“All the poems on this CD were inspired by Betty’s having cancer,” Harm said. In 2000, Betty Harm, Dave’s wife, was diagnosed with Stage III breast cancer. After a modified radical mastectomy, eight chemotherapy treatments, and a 30-day radiation treatment, she has since been in remission. “The goal from day one on this project is that years from now nobody who would listen to this CD would know what it means, that cancer has been eliminated,” Harm said.
The CD’s are available at Beatrice Bakery, Blue Rose Antiques, Git ‘N Split, TY’s Tobacco corner and Pro Auto Tune in Beatrice and Diller Telephone, Diode Cable, and C & C Food Mart in Diller. Copies can also be purchased through Harm’s website, www.daveharm.com
Harm said proceeds from the CD sales will go to the Relay for Life, with Jefferson County sales going to the Jefferson County Relay and Gage County sales going to the Gage County Relay. In addition, for Relay teams looking for a fundraiser, he said the CDs are available at a discount.
Harm said the idea of putting some of his poems to music started four or five years ago. “I got a CD in the mail from a band in New Hampshire,” he said. “They said they liked my poetry on the Internet and were interested and they were interested in creating a song from one of them.” From there, Harm said he thought it would be fun to find more bands interested in turning more of his poems into songs, but that project wasn’t meant to be.
Then last year while surfing on the Internet, he found a site with royalty-free music composed by Kevin MacLeod. He contacted the composer, told him about the idea for the project and got the OK to use the music. From there, Harm said he spent 30-40 hours listening to hundreds of MacLeod’s songs trying to find the ones that felt right for this project. “I wanted the music to be spiritual, reflective, and meditative, and to have some kind of meaning to it by itself,” he said.
Harm said he found 12 he really liked, and then went back through all the poems he had written to choose 12 to include. Then it was a matter of matching the poems and songs and figuring out how to space out the reading of the poems to fit with the music, a process that probably took another 30 hours, he said.
Harm said the next step was getting it recorded, which was done at Platinum Recording Studio in Lincoln. “I had never been in a studio before,” he said. “It was very time consuming.” Harm said even though they were just reading, they still made mistakes. Recording the CD, which runs 40 minutes, took about six and a half hours.
With all that, and finding a company to produce 1,000 copies, he said the total project took close to 100 hours and more than 500 miles of driving back and forth to Lincoln to complete. “It was a lot more work than I thought, but it was enjoyable work,” Harm said.
All Harm’s poetry is inspired by actual experience, he said. “There’s nothing fantasy or made up,” Harm said.
He said he got more into it in 1996 and began sending poems that were included in the Poet’s Pen column in the Beatrice Daily-Sun. Harm has since had two books published, was named a United States Poetry Ambassador in 2006 and writes the weekly poetry column The Poets Quill that appears in the Daily-Sun.
Article from the Beatrice Daily-Sun by Bill Hafer - 16 FEB 2008
2/16/2008
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