NEW SINGLE FROM DION IS “VISIONARY HEART” with a Buddy Holly-theme

Michael Hepworth

NEW SINGLE FROM DION IS “VISIONARY HEART” 

APRIL 8 RELEASE IN CONJUNCTION WITH TONIGHT SHOW APPEARANCE

HOLLYWOOD(Perfect Music Today)3/29/16/–“Visionary Heart,” a track from Dion’s much lauded new album, New York Is My Home will be released as a single on April 8.  The release date coincides with Dion’s guest appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon where he will perform with The Roots. He’s in concert at Brooklyn’s Kings Theatre the next day (Saturday, April 9) on a bill with Ronnie Spector.  

Dion’s next area appearance is set for Sunday, May 8 when the 92 Street Y present a program entitled Dion In Conversation with Anthony DeCurtis at its Buttenwieser Hall.

Tickets for the Kings Theater performance are available here: http://ow.ly/ZpruZ

Tickets for the 92Y program are available here: http://ow.ly/Zprri

“Visionary Heart” was inspired by the life, death and legacy of Dion’s friend Buddy Holly and by the fact that Dion was with him on the last night of his life.  Dion has referred to the song as “an imagined conversation between me and Buddy Holly.”

He notes, “The Winter Dance Party would be Buddy Holly’s last tour but we didn’t know that. On the bus, on stage, backstage, it was a running conversation between friends. It was an ongoing guitar war, to see who could play loudest and fastest and hold a chord the longest. But the conversation got cut short. This song is my way of carrying it forward, years later. The music lives. I was talking to Scott Kempner one evening and ‘Visionary Heart’ was completed the next day. I hope my friend is proud of the way I’ve carried on.”

The track will be released by Richard Gottehrer’s Instant Records through The Orchard Music Group and is coupled with “I’ve Been Watching,” a Dion composition that is not on New York Is My Home.  Like the album, both A and B-sides were produced by Jimmy Vivino and Dion.

In his four star MOJO review of New York Is My Home, Jeff Tamarkin wrote, “’Visionary Heart’ could have been a lost Doc Pomus composition.” That is high praise, indeed, as Dion and Kempner’s songwriting is compared to that of the writer of such classics as Elvis Presley’s “Little Sister,” “Save The Last Dance For Me,” by The Drifters and “A Teenager In Love,” Dion & The Belmonts’ first Top 5 hit.  The music lives on.