Neerlandia singer brings dream of first CD to life

From the time she wrote her first song in 1986, releasing a CD has been a passionate goal of Neerlandia resident Cindy VandeRiet.

Last month, she was able to cross the creation of her own album off her bucket list.

“It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time, and I didn’t want to live my whole life without doing it,” she said. “I figured now is the time.”

Another Glorious Day, a CD featuring 13 songs, is an easy listening Christian album. Each and every song is written and performed by VandeRiet, and features piano, drums and one other instrument.

“I got three instruments per song,” said VandeRiet. “For the third instrument I chose between trumpet, clarinet, cello, violin, trombone, guitar, and fiddle, so there’s a variety of instruments in the songs.”

The CD also has a combination of old and new songs written by the musician. The oldest song on the album, called Wings of a Dove written in 1986, was the first song VandeRiet ever wrote.

The newest, written in 2005, is Another Glorious Day and is the title of the album.

Both the oldest and newest, along with every song in between, represent pieces of VandeRiet’s life. Many of them are dedicated to her family and friends, filled with humour, love, and even the sadness that comes with tragic loss.

Another Glorious Day appears on the album twice, performed once by VandeRiet alone and a second time with a choir.

“I asked for volunteers in the Neerlandia Co-op newsletter and 20 people came out. We practiced two nights, about an hour each night, and we recorded the third night,” she said. “About three hours total and we had this. We recorded in the church in Neerlandia. That was a lot of fun.”

The album has one country song called Twelve O’Clock Drop, which VandeRiet wrote as a dedication to her friends Lawrence and Lucille Terpsma. VandeRiet was staying with the couple in 1996 after returning from Australia, when the household welcomed two additional members.

“They adopted two children at that time within a month or so of each other. They were babies and their house was really busy at the time, so I wrote that for them,” said VandeRiet. “It starts off at 6 in the morning when you get out of bed, and ends off with 12:00 drop when midnight comes along and they’re just dropping because they’re so tired.”

Precious Gifts was a song written for VandeRiet’s niece on her wedding day in 2005. VandeRiet said her niece asked her a year prior to the wedding to write a song for the special day.

When a person gets married, said VandeRiet, they are flooded with gifts from clocks to pans. Her song is about different kinds of precious gifts.

“It starts off with a sunrise in the morning, the dew on the ground, a rose in the garden, bright faces all around. A smile from a stranger, a hug from a friend, pray that God will bring you precious gifts without end,” said VandeRiet. They’re all free, and they’re all gifts that everyone treasures.”

Though the final result was a beautiful tribute, the song didn’t come to fruition until about a week before the wedding.

“I could not for the life of me think of a song. It’s a week before her wedding and I don’t have a song,” she laughed. “It was the middle of the night and these words start popping into my head, so I jumped out of bed and wrote it. Then I sat behind the piano and put some music to it, and that’s what I got.”

This isn’t an uncommon writing process for VandeRiet. In fact, she never sits down with the intention of writing lyrics or music.

“They’re not something where I think I’ll write a song today and I would sit down and just put some words to music. I know now that when something comes through my head when I’m dreaming, to get out of bed and write it down,” she said. “I firmly believed that these songs have been inspired to me, that God has put these songs in my head, then I get up and write them down.”

There isn’t just one song on the album about gifts. In December 2002 the VandeRiet family lost a daughter in a farming accident. At the time, VandeRiet was two months pregnant with their youngest child, and God’s Beautiful Gift is a song about that.

“That song is about God giving us this gift after such a great loss,” she said. “All the grief that was in us, and she brought joy back into our life. That’s her name too, Tessa Joy.”

VandeRiet started seriously thinking about an album in December when a friend asked if she was still considering making a CD.

“He got me thinking, maybe I should do this before something happens to me and I can’t do it anymore,” said VandeRiet. “I should get going on this.”

Once she started working on the album, excitement started to mount. VandeRiet hired Studio Pros in Los Angeles to do all the instrumentals. She sent them the melody and the words, and the process would go from there.

“They started off with the base of piano and two days later I would have to OK that. Then they would add the drums onto that. Two days later I would get that back,” explained VandeRiet. “It only took them two days to add all the instruments for each of the songs, for each of the parts.”

The first few songs went smoothly, said VandeRiet, so she and the studio started working on three or four songs at a time.

“Things started coming back from Studio Pros I really started getting excited about it, because it sounded so cool,” she said. “It started getting pretty wild for a while, because I was listening to songs and trying to find time to listen to them really carefully, because I wanted it to be good quality.”

In the end, VandeRiet said she was happy not only with the result, but the fact she completed a goal she had been striving towards for so long.

“I’ll never have to think, I wish I had have done that, because I did it,” she said. “I just really hope that people do like it and enjoy it.”

Another Glorious Day is available for $15 at Barrhead Sound, Neerlandia Co-op, and from VandeRiet directly. More information about VandeRiet and her music can be found on her Facebook page at www.facebook.com/cindyvanderietmusic.