Origin

In March of 1983, while on tour in the Pacific Northwest, Fred visited his friend Janet Peterson, cellist and singer in the women’s music group Motherlode and a lesbian mom. Over tea in her Seattle home, Janet told him how her nine-year-old son Aaron was struggling with peer pressure to conform to masculine stereotypes—to be tough, cool, and unemotional. Might Fred consider writing a song, she asked, that would let her son know he didn’t have to fit that mold, that he could choose his own path?

The next day, on a rainy bus ride to a gig at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, Fred wrote “Everything Possible.”

The song became one of Fred’s standards on the folk circuit. It really took off when musician Elliot Pilshaw heard it and brought it to the Flirtations, the iconic gay male a cappella group, who arranged it brilliantly in five parts and performed it at gay clubs, benefit concerts, and Pride events on their tours. “Everything Possible” became their most frequently requested song, and the Flirts included it on every album they released. Soon LGBTQ+ choruses around the world were adding it to their repertoires. It continues to be sung by parents and caregivers to children across the generations.