We’re getting really lucky with Voice Project. We know that. A lot of times we just show up and capture these amazing moments with some really incredible people like Cary and Laura. But in some ways, it has to be more than luck. There’s a lot of love that goes into this project…from the founding story and movement in Uganda, that act of mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers reaching out to their loved ones through song to say, “no matter what, no matter what you’ve done, just come home” to the artists selecting another they love and respect to sing in their own voice to help get the message out, there’s simply something in that mix that keeps bringing in performances like this one…and maybe a couple of other less tangibles like getting folks at home or wherever their home is on the road, and maybe some things too we just don’t know or can’t predict. Either way, there was a lot of love in the room on this sunny day in Los Angeles. From New York I remember feeling that little bit of that nervousness when you’re introducing people you really care about from different parts of your life, putting them in a room together and hoping they get along, or see-love-respect in each other what you see in them individually.

Cary is a long time friend of both Chris’s and mine, one of the first people I met when I had moved back to Los Angeles something like 7 years ago? There was a really good little community of people congregating around The Hotel Cafe, a small place where we’d hear Gary Jules and Joe Purdy and a great group of artists just starting out. A lot of nights of sitting around after the music was done, having too many whiskeys and those late night conversations that are hilarious, great or ridiculous and lots of times all three. It was a home base in a big city, and it’s grown a bit since then but still is that in a lot of ways. Cary was always eminently welcoming, friendly, expansive, inclusive…he’d already had a song (“Blue Eyes”) on Garden State which had come out recently and I remember how cool I thought that was. Something always struck me about him as a genuine person (in LA, you notice it more when you see it)…someone who knew music was going to be, was his life and future, and he was doing it, but someone who’s present in the moment and sturdy, one of the people who can weather storms, good times and tough. You get to come across a few of those in this life and as you get older, you realize how lucky you are to find them and how important they are to hold on to. When he told me that he and Laura were going to team up on a song for us I was so floored, and also really excited that Ryan would be shooting it. Ryan and I had a lot of those late night discussions half a world away on our last trip to Uganda, sharing a few crappy hotel rooms in remote places up north, talking about anything really when it was too hot for sleep to come. It does really seem that late night talks, whether it’s at the place you’re calling home or far from it, they’re one of the things that really bind us to one another like few other things. Anyway, I was really looking forward to getting these three in the room together and hoping for something really good. And we got it.

Chills when Laura’s voice comes in, and with their harmonies while the light from that window delicately catching her hair and their little interactions, the knowing looks of two people who share a life. Yeah, there’s a lot of love in that room, I hope you watch this all the way through and see it/feel it for yourself. After I watched the footage for the first time I just walked outside, I guess to be with the good feeling it gave me, maybe thinking the night air would help it stay with me. It did. — Hunter