I started playing guitar and writing my first songs when I was 39 years old and pregnant with my 10th child. I was living in the rural West and those six guitar strings opened up my whole world. In those first few years, I entered my daughter, Millie and myself in a county wide singing contest. We both won our respective age brackets and the prize was getting to open for Little Texas at the 4th of July Celebration.
For this occasion, I sewed us matching red sequin tops and created a special arrangement of the song, God Bless America for Millie and I to sing as a duet. The night was magical and then I largely forgot the arrangement I had made until a few years later when Millie and I started singing together more often, but that was not the end either. My band, Gone with the West, also performs this song together and we were in Colorado at the Egyptian Theater when my friend, Hans, heard the song, was touched by it and became an important part of the team that recorded the song in Nashville with Duane Sciacqua.
Written by immigrant songwriter Irving Berlin in 1918, ‘God Bless America’ began as a humble soldier’s prayer for peace during World War I. Berlin tucked it away for twenty years — and when he brought it back in 1938, America was ready to hear it. The song found its voice through Kate Smith, whose powerful radio performance on Armistice Day 1938 inspired a nation searching for hope.
Psalm 42:8 reminds us that song and prayer are inseparable, “By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me — a prayer to the God of my life.” When Irving Berlin wrote “God Bless America,” he offered not just a patriotic tune but a prayer for divine guidance and protection. Like the psalmist, Berlin turned his thoughts into melody, expressing gratitude and dependence on something higher than himself. Particularly the line, “Stand beside her and guide her” is asking God to remain present through the nation’s trials. In that sense, “God Bless America” isn’t only a song we sing; it’s a living prayer that continues to rise whenever voices join together in hope for the land we love.
How fitting that “God Bless America” will be the first single released from my album, Midnight Mustang. Release day is Tuesday, November 11 which is Veterans Day 2025 and the music video posted that day will be honoring our veterans. The best way you can help show support is to listen to the video and share it with your friends on social media and by text.
The Midnight Mustang album will be released one song at a time as an effort on my part to figure out how to give each song some time in the spotlight and allow for more time as the last songs are still being finished.
Love, MK
Sending love to my sponsors…
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