Listen, Soak Up and Enjoy...Behind the Music is a Living Whole Online podcast series that spotlights the stories of musician composers. The more we deepen our understanding and appreciation of the creative process from which music, art, writing, photography, filmmaking, energy practices and family connections emerge, the more we can embrace those creative energies within our own lives, and enhance our health, healing and relationships with ourselves and others.
Listen to this lovely conversation between Kathryn Hayward, MD and award-winning composer and musician Bill Shontz,. Bill is now performing on his own, having been one half of RosenShontz, the music duo that brought children’s music into genres including rock n’ roll, rap, blues, country and jazz. Bill and Gary Rosen composed and performed songs that both children and adults love.
This Behind the Music podcast comes from Bill’s first solo album, Animal Tales, and features the song One Earth, a song that he recorded in 1993 with Lea Salonga. The prescience of Bill’s music about climate change, which he was writing in the 1980s, is especially poignant now that global warming is more accepted as a real phenomenon than it was decades ago. Bill’s views about the warming of the Earth have also evolved, and a recent song, So I Can Eat My Hamburger reflects his recent discoveries.
I find it discouraging because I’ve been singing about taking care of the Earth for many, many years. I’d talk about global warming and a hole in the ozone...unfortunately this song is still relevant today. I think we should keep singing it and honoring our Earth and taking care of it, and that is what the song is about..
-Bill Shontz
Chorus
There’s only One Earth
And we share it
With the whole world
Great and small
Plants and creatures
Land and sea and air
There’s only One Earth for us all
There’s only One Earth for us all.
Verse 1
Mother Earth is our home,
She takes care of all life
In a balance eternal and true,
Armed with nothing but time
She is patient and wise
She tears down what is bad
And builds up something new.
Chorus
There’s only One Earth
And we share it
With the whole world
Great and small
Plants and creatures
Land and sea and air
There’s only One Earth for us all
There’s only One Earth for us all.
Verse 2
We have all that we need,
We need all that we have,
Mother Earth is a family affair,
Everything is a part of her natural plan
This planet’s the house and the home that we share.
Chorus
There’s only One Earth
And we share it
With the whole world
Great and small
Plants and creatures
Land and sea and air
There’s only One Earth for us all
There’s only One Earth for us all.