Songwriting is bridge for Franken, Hatch

Photo: senate.gov, WDCPix

Al Franken recently sought out songwriting help from Orrin “Eight Days of Hannukah” Hatch, the Minnesota senator tells the ECM Publishers editorial board.

Franken got himself invited to Hatch’s office to sample some of the Utah Republican’s song stylings. ”I didn’t expect much,” Franken said.

But a Hatch song about the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, recorded by another vocalist (“Orrin doesn’t sing,” Franken explained), made Franken “misty.”

With the next Orrin Hatch composition, written from the point of view of a woman addressing her husband in Afghanistan, “I just started to cry,” Franken said.

A Hatch stab at country western songwriting (“Is It Lonely Here With Me?”) reminded Franken of his own attempt in the genre, “We Stayed Together for the Kids,” recorded as a demo in Nashville.

But it doesn’t have a bridge. It just doesn’t have a bridge. It’s a really good song. So i gave it to Orrin and I said, “Would you write a bridge with me?” And so we did this last week. … And we were just laughing so hard. And his staff was going, “What is going on in there?”

Besides co-writing Franken’s bridge, Hatch is a co-sponsor of a Franken bill to get a national backlog of rape-kit evidence tested.

Here’s Hatch’s song about Kennedy: