Artists Registry

LEST WE FORGET

In the days following September 11, Nashville producer Neal James asked BMI recording artist Cindy Nelson to write a song for a 9/11 tribute album. Cindy wrote “We’re Not Falling from Grace” within a few days.

The song came first.

Then came a journey neither of us would ever forget.

Cindy did not want to fly in the aftermath of the attacks, so we rented a car and drove across the country to Nashville—with an American flag taped to the antenna (remember those?), and (because, “Cash is King”) thousands of dollars in the trunk to pay the musicians when we arrived.

And somewhere along that highway, something extraordinary began happening.

The words Cindy had already written started becoming real before our eyes.

At stop after stop throughout the American Heartland, people welcomed Cindy and me with open arms. I had hair halfway down my back, and nobody gave a damn. People hugged us. They thanked us for coming. Again and again, strangers offered us food, merchandise and other things for free. At a moment when the country was frightened and wounded, we experienced an outpouring of kindness, gratitude and simple human connection.

We arrived in Nashville carrying much more than the song Cindy had written.

The result was the recording of “We’re Not Falling from Grace,” a song that remains available today on major music platforms. Cindy pressed singles and sent them free to survivors and to American troops.

Then she created a video.

At the end of that video, the names of those lost on September 11 appear as a memorial. With the technology available at the time, the project crashed repeatedly—at least five times—and the names had to be painstakingly entered again and again.

But she finished it.

That video was subsequently shown at 9/11 memorial observances in New York and Paris for several years. Today, it remains available on YouTube.

Twenty-five years later, we would like to share Cindy's song, her video, and the story behind them with the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

Because twenty-five years may have passed, but the reason she made it has not changed:

We’re Not Falling from Grace

Cindy Nelson --- 2001