David Parofounder of the sports marketing Deep-Alliance, is a brand builder and partnership marketing expert.  David is a big sports fan.  He is also a musician.

David combined his love of sports, music, songwriting and the business of sports to create a song parody of Don McClean's "American Pie".

America is has now been without live sports for 10 days and we all need a little break from reality and a catchy tune to tap your toes to.

David was nice enough to answer some questions for the guys on our ESPN1170AM show "Don't Hassle Us We're Local"

  • Obviously we know what inspired you to re-write American Pie. But from idea to end result how much time did it take you?  I had the original idea late on Friday, March 13th after a great many of the dominoes had fallen. I awoke in the middle of the night on Saturday and wrote the first verse and chorus. I then got up on Sunday and spent a few hours finishing the lyrics. I knew I wanted to go ahead and record it since I do sing in a band and write music, but wasn't sure when I could get to it. Being motivated, I ended up staying up late on Monday night to record the vocals, then woke up and did some additional takes and mixed. Finished late morning on Tuesday the 17th. 
  • Are you planning anymore projects similar to this? I love doing a timely parody, but mostly have done them for family and friends. I've been doing parodies since I was in High School. I expect this whole experience will ultimately result in a fully original song at some point.
  • How big of a sports fan are you? I am fairly big (Cubs, Bears, Hawks, LFC, golf, tennis, racing), but I'm also in the sports marketing business, so the impetus was as much driven by the business side as it was from being a fan. The lyrics have a little inside baseball feel at some points as I was looking at it from the industry perspective, as well. Being in the businss, I have a pretty good sense of what sports means to our community of fans, so it really just feel sad as it all was getting cancelled in front of our eyes. I think the tournament being cancelled was the toughest thing to imagine. I'm a rather big college baseketball fan. 
  • What is Deep Alliance? We would like to plug your business and tag it in blog, of course. Deep Alliance is my sports/entertainment marketing consultancy. I ran Deep Alliance as a sponsorship marketing & branding agency from Chicago for 14 years before moving to NYC in 2014 to go to work for another firm. I relaunched Deep in 2016 as a consultancy, largely helping startups navigate the business. I started the company originally after working for McDonald's as the US sports sponsorship lead and running consulting for ProServ (SFX Sports). My career in Chicago started as the assistant SID at DePaul.

He also added this about the iconic song, song writer, performer, and more importantly the length of the parody--

There was no way I wasn't going to get through the entire song--too much respect for the masterpiece that Don McLean created.

LISTEN TO "THE WEEK OUR SPORTS WOULD DIED" BELOW:

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