As soon as I got back in January, Pete said, "We want to film a video spot with the song, as well.  Do you think we can knock this out by February? I've got a crew booked for two days the first week."  Sure, no problem.  I'm a professional songwriter!  How hard can it be?  So I got down to work with my friend and fellow composer, Nick Sjostrom (of Clean Cuts).

First task: Have you ever tried to make a list of words that rhyme with "Baltimore"?!

Let's see here, we've got:

chore
store
bore
more
core
nevermore

I could go on, but I won't.  We wrote a little tune that I liked and I wrote some lyrics that seemed to get at what Pete was looking for. We sent it off and heard back that he liked the lyrics (yay!) but wanted the song to "rock" more, (the first version was very piano heavy.) I knew he was a
Bruce Springsteen fan, so Nick and I tried to find what could be the meeting point between ellen cherry and Springsteen. We settled on R.E.M.

With the help of fellow composer Wall Matthews (also of Clean Cuts), we cranked out the version currently airing on a FOX channel near you.

I was stoked.  It was my first attempt at a professional work-for-hire songwriting job and I felt it had turned out to be really a fun, upbeat, stuck-in-your-head kind of song. And the best news was that Pete loved it.

Next came filming the video. I know it's currently 80 degrees as I write this, but think back to the two coldest days in Baltimore this winter, February 4 & 5, 2009. Pete had chosen a great location:  Clipper Mill, but he had unintentionally picked two of the coldest days of winter to spend
8 hours shooting outside.

AND then Pete said, "This is going to air in April, so if you can wear something that doesn't look like it's cold outside, that would be great!" The crew was professional and hilarious, and the time went fast, so I can't complain. I was treated like a rock star, with a professional makeup person (Leah Bassett) and an assistant (Jenny Furbay at FOX) who ushered me inside every time we weren't shooting.

Pete was a great director -- very focused. At one point the first day, he said "The problem is:  we can see your breath when you are singing along to the track." So he devised several solutions:  breathing in while singing (didn't look realistic); not breathing at all while lip syncing to the
track (looked even less realistic); or, (my personal favorite) sucking on ice cubes for a minute before each take in an effort to cool my breath to the same temperature as the outside (didn't work, but it took us five takes to discover this.)

Amazingly, when I see the footage now, they shot it in such a way, that you can't tell it was 13 degrees outside.  I think it looks great.

The crew worked for extra days, getting man-on-the-street shout-outs for each neighborhood and time-lapsed shots of our fair city. I saw the final product near the end of March. Right before I was to leave on tour in early April, Pete called to tell me they were launching the campaign. I was
bummed that I wouldn't be here to see its maiden voyage into TV land, but when I got home from tour, two days ago, it was -- I'm not joking -- the very first thing I saw when I turned on the tube. I think that's a good omen.

So now, it's out there in the world and I've gotten a few emails from people who have seen it, which feels really great (thanks to everyone who has written)! I had intended the words of the song to create a feeling of possibility, to be inclusive of the city and to highlight positive things that are happening in Baltimore.

Two years ago, I was seriously considering moving away from Baltimore, back to the South. I was feeling lost and disconnected.  But then something started happening: I went out into the
city. I started making some real connections with other artists in the city and I realized how much I was missing by not truly interacting with the city and its amazingly diverse artists. There's just something about Baltimore: I feel it's got everything I need right now. So I want to stay for a while
longer.

And so as the spring changes into my absolute favorite season, summer, I plan on wandering down the streets, singing a tune -- I'll sing to you, if you'll sing to me, Baltimore. Deal?