Radney Foster was going through some tough times when he wrote “Godspeed (Sweet Dreams).” He had just gotten a divorce, and his ex-wife was moving to France with their five-year-old son. Still, he wanted his son to know his dad loved him, despite their distance.
“I wrote this lullaby truly as a love song to him, just letting him know that I was his dad and I cared,” Foster says. “And I thought about all the things you do when you’re putting a little boy to bed.”
It wasn’t till recently, though, that Foster felt a need to rerecord the song – this time in Spanish. Foster grew up in a bilingual household in Del Rio, Texas, a town he calls “80 percent Latino,” and he wanted to do something for the children being separated from their parents at the border.
“I hope it changes people’s hearts,” Foster says. “I think that that puts a face to it, it puts emotion to it, it can win people over in ways that an argument cannot.”
Foster has closed his concerts with “Godspeed (Sweet Dreams)” for decades.
“I know that I can speak for my audience, for the most part, even when they disagree with me politically,” Foster says. “They see my heart, and they see that I’m going to move toward things that are heartfelt.”
Written by Kevin Wheeler.
