NHS handclap inspiration leads to Dancing In Silence fundraiser for Horley singer-songwriter
A moment’s inspiration while clapping for the NHS has led to the new song Dancing In Silence by Horley-based singer-songwriter Graham Knight and his band Lavender Hill. The song is available from the usual download platforms with all proceeds going to NHS Charities Together, Air Ambulance and PMR GCA UK (a charity aimed at supporting sufferers of polymyalgia rheumatica and giant cell arteritis). The video can be viewed on YouTube at https:// www.youtube.com/ watch?v=li7Qlw81juE or search Dancing In Silence Lavender Hill. “Lavender Hill band was formed in 2015. I had been out of the music business for 20 years. I started again randomly one evening.” A friend invited him into his music room which was full of quality guitars – and invited Graham to try one: “He took one off the walls and I played it and I really wanted to start playing again. “I started jamming with a friend every Saturday afternoon, and we picked up another member, and so the band started.” Alongside Graham the band features drummer Ray Betts, who lives just outside East Grinstead, and Rob Gwynne, who lives in Turners Hill. “I have been writing because we have recorded an album of original songs, and we have been keeping the band together by emailing or dropboxing our files to each other. “Then one day I saw on Sky News a report on coronavirus and it was very downbeat about the R number and the infection rates, and that evening we went out to clap for the NHS as we do, and I was just standing there clapping and these two lines came into my head – ‘while I’m dancing in silence, I am not alone.’ “I went inside and the words came quite easily. I sat down with a guitar and playing everything out until I had first of all the verses and then the chorus. “What happened after that was that I recorded a demo. I put down the guitars, bass line and various other things, and I put it to the guy that has been producing our album. “And he sent it back. “He said the timing was rubbish. I was in too much of a hurry to do it. He said we had to get it right. I did it again, and the second time he said it was fine. “But we had the issue that his studio was closed. He couldn’t have people in there. I had to record it at home. “Recording guitars and keyboards is quite easy at home because you are just plugging in through an interface, and that works well. But vocals are more difficult. You have got to do it the oldfashioned way. You have got to sing into a mic, and it is difficult to do.
“Whenever I have done vocals before it has been in a studio and somebody has known what we have been doing.” But Graham eventually got there – and is pleased with the result. And with the video they have also done while socially distancing. Graham was in a forest a mile from his home, Ray in a field and Rob in his back garden. The girl dancing in silence is director and producer Alex Horwood’s daughter. “The song is about us. It is about the way we have dealt with coronavirus. We are living with uncertainty. We are living with a completely new reality. “We don’t know what is going to happen. We are concerned for ourselves and for our relations, for people who may get it badly. We are living apart. We have got social distancing. And it is about how we are dealing with that. “But it is also a song of hope. Once we come to the third verse, it is about the fact that there is light at the end of the tunnel, that it is not going to last forever. We are going to get out of this and we are going to get back to normal… or a new normal. “The refrain is that we are not alone. “We have got people that look after us. We have got the doctors and the nurses and the paramedics looking after us, and we have got the key workers looking after us, and these people are often living with tremendous risk... but they are looking after us.”
So it is a song of thanks too, Graham stresses: “enormous thanks to all of them for all that they are doing for us.”
Graham isn’t asking for donations specifically, but the proceeds from sales on the download platforms will go to the causes he is championing with the song.