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Kyle Vanes On World Cafe

Kyle Vanes (second from the right) with his band, The Dales.
Emily Nicole Teague
/
Courtesy of the artist
Kyle Vanes (second from the right) with his band, The Dales.

We get a lot of music in the mail here at World Cafe and sometimes a song and a story hits me right in the gut. Kyle Vanes, of the band The Dales, wrote to tell us the story behind "Still the Love," a song inspired by finding, and losing, the love of his life Heather Marie Allman. She had stage 4 breast cancer when they met. Kyle and Heather were friends for a while before they fell in love and stayed together until she died in January of 2015.

Kyle says that after Heather passed, he heard poetry — words he believed were from her, drop right into his head, almost as if she was talking to him, or through him. Below, listen to the song Kyle and his band turned those words into, and our chat in the player above, as we honor Breast Cancer Awareness Month on the Cafe.

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Talia Schlanger hosts World Cafe, which is distributed by NPR and produced by WXPN, the public radio service of the University of Pennsylvania. She got her start in broadcasting at the CBC, Canada's national public broadcaster. She hosted CBC Radio 2 Weekend Mornings on radio and was the on-camera host for two seasons of the television series CBC Music: Backstage, as well as several prime-time music TV specials for CBC, including the Quietest Concert Ever: On Fundy's Ocean Floor. Schlanger also guest hosted various flagship shows on CBC Radio One, including As It Happens, Day 6 and Because News. Schlanger also won a Canadian Screen Award as a producer for CBC Music Presents: The Beetle Roadtrip Sessions, a cross-country rock 'n' roll road trip.