How travel retail can help Jeff Orson’s single, ‘Pray’, raise funds for the COVID-19 fight

There’s something that’s goin’ round, that’s shutting our borders down
It’s a bad time for our sick and our old
CNN’s nightly lullaby, tells of hundreds more that’ve died
I shut off the TV and think all alone, how long can this go on?

INTERNATIONAL. ‘Pray’, the single recorded by Canadian duty free executive and professional singer-songwriter Jeff Orson and released in association with The Moodie Davitt Report to raise funds for the the newly established UN COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund, is gaining rapid ground with soaring YouTube views and rising donations. But we need the travel retail industry’s help to really raise the fund-raising ante and make the song go viral.

As reported, Pray is a powerful song themed around the global COVID-19 pandemic, written and recorded by Jeff Orson, National Director – Duty Free for PMA Canada. The duty free executive turned recording artist told The Moodie Davitt Davitt Report today: “Five radio stations have picked up Pray in the first day and are putting it into rotation, hopefully a lot more to follow. Still getting primary likes and comments from The Moodie Davitt Report so please keep that going. Please push as many people as you can. We just need one break for this to go viral and raise a lot of money!”

The song came about after The Moodie Davitt Report Founder & Chairman Moodie tried (and failed miserably) to write an appropriate song and have his long-time industry friend (and fellow cancer survivor) Jeff Orson record it. Instead, as Jeff explains in the Podcast below, he put his mind to creating a powerful original tune that starkly portrays the threat facing humanity but builds to an ultimately uplifting finish.

You can listen to Jeff chatting about the song on In the Country Radio Show.

‘Pray’ was released late last month via North America online music company Bandcamp, which allows listeners to buy (or gift) the track by making a payment of their own choice (anything from C$1 upwards). Please click this link to buy (https://lnkd.in/gMsK2jF) or gift it (you can leave a personalised message) to someone you care about who you might not see for a while.

For a brilliant YouTube video of Jeff recording the song, please click here. To contact Jeff Orson: https://www.facebook.com/jefforson1 or email him at jorson@pmacanada.com

[Click on the icon to hear Jeff Orson talk to Martin Moodie about Pray]

As mentioned, all funds raised (minus any Canadian government taxes) are being donated to the newly established UN COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund. Martin Moodie has personally funded the recording costs.

Talking to The Moodie Davitt Report Podcast series In Crisis – Travel Retail Voices, Jeff said: “We’ve got this song set up on Bandcamp (and you can watch the video on YouTube as well) so you can go in and download the song. The minimum charge is C$1 but you can donate anything you want – if you want to pay C$10, C$100 or whatever it might be, we’re going to take that money and send it to the UN COVID-19 charity fund. All the proceeds received from anything on Bandcamp will be donated.”

Jeff also talks movingly about his successful fight with colon cancer six years ago, an experience that inspired him to take up music seriously. “As I was lying in my hospital bed wondering if I was going to live or die, I started to write some music again and play some songs,” he recalls. “I picked up a guitar and one thing led to another on the radio and playing all over the world.”