Thank you, you sweet puffy white sheep

One year ago this week, I posted my original blog entry on Spotsylvania's Marching Knights, stating my intentions as I launched a journey into my own musical voice. Oh! the places we have gone! The adventures!

From dragging my old wooden Holton horn case through Times Square for rehab lessons, to using the Google to find a vocal coach who strips away the lacquer and makes me cry time after time, to the moment when I realized I needed a major lifestyle change, to the flow chart I created in order make the Big Decision, to the announcement that I was leaving my job.

Tracing my origins, I easily uncovered my own musical homeland: marching band, a cappella hymns (in the shape note tradition), and acoustic singer-songwriters from the 70's and 90's.

I got brave and took a baby step by posting some lyrics about Justin Bieber's news cycle in July and about my husband's laundry in November, before admitting that I'd been wholly insincere for months.

Then I put my Courage Tights on and posted my first-ever recorded song (newgrass!) in December. It was enough to make me want to do it again, so I cataloged my existing 30 songs or so, and was in the process of getting a band together (we look like this in stick figures), when a blues tune called My Baby's Gone to Vegas wrote itself at me last week, so I just went ahead and recorded it even though I don't know how to use the recording software or play the ukulele.

In all this, I'd braced myself for the viper's den but instead landed in a barrel full of puffy white sheep. Within two days of posting my first song, I was contacted for a hometown press interview and realized I need to learn how to speak in better sound bytes. Most importantly, however, I got sweet personal notes from all over — friends and friends of friends far and wide — who heard my song and were moved by it, touched by the words I wrote all those years ago. My parents cried, my in-laws cried (!), one of my super tough lady grandmas listens to it every day and cries (!!), my older brothers finally admitted I'm not adopted . . .

And that is all I've ever wanted. So thank you. Super extra thank you. And this is the year that I intend to get a band together to play a real live show, so please stay tuned and hold on to your ******* hat. (Period.)

My Baby's Gone to Vegas (new song recorded!)

I got this song idea yesterday, wrote it when I woke up this morning, and then recorded it in a one shot live take tonight.

It took about 30 minutes to write, 3 1/2 hours to get the recording equipment/software working, and about 3 minutes to record. But hey, that beats 12 years and 17 hours --- my existing record!

I'd like to learn how to actually play the ukulele and then add some more strings and percussion to it. I'm also not entirely settled on some of the lyrics. But overall, I like this one. Hope you do too.

xo
VBK

  My Baby's Gone to Vegas by VirginiaBK

Sutton Foster's Legs Also Make Me Cry

Maybe I do like performing.

This past Sunday I was the world's luckiest duckie, in that a friend of mine (who is serving on the Drama Desk Nominating Committee) generously invited me to see Anything Goes at the Sondheim Theatre on Broadway.

Sutton Foster as the leading lady, Reno Sweeney; Joel Grey as Moonface Martin; Jessica Walter as Mrs. Evangeline Harcourt [that's the MOM FROM ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT and so what if I freaked out and waved my arms around when she came on stage].

Pure. Unbridled. Joy. This show is everything Broadway can and should be. Elegant hair, the flash of sequins, killer legs, company tap-dance, classic tunes, puns, slapstick. The title number was so full of life, energy, joy, talent that I found myself beaming and wiping tears from my eyes.

Click the image for video from the show!

I was suddenly reminded of the days as a little girl when I would sing out my bedroom window, pretending I was Lauri (Oklahoma!) or Dorothy (The Wizard of Oz). How my conveniently removable bed knob routinely became a microphone and I was The Great American Hero. In middle school, how many hours I spent at the piano, singing Rogers & Hart, Cole Porter, and Duke Ellington tunes from Sheet Music magazine. Then, in my early teens, Miss Saigon and Les Miserables and Showboat and Porgy & Bess and Phantom of the Opera.

All of this I'd completely forgotten! Something happened in my adult life (late high-school? college?) where it seemed the closer I was to a stage, the less I believed myself to be fit for it. Kind of a barrier to the whole I-love-to-sing-and-dance-more-than-anything-else-on-earth thing.

