Albany musician releases new song inspired by COVID-19 lockdown

It is amazing what music can do for the mind and body.

In times of need, when happy or sad, there is something invigorating about lyrics that speak to you, forming a momentary connection.

The outbreak of COVID-19 prompted people to take up new hobbies in isolation or spend more time on things they might have neglected.

One woman who turned a negative into a positive and put her feelings on the line during COVID-19 restrictions is Albany musician Simone Keane.

Keane found inspiration at the peak of the pandemic, writing her single, Covid Dayze, in April of last year.

With family in Victoria and South Australia, Keane felt an overwhelming urge to record a song about dreaming of seeing loved ones far away.

“The song starts off, ‘I had a dream the other day I was flying on a plane over the clouds to see my family, and all my friends so far away in other towns and other States and other countries across the waves in these Covid Dayze’,” Keane said.

“The days become a daze at the end of the last verse.”

The song was an arrangement of parts by musicians based around the world, from Kiersten Fage’s cello in Newfoundland off the coast of Canada to Lez Karski’s guitar riffs in Fremantle.

Perth producer Lee Buddle happened to have a few days to work on the song after he was forced to cancel a holiday due to the five-day Perth lockdown.

Keane said she got the “full treatment” in Perth and was happy with the sound.

“Covid Dayze is a song about missing our family and friends far away in these days of COVID-19, and the strange daze we sometimes find ourselves in as we grapple to adapt,” Keane said.

“It also embraces the beauty of being able to see things in a different light as we commune with our inner natures, by the light of a single candle under a starlit sky.”