Southport musicians come together to record charity single for families of stabbing victims

Southport musicians are coming together to record a charity single, raising money for families of the victims of the stabbing attack.

Singer and songwriter Jenny Wren has created a group called Southport Sings and written a song, Dancing in the Stars, which she plans to record over the next few weeks.

She says she’s been ‘flabbergasted’ by the response since she posted the idea on social media.

Jenny, who is also a primary school teacher and works with the schools’ music service, has been inundated with offers from singers, bands, choirs and local celebrities who all want to get involved.

She says:

“When it happened, like a lot of people, I couldn’t comprehend it. I thought, the only thing I know is music so I started writing a song, collaborating with Paul Robert Mullen, a local musician and friend.”

“We had to be very sensitive in writing the song because obviously this is ongoing, families are still going through this terrible trauma.

“I set up the Southport Sings group, put a post up this morning and it’s just gone viral.

“I think it’s not only about raising money, although that’s the primary thing, it’s also to bring the community together and support everyone who is grieving in their own way.

“With recent events, we all just want to stand together, and honestly the reaction hasn’t surprised me at all. In Southport everybody knows everybody in some way, it’s very close knit even though we’re quite a large town.”

Jenny, who lives in Birkdale, has been able to call on contacts in the local music scene and from previous charity projects after writing and recording two fundraising singles.

She put together The Rainbow Collective and wrote two songs during Covid, one to help the NHS and one to support musicians through the pandemic.

The logistics of recording this latest single are still being worked out, but 46-year-old Jenny says she hopes to get as many people featuring on it as possible.

“The song is written and my producer is going to be putting it all together, so what we’ll do is get the musicians in individually to different recordings studios who have already offered their services.

“I don’t know how we’re going to collate this yet because the response has been huge but we want to represent the community as much as we can so it might be that we take some people from each choir to build one group which has a wider representation.

“I can hear the song in my head in terms of production and I know there’ll be some strings so I’m also hoping we can get RLPO involved in some way.

“I want to get things moving as quickly as we can so we’re hoping to get the guide track done in the next few days and start recording within a couple of weeks.”