Singer-songwriter Rob Hincks recently wrote his first jingle.
No, it’s not an update of a classic such as Alka Seltzer’s “Plop plop, fizz fizz,” Campbell Soup’s “Mm-mm, good,” or Rice Krispies’ “Snap! Crackle! Pop!” Instead, it’s a jingle for an organization near and dear to Hincks’s heart: Northampton Neighbors.
Hincks’s endeavor began as an instrumental melody. Playing back a guitar piece he had recorded earlier, the 74-year-old Hincks heard the kind of catchy, upbeat tune that would lend itself to a theme song or jingle. So he got to work writing lyrics.
“It was a lark—a complete lark,” he said about the project.
Ultimately, he decided to make the two-minute piece the Northampton Neighbors theme song, and the first chorus became the jingle.
“We’re not alone,” the jingle begins. “We are Northampton Neighbors.
aging at home,
sharing laughs and labors.”
Soon after retiring from his career as a social worker, Hincks threw himself into volunteering for Northampton Neighbors. Mostly, he gave rides to women in their 80s and 90s who impressed him with their intelligence and spirit. Based on those experiences, as a lover of wordplay, he turned the common phrase “growing old” to “glowing old” in the second chorus to reflect his impressions of the women he helped.
The story gets even better. During the countercultural 1970s, Hincks lived in the Renaissance Community in Franklin County and played music with a band called Spirit in Flesh. His son, Shox, a 50-year-old sound engineer who was born in the commune, helped as well, so it became a multigenerational project.
Hincks also has created a music video, complete with lyrics, to go with the theme song. He used thirty-nine still images from his own files as well as NN to make the piece.
Click here to see the music video and check out Hincks’s own website, hincksongs.com.