VOICES FROM AFAR THE STORY
We’ve all done it. A rotten day gets you grumbling and cranky, so you throw on a bright and poppy dance CD to lift you out of that negative mood. Or you’ve just ended a relationship and you want to wallow, so you sob al [+]VOICES FROM AFAR THE STORY
We’ve all done it. A rotten day gets you grumbling and cranky, so you throw on a bright and poppy dance CD to lift you out of that negative mood. Or you’ve just ended a relationship and you want to wallow, so you sob along to song after song about love lost. An old college friend sends you an email, and after responding you go through your CD collection to find all the stuff you listened to back in the old days. Music transports. It sympathizes. It speaks to us. And that’s exactly the point of voices from AFAR. The 10 songs of the album, written and performed by six artists came out of their own experience and reactions to addiction and recovery. “As a songwriter, professionally you write songs for different reasons,” Stephanie Urbina Jones, Creative Director and member of voices from AFAR explains. “These songs were for ourselves, needing to express something as we went through it. The idea of making an album came up and when we heard each other’s songs, we were all blown away. We wanted to share that, to validate people’s experiences so that they wouldn’t feel alone.” Jones and the other Voices – Boh Cooper, Porter Howell, Paul Jefferson, Sherrie Phillips and Vee Bishop – each took different paths that led them to Nashville to pursue their love of music. In an all-too-common occurrence, each also developed addictive ways of copying. At different times, they found their way to therapists Max and Kathleen Haskett, who guided them through recovery. Some knew each other beforehand, some met through the Hasketts, but eventually they were meeting and talking and helping each other. The seed thought of using microphones for this emerging post-trauma health originated through Dr. Max R. Haskett. This was confirmed by Kathleen Haskett's energy and gifts. The end result was the voices from AFAR, which were enthusiastically introduced to Dr. Patrick Carnes at the Radio Café, a club in Nashville. Patrick's acceptance and support poll-vaulted the voices from AFAR singers into their first recorded CD and national recognition. Dr. Patrick Carnes is CEO of the American Foundation For Addiction Research (AFAR), which is dedicated to fostering scientific research and understanding -- and to disseminating the knowledge of -- the ca
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