Words and music by
JACK WALKER
“Song of the Kingdom” is the story of a quest – a heroic quest, the kind of tale that has captured the imaginations of audiences for thousands of years … from Homer’s “Odyssey” to George Lucas’s “Stars Wars.”
But in “Song of the Kingdom,” the heroes are not searching for gold or jewels or power; the goal of their quest is a song – a magical song that will bring peace and harmony back to a kingdom fallen on bitterly hard times.
The back story:
The particular journey of this work goes back to 1980 when I read the book it was taken from. It wasn’t until 1999 that I found out where I could reach the author when Clif Magness, a songwriter, and I were sitting on his patio sharing lunch. We were talking about things we had let get away and I told him about the book, “Song of the Kingdom.” He got up, went into his house and returned with the book as my heart began fluttering and I heard the theme of “Twighlight Zone.” Inside was a note from his uncle saying that the book was written by a friend of his and he thought it would make a great musical. I called Andy Stone that night. It turns out he was the editor of the Aspen Times. He was flattered and agreed to meet with me to knock out a treatment if I could get back there. A week or two later I was in Chicago in a bar with a member from the church I was Director of Music at, Brentwood Presbyterian Church. (You may remember Chuck Shields who was pastor and I believe led a blessing ceremony for your new house in Malibu.).
When I told this man I was going to be writing a musical soon, not telling him the rest of the story, he said if I needed to get away for some secluded time, he had a condo in Snowmass I could use. Snowmass is 8 miles outside of Aspen where Andy Stone, the author, lived. I got a two week sabbatical from BPC and combined it with my two weeks of vacation and set out for Aspen. In one month I returned with a 25 page treatment with twelve songs and began to try to get it produced. Although I got favorable reviews from several entities, it was never produced. For example Michael Kerker, head of the musical theater department at ASCAP loved it, seemed powerless to help me. A producer with several credits wanted to produce it but said it was too big of a project for him to handle.