Labor of love
PHS graduate writes song promoting Polson
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POLSON — A recent Polson High graduate is promoting the hometown that she loves.
Kelsey Lyn, 19, a 2016 PHS graduate, recently recorded her first music video with the help of local videographer David W. King.
The video — which was released Saturday evening Jan. 13 at the Polson Chamber of Commerce’s annual banquet at KwaTaqNuk — includes a song that Lyn wrote, “Mountain Tops.”
Lyn, who plays guitar and sings in the 5-minute recording, was joined by her mother, sister, nieces, nephews and friends in the video.
King came up with the idea. He previously made two music videos for the chamber derived from famous songs written by Randy Newman and John Mellencamp: “I love LA” was changed to “I love Polson” and “Small Town” was changed to “Small Town Polson.”
This time he wanted to do something different.
“Why don’t we stop being derivative?” he asked himself. “Why don’t we do something original?”
So he called Lyn last February and asked if she would write an original song.
“I got quite inspired and started writing it right after I got off the phone,” she said.
In addition to fresh video recordings of the town and a number of local businesses, King also included some file footage of northwest Montana that he’s taken over the past six years.
King and his wife, Jessica, watched Lyn’s self-made video that she texted them on her iPhone, which was basically just of her hands playing the guitar while she sang, and they got “really excited.”
When he heard Lyn’s original opening lyrics, “These mountain tops raised me,” he got chills.
Lyn ended up changing those lyrics to: “We were raised by these mountain tops.” She said that even those who moved to Polson later in life as adults are still being “raised,” as it were, whether emotionally, spiritually or physically by the mountains that surround Polson.
“I dug into a lot of my memories growing up here” while writing the song, she said. “I definitely put a lot of my heart into it.”
Kyle Daugherty, whom she called a great family friend, encouraged her along the way, she said.
King, a Riverton, Wyoming native who worked in Hollywood as a film and TV producer from 1979 until he moved to Polson in 2012, said the video “is one of those watershed moments in your life where you’re very privileged to have been involved in it.”
He noted that Jessica also helped with the video, which he said celebrates Polson, family, life and growing up.
“It was a lot of fun shooting,” Lyn said.
The video includes clips of a live recording in front of an audience in July at the Lake Bar, along with other businesses and people paddleboarding and canoeing on Flathead Lake, among other scenes.
The video can be found online at polsonchamber.com and davidwking.com, by searching for “David W. King” or “Kelsey Lyn Music” on Facebook and “Kelsey Lyn” on YouTube.com.
