There are times in one’s life when you realize life is precious, time is precious, and memories, despite illnesses that can make them disappear, can last forever. For Vancouver-Based duo Focus Your Audio — Bobcaygeon, Ontario singer Sarah Stewart and Coquitlam, BC musician Bobby McAloney — those feelings are vividly captured in the hauntingly precious single “The Long Goodbye.” It’s a gorgeous, tear-inducing effort detailing the topic of dementia and how difficult it is to see loved ones gradually slip away.
Although universal in its empathy, Stewart says the song was inspired by her nursing career and meeting a special elderly woman who was diagnosed w progressive dementia. “’The Long Goodbye’ was written about an incredible woman, someone whose details I didn’t want to lose,” she says. “This song was based on a single mother who beat all odds, attended medical school in the ’60s, and went on to have an incredible impact on the world around her.”
Stewart says while caring for the woman, the woman’s daughter said something that deeply hit a nerve. “‘I don’t think I’ll be able to handle it when my mother won’t remember my name; I guess that’s why they call it the long goodbye,'” Stewart recalled the daughter saying. “It was at that moment that I was hit in the chest with layers of gravity. I instantly said to myself, ‘I’m going to write a song about this, and ‘The Long Goodbye’ was born.”
“The Long Goodbye,” produced and engineered by Mike Young best known as Mother Mother’s bassist, came to life when Stewart’s lyrics melded perfectly with a “beautiful piece of instrumental music” McAloney had. The sparse instrumentation features primarily Stewart’s hauntingly beautiful vocals, McAloney on acoustic guitar, and cellist Peggy Lee adding more gravitas to the already poignant, moving single. Fans of Sarah McLachlan, Allison Moorer, or Shawn Colvin would find this barren but blissful single a keeper.
“When the lyrics were written, the merriment of that and the music left us with a gift that was meant to be shared with others,” Stewart says of “The Long Goodbye” which was written by Stewart and McAloney in West Vancouver and recorded at Vancouver’s Studio Y and Hipposonic Recording Studio. “Every time I listen to this song, it’s like the first time. I go through all of the emotions of watching loved ones empty themselves over and over again in the walking out of their own long goodbye.”
“The Long Goodbye” is the latest single for a duo who have made inroads in Vancouver music circles and the Canadian music scene. “When you strip it all away, we’re two people who fell madly in love through the process of creating music and have never looked back,” McAloney says of his partnership with Stewart.
In 2019 Focus Your Audio released their debut EP and have released successful singles ever since. Collectively their singles “Shades,” “Over There” and “On Your Own” have amassed over 300,000 streams and have had songs on the Netflix film The Half Of It Spotify playlist. “On Your Own” also garnered global attention when Swedish DJ/record producer StoneBridge (Ne-Yo, Beyonce) remixed the single featured on StoneBridge’s SiriusXM BPM Mix channel. Publications such as Canadian Music Week, The Georgia Straight, and Aesthetic Magazine have all highlighted Focus Your Audio. And they’ve shared the stage with Tobias The Owl, Samantha Martin, and Delta Sugar, among others, while performing at Vancouver’s The Railway Club and Calgary’s Ironwood Stage.
Now with the single “The Long Goodbye” (and a music video created by Quest Coast Studios for the song), Focus Your Audio are set to pull at your heartstrings with this memorable, emotional song. Although Focus Your Audio didn’t tell the family of the woman they wrote or recorded the song, “The Long Goodbye” will resonate with anyone who has a heart. “When we perform this song live, the room goes quiet, and we can see tears in the audience’s eyes,” Stewart says. “We know they’re relating it to their own lives.”
