Produced by Jim Vallance and Bryan Adams.  Recorded by Ben Dobie and Jim Vallance in a variety of locations on a variety of continents. Mixed by Bob Clearmountain (January 10, 2010) at "Mix This", Los Angeles. Mastered by Bob Ludwig (February 2010) at Gateway Mastering Studios, Portland Maine.

	Performing with Bryan at Massey Hall, Toronto (2009)

Bryan rang me up in November 2009 and asked if I'd help write a "2010 Olympics" song for the ARD German television network. Thinking they might want something "high energy" we wrote and recorded an up-tempo rock track. We cobbled together some lyrics via email and sent our demo off to Germany.

As it turns out, we were off the mark.  They were looking for a slow song, an "inspirational ballad". 

Oh well.  Back to the drawing board!

Nothing occurred to us immediately. In fact it was nearly a month before we even discussed it again. In the meantime I discovered a short snippet of music I'd recorded a few years ago, just a simple two-bar phrase, a few seconds in duration. I thought it might provide a good starting point for our second attempt at the ARD song, and Bryan agreed.

With this new direction in mind Bryan and I emailed some lyric ideas back-and-forth. Given the "Olympic" nature of the project our lyrics were leaning towards athletic themes. The problem is, it was starting to sound a bit like an advert for a breakfast cereal. We were happy with our track and our melody, but the lyric wasn't quite right yet.

In pursuit of outside inspiration Bryan sent our song-in-progress to Gretchen Peters in Nashville. With fresh ears and a fresh perspective Gretchen contributed some new lyrics that perfectly captured the Olympic spirit, without being too overt or obvious.

Here's what RP Online had to say about it (February 1, 2010):

Bryan Adams hat für die ARD den Song zu den Olympischen Winterspielen 2010 in Vancouver geschrieben. Der Titel heißt "One World, One Flame", wie der Senderverbund am Montag in München mitteilte. ARD-Sportkoordinator Axel Balkausky sagte: "Bryan Adams ist nicht nur weltberühmt, sondern er steht für Kanada wie kein anderer Musiker und hat mit 'One World, One Flame' ein Lied geschrieben, dass perfekt zu einem solchen Großereignis wie den Olympischen Spielen passt."