Singer finally records the song that almost wasn't

Since hatching in the late 1990s, Wings In Flight is finally ready to leave the nest.

It's been a long and sometimes exhausting process, but Cindy O'Neil is confident the song will now soar.

More than a decade ago, the local songstress penned the lyrics to the genre-defying track.

While enjoying some early morning fresh air in Vancouver, O'Neil was captivated by the chirping language of the birds. As the city began to wake up, she said she was inspired by the feathered creatures around her.

“Even though their chatter seemed frantic, it was much more calming than the city,” the life-long bird lover said.

With the words done, it was time to write the music. It took nearly 10 years to find the sounds to accompany the lyrics, but it happened through a whimsical connection made at a SOCAN conference in Calgary, the city O'Neil was living in at the time.

Sitting in the audience, surrounded by hundreds of musicians, O'Neil met fellow Canadian recording artist Sora.

“There was a 'connection,'” she said. “It was like it was meant to be.”

It didn't take long for the two to have a studio-ready product. Now, they needed to get to a studio.

“I had a strong sense we had to record the song now,” O'Neil said. She was right — not long after completing the song did she sign up for a building project in a European country, where she met “the love of my life,” and moved to Sudbury.

Now that she and Sora were provinces away, recording Wings In Flight was seeming less and less probable. O'Neil gave up almost all hope when e-mail correspondence with the Calgary-based artist drew to a halt.

“I guess the song is never going to be recorded,” she said, remembering the summer of this year. Little did she know, her fiancée was on it; without her knowing, Ken Ritari had contacted Sora and set up a recording date.

On Oct. 15, all O'Neil had to do was walk in to the studio and sing her song. Ritari had taken care of all the details, from whisking her off to Calgary to ensuring the musical tracks had already been completed by the time she arrived.

“The fact that it's recorded and mastered is very exciting,” she said, right before the song was released.

What makes timing of the song's completion even more remarkable, O'Neil said, is her unstable health.

Rheumatoid arthritis has left her uncertain about if and when she's able to be mobile, and has had an effect on her voice. She had released two albums, received radio play and appeared in a variety of music videos before the disease began impacting her.

“I feel very grateful to have recorded this song,” she said.

Despite the challenges she now faces, O'Neil said music is still a big part of who she is and what she does. She's not performing, but she is still writing.

“I can't help being creative,” she said. “It's in my blood; it's how I'm wired.”

To purchase a copy of Wings Of Flight, visit cindyoneil.com/music and follow the links to CD Baby and iTunes.

Posted by Mark Gentili