But I've experienced a rapid burst forward in this area over the past two weeks --- remote controls (and even microphones themselves!) becoming microphones, spontaneous outbursts of karaoke, dancing in the living room, losing track of entire evenings singing in the basement --- and Sutton Foster's legs reminded me of the joy an entertainer can bring by allowing herself to shine on stage.

My deep gladness and the world's deep hunger. I get it. Yes, I'll do that. I'm ready. Sign me up.

I'm starting a band. And this is what we will look like.

Partially inspired by Lemon Peele's recent Ladies' Rock Camp experience, in which completely normal women with normal jobs and no performance experience formed perfectly normal bands and played a gig within 3 days, I have decided that what's-the-big-deal-about-people-of-like-minds-playing-music-together-I-mean-when's-it-ever-gonna-be-just-the-right-time-Virginia-because-the-only-way-to-start-it-is-to-start.

As you guys know, I've recorded one song so far.  But each of my songs calls for a different instrumental set-up and I'd like to get really imaginative, so, rather than producing and fleshing out my list of 30-some songs in the solitude of my password-protected eye-scan-for-entry vacuum-sealed downstairs lair, it's time to do this thing right. Like, with people.

Last night's decision made, I biked out to Coney Island and back today with my friend, Whirlwend, to get in the proper mindset for an artists' date this afternoon at Ozzie's. While she sketched some far more sophisticated pieces (she sells micro-watercolors, ladies and gents, and they're uncommonly good), I dreamed up a picture of the band: Spotsylvania's Marching Knights.

Here they (we) are! [CLICK TWICE FOR CLOSE-UPS.]

Though my preferences are expressed clearly in the sketch, I am flexible on gender, personal style, and facial hair (read: the trombonists don't all have to be bald). I have favorites already.

I'm looking to collaborate on songwriting, play gigs, and record. It's an ambitious ensemble, I know. That's why it's taken me a decade to approach it.

I just posted the ad on Craiglist. Interested parties inquire within.

Now I vomit.

Competitive Emoting & Vocal Gymnastics

Once again, there I was a captive audience. This time on a Jetblue [I LOVE YOU JETBLUE FOR YOUR SENSE OF HUMOR] flight from Ft. Meyers to JFK after a weekend in Naples with lizards, breezes, a pool, the beach, cocktails, Peanut-effing-M&Ms, orchid blossoms, tennis, bike-riding, and the sun. (Does anybody remember the sun?)

I ended up rather accidentally catching the Top 12 Men of American Idol show their stuff on Tuesday night, which worked out fairly well considering that my next blog post was to be about the show. To balance things out, tonight I forced myself to watch the Top 12 Women on the American Idol website. And I must admit that I went into this locked 'n' loaded, ready to post about how they all sound the same and all of the music is either R&B or Pop-Country. So I was actually relieved and somewhat disarmed to hear distinctive timbres in different contestants' voices, distinctive looks and personalities:  Casey Abrams' general bearded 19-going-on-38-sex-creepiness (but he's a bassist! a real bassist! yes, please), Naima Adedapo's straight-up jazz depth, Jacob Lusk's throwback gospel R&B (comes off as more of a 70's Baptist preacher than a rock star).

I've not followed the show (so correct me if I'm wrong, fans) but it seems to me the Idol producers have made a concerted effort to diversify the selection of contestants, both in terms of genre-preference as well as ethnic and stylistic backgrounds. Generally speaking, the men were more interesting than the women. Diva (yawn), ingenue (gag), angel of inspiration (feh), temptress (eyeroll) —what is this, a line of Old Navy jeans? There are many emotions that a woman can experience and express in her life. Let's try some new ones, eh ladies of America? Here's a chart to help you explore: http://www.ami-tx.com/Portals/3/EmotionsFlyer.pdf

All of that said, there's an answer for me in James Durbin.

Tourette's & Asperger's syndromes he has but he's also got the juice. I never thought I'd say this but J-Lo's totally right: he sings from the place where singing is supposed to originate. When he sings, everything else goes away. He is not aware of the fact that he's performing, that people are watching him, that he's supposed to be entertaining. He just goes to a place deep inside and turns inside out.

