The Water is Wide

Music: Traditional
Arrangement and New Lyrics: Georgia Stitt

https://www.facebook.com/6277352637/videos/890779574781620/

From Playbill’s Track-By-Track Breakdown Feature (3/27/20):

“THE WATER IS WIDE”
Beautiful Kate Baldwin calls me her “work wife” and it’s true: I music direct for her and she sings everything I write. It works out beautifully, and I feel as if I’ve gotten the much better part of the deal. Kate called me with one of those favor-asks; she was going to sing at a friend’s wedding and wondered if I would write an arrangement for her of this traditional tune. I said, yes, of course, but as we started figuring out what we wanted to do, we realized the traditional Irish lyrics were pretty bleak. False love, abandoned love, faded love, a broken heart! This is not wedding material! So I polished it up, which is a beautiful thing you can do with a public domain text. It only took a few new lyrics to shape the song around the idea that all things can be endured with a partner you love. And that’s true: just ask Kate about the time we were hiking down the side of a mountain when we were supposed to be at the airport boarding our plane. It’s a good thing I love her.