Al Petteway (1952-2023)

One of my dearest and oldest friends, Al Petteway, passed away with a late-diagnosed esophageal cancer that just ran away with him on September 25, 2023. He passed over in his own home with his wife, Amy White, and one of his daughters by his side, his other daughter was struggling to get home to him in time. Knowing how ill he was, I was in a hurry–building this video for him as he was dying, but he slipped on ahead of us. The music here, Requiem, is from one of Al’s fine instrumental albums. It is a tune that he improvised in his studio on September 12, 2001, playing out our grief. The lyrics were written as I was driving north out of North Carolina to begin a new life in Vermont with Barb Ackemann. The video is a montage of time-lapse footage from Nova Scotia. I did not know the circumstances of the creation of this work until well after I’d written the lyrics. The magic of a melody connected us, two old friends, in ways that I would struggle to explain. But there it is. May the gods smile on him and everyone he touched. We were enriched by his presence and are poorer for his absence. Now we must live very well indeed to compensate for his loss.