One Sunray at a Time

Parenting a daughter as she heads toward springtide is the inspiration for “One Sunray At A Time”, the new single by the Grammy-winning Americana music duo Mark and Maggie O’Connor. Mark wrote the song’s melody line years before when his son Forrest was his sole devotion. The song’s lyric was never finished. His idea though sat around for 15 years when Mark’s 2nd child Autumn came along. His theme was repurposed while Mark took the pen himself and wrote about his daughter: Morning light awakes you, exciting plans today; Arm in arm we go to walkin’, finding our own way. In the final chorus a new crossroads takes hold as the once baby girl leaps towards her own future. You show your light and vision for our world now, you have found your own way. Mark calls upon his bluegrass roots for the musical setting as he asked his wife Maggie to sing the new song with him. After all, Maggie observed the very heartstrings of the song take place in real time. It was the first original song created for their project Life After Life. It led to several more songs dealing with one’s inherent state on how you experience the world. In the song’s final refrain, the father remembers the sweet times laying the course for busy days of childhood activities, to nightfall and bedtime stories: Evening goes down one sunray at a time; There you go and then I follow ‘till the end of time.