Two years ago, Daniel Valoff recorded his deeply personal survivor’s anthem, “There’s Still a Light in the Sky,” for the first time in his home studio. Today, he’s revisiting that emotional track under very different and much happier circumstances, enjoying the “best day of his life” at Los Angeles’s legendary Village Studios.

“I was spitting up blood, and you could hear that on my demo recording,” the Orange County-based musician, who is currently battling Stage 4 thyroid cancer, forthrightly recalls of his initial attempt to record his poignant ballad. “My vocals are kind of breaking up a bit, because there was blood on my vocal cords. I was singing the song and it just kind of came really, really quick, because it was really from the heart about how I felt.”

But today, Valoff is working with Cancer Can Rock, a nonprofit that gives musicians facing aggressive cancer the chance to preserve their musical legacies, on an updated recording of “There’s Still a Light in the Sky” with a stellar cast of music luminaries — among them, notably, Rufus Wainwright. And Wainwright isn’t just lending his iconic background vocals to the Village Studios production. FOLK CANCER: The Kate McGarrigle Project — an organization founded by Rufus and his sister Martha in honor of their folk-singer mother, who died of sarcoma in 2010 — is also funding the recording, which premieres June 23 via the countdown YouTube player below:

Rufus witnessed up-close the healing power of music during his mother’s cancer journey. As he sits with Valoff at the Village right before the afternoon’s first-ever Cancer Can Rock/FOLK CANCER recording session, he fondly recalls how McGarrigle gave her final public performance at an all-star Royal Albert Hall holiday concert just six weeks before her death.

“There was a definite kind of magical moment, some magical moments for her, with her last Christmas show,” Wainwright marvels. “She wasn’t doing particularly well health-wise, but every time she came out onstage to perform, she just put it out there. It was like 20 years had just been [rolled back], and she was just right back to where she started. The life force that music imbues is profound.

“When she was going through her treatments and stuff, it was such an incredible outlet and release for her, to just forget about the world for a second and focus on art. So, we just wanted to help continue that process for people who were going through treatment,” Wainwright continues. “And luckily, we found Cancer Can Rock and decided to join forces. And this is my first kind of venture into this new world, today.”

left to right: producer Jim Ebert, engineer Gabe Burch, Rufus Wainwright, Daniel Valoff (photo by Erik Nielsen)

Valoff can relate to McGarrigle’s experience. “I noticed when I was doing these home recordings, it was kind of the only time all the noise in my head stopped and I was just focused on singing and recording and getting lost in it — just having a moment of shutting everything off and kind of finding the sanctuary and music,” he reflects.

By the time Valoff was finally diagnosed with thyroid cancer, after he started coughing up blood while out for run and “it took a few months [for various specialists] to figure out what was going on,” a tumor had already grown around his laryngeal nerve and into his trachea. Doctors advised him to have surgery that would “pretty much remove my voice” and a render him unable to sing, but that, understandably, was not an option. “I said, ‘No, there’s got to be a different way,’” says Valoff, who’s been undergoing alternative treatments to shrink the tumor instead.

“When I got this diagnosis, a lot of thoughts that come into your head, and it kind of gets overwhelming. And one of my thoughts was, ‘I have all these songs I’ve written and I’ll never be able to sing them, possibly.’ And the other thought was, ‘If the worst happens and I’m not here much longer, I feel like songs live a lot longer than we do and could touch a lot of people.’ And I kind of wanted to leave behind a legacy.” Valoff explains. “So, I started recording all these songs urgently, at home —  home recordings of all these songs I’d written in the past that I never got around to recording, while I still had a voice. And on top of that, I kept on writing new songs. And the song we’re doing today is one of the songs about this journey I’ve been on.”

photo by Erik Nielsen

Valoff recalls writing “There’s Still a Light in the Sky” in a sudden flash of inspiration, as he envisioned a murky, moonlit seascape and thought, “It doesn’t matter how dark it gets — as long as there’s one star or a moon, you can always chart your course and be guided. There’s always something, as long as there’s one light in the sky. And for me, that light is my faith in Jesus.” (The song’s bridge references the Bible verse 1 Corinthians 15:55, as Valoff croons, “O death, where is thy sting?”)

Valoff says he wouldn’t be able to get through his cancer ordeal without his two “anchors”: his music and his faith, which are closely intertwined. And Wainwright, while “not a particularly religious person,” understands.

“I do believe in spirit, and I love Jesus too — what’s not to love, in a lot of ways? I believe in spirituality, and we need it now,” says Wainwright, who last year released Dream Requiem, an orchestral work featuring text from the Latin Mass for the Dead. “And one thing I actually say about music is: It chooses you. You need to a certain degree to be receptive to it, and you have to work at it, but it is this calling. It’s a sacred event.”

