NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — One thing is certain in Music City; we live among talented people who helped create some of the world's most famous recordings. One producer and engineer has set out to tell a huge piece of history, one you may not have heard before.
In his Berry Hill studio, The Blue Room, is Brent Maher. Among his many credits is being the engineer behind Ike and Tina Turner's Proud Mary.
"I'd seen Ike and Tina perform it live, and it was just extraordinary," he remembered. "How could you recreate that in the studio? We set that up with the band in the studio, exactly as they performed it. They were just thrilled and said, 'we've never been able to capture our stage energy like we just did today.'"
Maher's worked with many major artists, including being the longtime producer for The Judds. The latest story he's telling isn't about a music legend. In fact, it couldn't be more unexpected.
A few years back, Maher was driving down the interstate in Kansas when he saw a sign for the National Orphan Train Complex, a museum in Concordia.
What was an orphan train? That sign started Maher's research into something that operated from the 1850s to 1929.
"There were no social services in our country, hadn't been developed yet," he said. "There was what locally they called an epidemic of homeless children, living and dying on the streets of New York. When terrible things happened to families, people could just be left on the street to survive the best they could."
From that came the orphan train movement, a program that took children from crowded eastern cities like New York into other parts of the country. Their arrivals would be advertised for families.
"They took over 250,000 kids," Maher said.
Maher's just released a project in places including Amazon and Audible. Night of the Orphan Train is what he calls a musical novel.
"It's a fictional story based around historical facts centered on three kids, and it's totally narrated just like an audiobook," Maher explained. "There is music. Then there is a narrator who comes in."
Maher knows the history of the orphan train movement is a complex one, with some of those children just being used to work on farms. Maher wrote one track from the perspective of a dubious character, working to round up orphans for the train with promises of a better life.
Maher has several hopes for Night of the Orphan Train. For one, he's long admired Youth Villages, which works today to get children fostered and adopted.
"We would hope this is a successful project," he said. "We absolutely plan to donate a portion of our profits to Youth Villages."
Maher wants to share a story he wouldn't have heard if not for a sign on a Kansas interstate.
"I hope they learn about a part of our country's history that hardly anyone knows much about," he explained.
Do you have a positive, good news story? You can email me at forrest.sanders@newschannel5.com.
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