Says the 3-year-old, "I want to go to there."

Because otherwise, it's just competitive emoting, showcasing, and vocal gymnastics. I'm sick of watching people try to out-diva each other whether on American Idol, The GRAMMYs, or trash TV. It's all "I'm going to go out on that stage as sexed up as possible, throw my voice around 'til I sweat, and work myself up into a scream at the end with either my loudest/highest note or a seemingly unending riff on all the notes I have inside my body." OK, fine. But that doesn't make you a musician, it makes you some kind of super-specialized athlete. And that makes me tired.

So what's the point?

Glee Thinks All Space Is Star Wars / From the Phantom Zone

Due to the vicious plague I contracted somehow (licked a pole on the C train?), I recently found myself on an unprecedented TV bender that included a couple of episodes each of Glee and American Idol, and ended with the (53rd Annual) GRAMMY (Award)s (show).

Which brings me to the subject of today's blog.

Glee, you make me want to punch teenagers. First of all, nobody goes to a competition called "sectionals." Did any of the writers on the show even bother to learn the basic vocabulary of the choir world? A choir competes in All-County, All-District, and perhaps they can go to "Regionals" or "State" competitions. In the context of music, a "sectional" is when the different sub-sections of a larger ensemble break off to rehearse their specific part. Like, the alto section has a sectional rehearsal. [It took me four seconds to find this on Wikipedia.] A correct usage would be the teacher walking into the room and saying "OK, guys. Remember that today we're breaking into sectionals, so grab your folders and get going." They also never encounter written music of any kind (??), have a multimillion dollar budget (I had $400 a year + whatever we made selling candy bars), and an invisible choreographer, costume designer, arranger, producer, several mix engineers, and a music licensing agent. Whatever, whatever, fine, I get it, it's an episodic musical on TV.

But still, I watch that show and the words of Cletus Spuckler and his friend say it best: "You know, one hillbilly has his way with one fat guy in Deliverance, and suddenly, people think that's all hillbillies do. I suppose you think all space is Star Wars!"

Exactly.

But the fact is, after 20 minutes of any of the above shows, I yearn for the rough 'n' shoddy sounds of the Country Bear Jamboree. And the real reason isn't the complete lack of basic research done by the show's writers, it's the over-production. It's not just Glee, it's...just about everything that makes it to the radio or TV and ends up in my iPod's gym mix.

I can suspend reality and roll with the shallow characters and over-the-top story lines. Sure, it's kind of fun. But listening to the canned vocals, the flat compression [THE WORST], the autotune, the pitch correction, the time correction, the sterilization of all emotional nuance (leftover are only power, cutsie-ness, and cheese, but that's my next blog entry) in the sound — that's what really sets me off.

It sounds like everyone on the show (and on the radio) is singing to us from The Phantom Zone.
 


WHY?? Is it just because we have a lot of sliders, buttons, and effects that we have to crank them up to 11? Are quality and authenticity of sound not something addressed in audio schools?

Step Four: I Can Give You More - Part 2

Further to Step-Four-I-Can-Give-You-More's catalog of songs, here's a look at progress since October. 

Milestones
~Recorded and released first song for free download.
~Had my first press interview.
~Played a prog rock horn gig in Bay Ridge.
~Subbed for pianist/choir director at PSUMC. Also sang ballsy a cappella duet with Leila.
~Worked chest voice up to F4, comfortably. Heading toward C5.
~Writing two new songs.
 
Next Steps

~Arrange and record "Boats & Snow" for piano, horn, vocals.

~Keep vocalizing with my real voice and get rid of all that awful training.
~Buy big ukulele chord chart poster for music studio wall.
~Book voice lesson for March?
~Book horn lesson for April?
~Continue block-buzzing on horn mouthpiece and work range up to C5. (F4) Practice duets and etudes from July lesson.

Play Dates
~Regular meet-up with brass quartet at PSUMC.
~Learn something, anything on uke.