Daniel Valoff & Rufus Wainwright (photo by Marguerite Chan)

“I keep my faith. I know that I’m not alone in this,” Valoff asserts. “If I was going through this and I felt like God wasn’t aware of what was going on, I would feel really alone. But He is aware. … I’ve never questioned my faith. I just know we live in a fallen world, and I know that God didn’t do this to me. We weren’t designed to die. I have a spirit that will live eternally, forever. … I’m believing I’m going to get through this and be healed, but even if I don’t, Jesus promises if you believe in Him, it’ll give you eternal life. So, I have hope beyond this world that I’ll have an eternal life — which starts now.”

Fate and faith have figured greatly in Valoff’s Cancer Can Rock story. After applying to be a Cancer Can Rock featured artist — “I just couldn’t believe there were other [musicians with cancer] who had the same situation; I thought I was having a unique experience,” he says, recalling how excited he was to learn of the organization — he’d just received his invitation from Cancer Can Rock when, serendipitously, he had chance encounter with the always charity-minded Wainwright at a wildfire relief benefit in Pasadena.

“A couple hours later, I happened to run into Rufus Wainwright, and I showed him my email: ‘You won’t believe this!’” Valoff laughs. “And he was gracious enough to say, ‘Well, let me know. I want to be there when you do it.’”

In another seemingly fateful moment, as Valoff joins Wainwright today at the Village, his gifts Wainwright and the session musicians with candles. And as Wainwright points out, “There’s a song that I wrote, actually around my mother’s death, called ‘Candles.’ … I lit a lot of candles during my mother’s illness and it did help me, just that ritual.”

And now Valoff is at the candlelit Village with not only Wainwright, but with producer/mixer Jim Ebert (CCR’s founder, who has worked Ice Cube, Madonna, Butch Walker, Jason Falkner, and Meredith Brooks); engineer JC LeResche (Kendrick Lamar, the Strokes, Weezer, Tyler, the Creator); bassist Jon Button (the Who, Michelle Branch, Shakira, Sheryl Crow); guitarist Dory Lobel (Backstreet Boys, Hilary Duff, Enrique Iglesias, The Voice); keyboardist Bill Appleberry (Stone Temple Pilots, Walsh, Fugees, Macy Gray, 311, Hole); and veteran tribute-band drummer Rolly DeVore.

photo by Marguerite Chan

“I’m excited to be working with Jim Ebert today and Rufus and all the great musicians downstairs, revisiting the song,” Valoff enthuses. “I recently wrote a string arrangement for my demo, so I’ve spent a lot of time listening to it. It was very meticulous. So, I’m ready to record today, and then move on to a different song. Because when you work on a song so much… I’m not revisiting past thoughts that I had a long time ago. They’re thoughts I’m currently battling right now.”

Wainwright has faced his own battles and demons, and he quips, “Sometimes I wish I didn’t have to write so much music, because it can be painful! … I wouldn’t mind a little less heartache and falling in love with the wrong person and all of that stuff. I wish I didn’t have to write those songs sometimes.” Then he adds more seriously, “But in the case with my mother, when you’re really up against the biggest challenges in life, that is when music really matches it. … When push comes to shove and everything’s really going down, music is there. It’s always there.”

Daniel Valoff and Rufus Wainwright’s Cancer Can Rock recording of “There’s Still a Light in the Sky” will be available via YouTube as well as streaming services on June 23. An audio preview of the track is below, along with its full lyrics.

LISTEN HERE:

There’s still a light in the sky

There’s still a light in the sky

The night is coming on my love, but there’s still a way to get by

My feet are still on the ground

My feet are still on the ground

The waves are crashing over my head, but I will not be knocked down

It’s not the kind of thing you get to rehearse

You only do it once, for better or worse

I still don’t know which way all land

I’m doing my best with the cards in my hand

And there’s still, still light, light in the sky

They tried to bury me

They tried to bury me

They tried to put me in the ground, but I grew up like a tree

They swung their sickle in vain

They swung their sickle in vain

Come on, they tried to come in down

New branches grew from the pain

It’s not the kind of thing you get to rehearse

You only live it once, for better or worse

I still don’t know which way I land

But I’m doing my best with the cards in my hand

And there’s still, still light, light in the sky

O death, where is thy sting?

A new life began in me

No gravel victory, for I have been redeemed

And I’m ready, but I don’t want to say goodbye

But there’s always a light in the sky

There’s still a light in the sky

There’s still a light in the sky

The night is coming on, my love

But there’s still wait get by