Helping Couples Put Their Love to Music
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 30, 2006; Page PW04
Joshua Rich wrote his first song, "Trying Vegetables," when he was 12, expressing his doubts about sprouts.
Now, in his Northwest Washington studio, he writes customized love songs that are unashamedly romantic. Rich, who has performed in piano bars, on cruises and at the Kennedy Center and who counts Chico Marx as a major influence, recently added a title to his musical résumé: composer for gay weddings.
  "I don't want to make a song specific to being gay or straight," Washington songwriter Joshua Rich said. "Any song I write, I try to make it universal." (By Michael Robinson Chavez -- The Washington Post) |
For a base price of $250, he will sit down with a gay or lesbian couple, interview them about their relationship and write a personalized song that celebrates their union. He steers clear of the telltale pronouns and gender references that make many traditional love songs inappropriate. Instead, his lyrics are more universal, such as "my soul friend" and "we have grown together."
As the new composer-in-residence for Savvyplanners.com, a gay-wedding planning company, Rich's songwriting skills are the laTest service offered by a fledgling but fast-growing industry that caters to same-sex couples. Despite an ongoing backlash that has resulted in 18 states passing measures since 2004 to ban same-sex marriage, an increasing number of businesses are emerging to make sure there are cake-top figurines available with two brides or two grooms.
"People are becoming more accepting, and I think what's finally happening is what happens with everything -- people find out you can make money from it, there's a business there," said Rich, 44, of Glover Park, who also composes songs for http:/
M.W. Savant, chief executive of Savvyplanners.com, described his New Jersey-based business as a full-service agency for same-sex weddings.
"I find it somewhat baffling that people think [these couples] have just miraculously sprung up . . . and all of a sudden, this is a brand new issue," Savant said, adding that committed gay couples have been around since Aristotle's time, "and the sky has not collapsed."
One of the first such businesses was started in 1999 by Gretchen Hamm, a Dallas mom who became frustrated at the lack of suitable wedding accessories available when her daughter, Kathryn Hamm of Arlington, was planning a commitment ceremony with her female partner.
"It was important to me that their wedding, their ceremony, not be shortchanged," said Gretchen Hamm, whose Gayweddings.com now offers "butch" or "femme" thank-you cards and fancy wedding proclamations.
During the past year, Kathryn Hamm, who now heads the business her mother started, has held wedding-planning seminars, called Gay Weddings 101, in Boston, Chicago and the District.
"I think there are people who need education on this," she said. "I get a lot of questions, 'Where do we start?' "
Rich's entry into the gay-wedding business came about after Savant stumbled onto Rich's Test site and was taken by the emotion he heard in samples of the music. Rich said he is sensitive about the issue of gay marriage -- his mother and a sister are lesbians. His mother, a resident of Massachusetts, where same-sex unions are legal, married her longtime partner two years ago.
"If you look at it from a spiritual point of view, here's two people who have come together, they love each other just like a straight couple loves each other, and they want to celebrate it," he said.
Rich, who grew up outside Boston, received his only musical training from his late father, a piano and saxophone player who would hold the young boy on his lap while playing at parties and show him how to pick out the notes. The rest came naturally, Rich said. He was soon running home after school to play the piano, his favorite activity.
Later, he made his living "doing every kind of piano job there was," he said, including accompanist and cruise-ship entertainer. He estimates he has written nearly 500 songs, including children's songs ("Trying Vegetables" is on his current kids' CD), patriotic songs and radio jingles. A song he wrote for a hospice patient was played at the man's memorial service. He has not composed anything for the two-year-old Savvyplanners.com yet, although Savant says the company is receiving many inquiries about the service.
"I don't want to make a song specific to being gay or straight," Rich said. "Any song I write, I try to make it universal. I think the best songs are the ones that live on forever. Anybody can sing them; it doesn't matter if you are a boy or a girl."
Loretta Newmann and Daniel Smith of Northwest Washington are still enjoying the song Rich wrote for their Oct. 28 nuptials, "Love Only Knows." They had met the songwriter at a friend's home, where he provided the after-dinner entertainment. When they asked him to sing one of his songs at their wedding, he offered to write an original for them.
"What Joshua was able to do," Newmann said, "was take all the information about us and distill it into something that had our essence. And it was really so beautiful."
