By Andrew Hughes

We're pleased to announce the Keep Looking Up gift, an annual $300 contribution by longtime member Joe Peters that will help further SAMI's key goals. Unlike the Shirley Martin Scholarship, which highlights young songwriters in mid-north Indiana, this gift will "support critical areas of SAMI's mission and efforts that may otherwise be underfunded or overlooked."

Peters will work with President and Co-Founder Scott Greeson to use the KLUG in the best way possible. This year, the funds will be used for our songwriting retreat on the weekend of September 19th and 20th. More details on that event are coming soon!

In the meantime, we're excited to share how the Keep Looking Up gift came about, to help the SAMI community fully appreciate its significance. The story begins with a picture. Imagine yourself looking up in a forest of towering California redwoods.

That's exactly what Joe Peters was doing one day when he memorialized the moment with a photograph. Originally from Indiana, Joe moved to the Bay Area some years ago and is blessed every day by his natural surroundings. He uploaded the image to Facebook to share that gift with friends, and for a time, that was it.

That is, until one day Joe saw a photo of a quilt posted by his friend Mary Bunte. She had seen the photo Joe posted and felt inspired to create a quilt based on the idea. When Mary sadly passed away some time later, her husband Dave sent the quilt to Joe in the mail.

Says Joe: "On the back of the quilt, Mary had titled it 'Keep Looking Up'. My goddess what a joyous message!"

That message stayed with Joe as he found himself at the Pacific Songwriting Camp in Cambria, California. Joe describes the scenery as "indescribably beautiful, and thusly inspirational." So what else is there for a songwriter to do?

"That weekend I wrote the song "Keep Looking Up", with Mary’s quilt as inspiration," he says. He contacted videographer and fellow collaborator David Burkhart to produce a music video to celebrate Earth Day.

You may be wondering how the accompanying recording of the song came about, which Joe describes as "the final piece of this beautiful puzzle." As if we hadn't already come full circle, Joe asked Mary and Dave's daughter Brittany Rees, along with her husband Hans, to arrange and record the song with their band Frank Muffin. As you can see and hear for yourself, that's exactly what happened. They did an excellent job!

One day in 2024, Joe played a set at Peaches' Patio, a house concert series hosted by Lou and Joan Cuneo. "Those of us who play house concerts know and accept that we play for patron’s donations, and the patrons were very generous that day," says Joe.

He returned home from the event to find an excess of $300 dollars in his account. Unable to get Lou to take the money back, he decided to set the amount aside until "somewhere, sometime down the road an opportunity would present itself to support some worthy musical cause."

That time came when it occurred to Joe that SAMI would make good use of the funds at their songwriting retreat this fall. Such events are possibly only because of our generous sponsors and individual donors, and it made perfect sense to Joe that this contribution live on as the Keep Looking Up gift.

Knowing that this year's gift came fully from Joan and Lou Cuneo, it also makes perfect sense that "the gift remembers and celebrates the life of their son, Kevin, who passed away suddenly and unexpectedly late last year shortly after the birth of his second child."

Note: the quoted excerpts in this article come from a memorandum written by Joe Peters.