There have always been times when we, as Canadians wept for America—when Kennedy was assassinated, the 9/11 attacks. That's something Americans may not know.

I saw a change in America coming. I thought maybe America was in need of something like this to tell the world who America is.

HN: How did you find the songwriters?

DH: Bart Herbison, Executive Director of the Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI), got 20 or 30 songwriters together and let me pitch them. The NSAI writers are the copyright owners of the songs they wrote for the project.

HN: Most of the writers seem to have some personal connection to the historical events they wrote about. Was that serendipity or careful matching of writers to songs?

DH: Let's take Rory Bourke for example ("Terre Haute," "Ridin' the Rails"). He's a historian who's written a long list of hit songs, Grammy Award–winning songs. He was at that first meeting and really was an inspiration to others. He wanted to write about the Depression and World War I.

Wood Newton ("Secret of the Rohna") had an uncle on the Rohna, a ship that we now know was sunk during World War II by one of the first guided missiles ever fired in war. (The troopship Rohna was sunk off the coast of North Africa by a German radio-guided missile bomb, November 26, 1943, killing over 1,000 men. The incident remained classified for 57 years.—HN)

Horses had a major role in shaping America, so I asked Victoria Venier ("Spirit of the Horse") to write a song about horses because she is interested in them. Thomas Cain ("More Than a Train"), an executive with BMI (music licensing agency), is African American. I told him I wanted a song that did a good job of reflecting African Americans' contributions.

I think I set the mood when I told the writers and performers this is not about me, this is not about you. This is about a place called America.

HN: Were all of the songs written specifically for this project?

DH: Some songs had already been written. "There is a Light" was originally written by Beth Nielsen Chapman for her husband who died of cancer. She performed it at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York to an audience of 3,000 who had family members killed in the 9/11 attacks. I thought having someone who had contact with those mourners was the way to approach having a song about 9/11.

HN: Did you have your own personal connections to any of the songs?

DH: I wanted to include something about how America has affected my own life and Elvis was a very big part of that. He was one of the reasons I went into music. So I asked Jim Weatherly to write an Elvis song. He's from Memphis and was very excited about the idea, so he did research and wrote "Hot Night in Memphis."

I grew up on a ranch and knew all about what it was like when we didn't get rain. So "A Good Rain" and "He's a Cowboy" are special to me. Of course, cowboys and Indians have always been part of our culture, mostly through movies, and I wanted to do something that told about the Native Americans. "Follow the Buffalo" was a must for this project.

Samantha Robichaud, a young fiddle player from New Brunswick called me last year to tell me she had been awarded the one-year use of the Daniel Pearl Memorial Violin. My understanding is that the first Daniel Pearl violin was presented to his family by the famous violinmaker Jonathon Cooper from Maine after Daniel's death. (Daniel Pearl was the American journalist kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan in 2002. Music was an important part of his life; the Daniel Pearl Foundation promotes cross-cultural understanding through journalism and music.—HN)

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