Newtown shooting survivors record song for charity

NEW YORK CITY (WTNH) -- It was a special and emotional performance in New York City Tuesday morning, in honor of those killed in the Tragedy at Sandy Hook.

Twenty children from Newtown sang in memory and in honor of 20 other Newtown children whose voices are now silent.
  
It's a different kind of music for Tim Hayes. He owns the iconic rock club CBGB's, and he made it all happen.
 
"I'm sure someone else would have if I didn't, but I picked up the phone a minute before someone else did," Hayes said.

"Somewhere over the rainbow..."

He got indie recording artist Ingrid Michaelson to pick up the phone and agree to sing and play ukelele.

"I love the sounds of children's choirs, and so hearing them all sing together, and I'm playing ukelele in the background. it's just really special and really moving," said Michaelson.

And he called Newtown schools and got 20 kids, many of them Sandy Hook Elementary students, to meet Michaelson for a recording session in Westport.

"We're back in a minute thirty, minute thirty..."

And then came their big live TV debut on Good Morning America. 

Now before the performance they aired a little news piece about the shooting and about the making of the recording. You wouldn't have known this at home, but because News 8 was inside the studio, we can tell you they didn't air that piece in the studio. The kids couldn't see it, couldn't hear it, and that's because some of the younger kids still don't really know what happened a month ago."

"Skies are blue..."

Then that tape faded away and there they were live on national television.

"...dare to dream, really do come true..."

"If you really listen to the lyrics, and if someone really reads the words, they'll understand," said Hayes. "It fits perfectly."

The song is a classic that speaks to a better, more peaceful place. It takes on extra meaning for the 20 students, who lost 20 friends and neighbors along with six grown ups at the school.

The song went on sale Tuesday on Amazon , iTunes and Google Play , with proceeds benefiting a local United Way and the Newtown Youth Academy .