Van Friscia's official guitar playthrough video for "Lily's Theme," from the album "Fallen Angel."
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ALBUM NOTES
“Fallen Angel” is a concept album released in 2024 by solo artist Van Friscia. In chronological order, it tells the story of Van’s grief journey from the untimely passing of his son, Tony, who died as a result of a car accident when he was just six months old.
Track listing:
Overture
Charmed Life
Tony’s theme
Blink of an Eye
The Haunting
Serpentine
Charmed-ish Life
Lily’s Theme
Todd “Van” Friscia - All Guitars/Bass/Vocals/Drum & Synth Programming
Mixed & Mastered by Dennis Ward at TrakSkak Studios / Kangaroo Ton Studios
SONG NOTES
This is more of a bonus track than anything, but really, it still fits. My daughter, Lily, is a competitive gymnast and asked me to write custom music for her floor routine. Being a proud daddy, I was more than happy to oblige, and I decided it would make a great finisher for the album to boot.
I tried my best to capture Lily’s essence in this song. Anyone who knows her well knows that she’s a walking contradiction. On the one hand, she’s an energetic goofball who, just like her mother, is quite the klutz - tripping over her own feet, spilling drinks, walking into walls, etc. And yet, when she’s focused, she’s incredibly graceful and poised. You wouldn’t even believe it’s the same person.
So, the intro is her graceful side - nothing but strings and piano. Then, the main theme kicks in and the momentum picks up to pull in the rest of her personality. She’s an upbeat person, and this is an upbeat song to match. It’s quite simple and short, with the brief runtime being an official requirement for USA Gymnastics.
00:00: Intro
00:11: Main Theme
00:28: Verse
00:56: Main Theme (Reprise/Guitar Solo)
One related anecdote - My personal favorite song is Joe Satriani’s Summer Song, a tune Lily is also familiar with thanks to me. I think it’s absolutely perfect in every way and am astounded at how perfectly it evokes its title; Joe’s a genius. Anyways, when probing Lily for what she wanted for her song, and her declining some riffs I had lying around, she said she wanted “not Summer Song, but something like Summer Song.” Right, so my stuff wasn’t cutting it, and instead I needed to write something on par with what I considered to be the pinnacle of instrumental music…Got it, thanks Lil! 🙂 In no way did I live up to that lofty standard, but I am happy with the end result and, more importantly, she seemingly is too.
Some other random musings related to Lily & this album…
Lily is one of very few things I wouldn’t give up to get Tony back. The truth is, we were so happy with Tony that we weren’t planning on having any more kids. So, if none of this awfulness had ever happened, Lily more than likely wouldn’t exist. That’s a life I don’t want to imagine. And while I of course now wish it could be the four of us, we’re also perfectly happy being this new threesome. So, I’ll never understand how or why things went down the way they did and I look forward to one day being whole in the afterlife, but I’ve also come to accept things as they are right here, right now.
Regarding faith - If it wasn’t already clear from the lyrics, I’m a religious person (a Christian, to be exact.) That title comes with a lot of preconceptions from both believers and non-believers. Among them, many equate faith in God with nothing bad ever happening to you, but clearly, kind and decent people face injustices of varying degrees every single day. Some point to this obvious contradiction and ask, why bother with religion? And that’s fair, but it’s grounded in an incorrect assumption. God isn’t going to make things right in the scope of our lifetimes. He’s not going to open up the clouds and give Tony back to me, nor am I ever going to be fully free of the pain and guilt that I feel. We live in a beautiful but fallen world where awful things can happen for seemingly no reason at all. It’s full of sucky people who do terrible things, and even the best of us have more regrets than we’d care to admit. Hope springs, though, from the promise of what comes next. In the scope of eternity, I fully believe He’ll make things right. I fully believe my perfect little man is doing just fine in heaven, and while I can’t wait to see him again, he doesn’t need me right now. My girls do though, and I’ve got plenty to live for here before joining him there.
Alright, that’s enough of that. I’m all out of things to say about both this song and this album. Thanks for sticking with me and, as always, thanks for listening!