“You can burn it to the ground, but you’re never, ever going to keep us down.”
Alberta Strong, a song penned and performed by Alberta musician Neil Szybunka, has become the unofficial anthem for Fort McMurray evacuees forced to flee a city on fire.
The song, and accompanying video which tracks the dramatic first hours and days of the evacuation using raw footage from the scene, has been viewed almost a million times on Facebook since it was released a week ago.
Available on iTunes, all proceeds from sales will benefit the relief effort. There are also plans in the works to auction off the guitar used to record the song to generate more funds.
Szybunka, who worked in camps north of Fort McMurray for more than 10 years, felt compelled to help evacuees and workers affected by the disaster, and help raise awareness about the relief effort.
“I also lost my job and I realized things were tough for everyone, and I couldn’t help in that financial way,” Szybunka said in an interview Wednesday on CBC Radio’s Edmonton AM.
“So the only way I could really help was making something, doing something, and giving it back.”
Szybunka says he wrote the song in less than three hours and reached to fellow musician Tanner O’Dell to help record the song, and Steven Eckert to compile the music video.
“It wrote itself, really, really fast. This is a song for all of us,” Szybunka said.
Neil Szybunka wrote the song to promote awareness about the Fort McMurray fire and help garner funds for the relief effort. (Neil Szybunka/Facebook )
Within the first 24 hours, the song garnered more than 100,000 hits, and Szybunka says he’s been getting messages of support from evacuees across the country.
“It’s pretty overwhelming. I’ve been doing music for most my life. When we did this song, we didn’t really know where it was going to go,” he said.
“The messages from people that I’m getting from people that have lost their stuff and lost their livelihoods; I have no words to describe how appreciative I am of those people, and how proud I am.”