It pays to coach Little League. For Kevin Briody ’85, it led to a Daytime Emmy award.
While coaching his son Cavan’s Triple-A baseball team in Ridgefield, Conn., Briody, a folk singer-songwriter, had made the acquaintance of another player’s dad, who also happened to be a songwriter. In fact, he was Paul Glass, music supervisor for ABC’s One Life to Live.
So when Glass was looking for someone to write a song for one of the show’s storylines — prom time for the high school-aged characters — he turned to Briody.
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| Kevin Briody ’85 holds the Daytime Emmy he won for his song “Little Starr.” |
“Paul called and said, ‘I need a song for a mother-daughter moment, as the daughter is getting ready for the prom,'” said Briody. “It’s just one of those close moments between a mother and a daughter. So I wrote this song called ‘Little Starr’ — with two Rs, and the reason for that is ‘Starr’ is the name of the daughter character. The song kind of found me from there.”
The song, which was recorded and sung on the show by Starr’s mother Blair (played by Kassie DePaiva), received a Daytime Emmy award for outstanding original song.
In an interesting twist, Briody actually tied for the Emmy with Glass, who also received it for one of his own songs, “Chemistry.” The awards ceremony was held at Lincoln Center in New York on June 13.
Briody — who serves as Connecticut’s State Troubadour — opened for Sophie B. Hawkins at the Ridgefield Playhouse last year.
Earlier this summer, he wrote and performed a song for a Ridgefield, Conn., home building project for which he was a volunteer. The project, modeled after the national TV show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, involved renovating the home of E.J. Carfi and his family. E.J. has epidermolysis bullosa, which causes his skin to blister and tear at the slightest touch.
Briody says his own recording of “Little Starr” might find its way onto his next (fifth) studio CD; in the meantime, you can listen to it here (mp3), and check out DePaiva’s recording of the song on YouTube.