From her family to yours, 58-year-old Newfoundland housewife Madeline Thomson has written a beautiful wedding song from the viewpoint of her husband as he gives away his daughter. The lyric so touched Toronto-based tenor John McDermott that he recorded it for his latest EP, Daughter Of Mine, so titled after the track.
"Madeline is just this sweet lovely lady who has lived life and decided to put personal experience into a lyric," says McDermott. "It's just talking about the process of life from when (her daughter) was a child to where she is now. It just came off so naturally and so beautifully."
Thomson, who started to learn guitar at age 50, wrote the song in 1993 when her daughter Amanda couldn't find a suitable piece of music to dance to with her father at her wedding. She suggested her mother write something. "The two of us kind of laughed about it because I didn't think I could write anything like that," remembers Thomson.
"We have four daughters and Amanda was the first girl to get married and I wrote it through the eyes of her father because weddings are happy, but there's still a lot of mixed emotions going on. Here's his little girl getting married and leaving him, a new man coming into her life."
Thomson recorded the song, an old-fashioned waltz, and played it at Amanda's wedding. Soon, she was getting requests for it. She pressed it in compact disc format and packaged it as a wedding invitation. It went on to sell nearly 5,000 copies on the east coast. When another daughter Kellie got married, Thomson actually sang it at the reception.
McDermott heard the song in 1998 through his friend Larry LeBlanc, the Canadian editor of music business trade paper Billboard. Thomson slipped LeBlanc a copy at a songwriters' showcase in St. John's, after she performed a gospel song, "At The Foot Of The Cross", which LeBlanc wanted to give to another friend Sylvia Tyson.
"She's such a warm person that I obviously took (the recording of 'Daughter Of Mine')," says LeBlanc. "I think the reason I listened to it back in the hotel is I've never had anybody ever give me a wedding song, ever. We know songs that are adapted for weddings, but very few that are wedding songs."
LeBlanc's wife, radio promoter Anya Wilson, thought "Daughter Of Mine" was perfect for McDermott and the multi-platinum artist agreed. McDermott's version, arranged by Eric Robertson, is almost identical to Thomson's original but was recorded with the Vancouver Symphony. He plans to add it to his Love Is A Voyage album for re-release in the fall.
"It's wonderful," says Thomson of his version, "and John has such a fanstatic voice. When I wrote it, it was just for our family. To think that somebody else might like to record it is fantastic."
LeBlanc acquired the publishing for the song and began researching the wedding market. "It's gigantic, far bigger than you could ever imagine." As well as scouting other artists to cover the song, he is looking into alternative marketing channels like the huge disc-jockey circuit "The one thing that's great about a wedding song is you get a shot at marketing it (every) year," says LeBlanc.
