My Secret Rock and Roll Fantasy

Sometimes remarkable things happen.

I've always loved music in a big way. All kinds of music. And I had a secret dream. I wanted to be a backup singer.

I never seriously coveted the lead vocalist spot - that didn't seem like as much fun. My favorite experiences were singing with other people - doing four part harmony with my girlfriends in high school, harmonizing with my mother, my best friend, my daughter, my son - whoever would sing with me. There's something about that blending of voices that just thrills me to death.

But I'm no musician and probably never will be - my real talents lie elsewhere.

I got to do it anyway.

I live with a real musician - a man whose talent blows me away on a regular basis. And on his latest album, he put me to work. I felt pretty frozen at first, but as time has passed I have gotten more comfortable hearing myself through headphones (and worse, in playback) and I will admit I'm loving it. In a big way.

Go ahead and listen. The amazing wailing background vocal isn't me - I'm no Machan Taylor (she is just incredible!). But the breezy bridge backup vocals? That's my daughter and me. It just doesn't get much more fun than that!

Backup Vocals, Joyless Meetings and a Kitten on My Shoulder

I started this post before dawn on Friday. I'm supposed to be getting dressed to leave for work. But I've got a kitten on my shoulder and it's just too damned cozy to leave yet.

My morning routine goes this way: Wake up, double check the clock to be sure I really am supposed to be awake before the sun comes up (sadly, I am), go downstairs followed by my much-loved old cat, whose goodness is equalled only by his girth, enter the kitchen to find the other three cats, who do not appreciate his sweetness, clamoring for their breakfast, too.

Everyone eats, (Boris, the kitten and the light of my dark mornings, cannot be predicted - he will either attack his breakfast with gusto or ignore it completely), I make coffee (only a push of a button thanks to the lovely man who loves me), then I go to my computer, sip coffee, check email, Facebook and maybe the day's headlines.
It's a comfortable way to start the day, particularly when Boris finishes his meal and jumps onto my shoulder to knead his paws in my hair. It's a bit awkward, as I need one hand to support him, but it's so cozy that it's well worth a bit of discomfort.

The hard part comes next - walking away from all that, getting dressed and going to work.

I will not gripe about work. I am grateful for the paycheck and I'm incredibly lucky to have gotten a job with a substantial pay raise when many are losing their jobs and their homes.

Here's what I will say - I sat on a meeting on Thursday so horribly dead, so uncomfortable, that it took a real act of will to make preparations to go back to that place again on Friday.

This is what happened: it's a monthly meeting about matters important to my place of work. I attended as an observer for the first time. What I witnessed was a roomful of people not only serious, but sour. I have spoken with many of them individually and they're not that way at all....yet this group had a dynamic so sour that I could imagine their mouths puckering.

They reacted to questions from each other with thinly veiled disdain, they offered information with an "I hope this is okay" plea in their voices; it was a roomful of worried people. Their worry had nothing to do with the content of the meeting; it was their interaction with each other. They targeted one person in particular for a universal sniff of superiority, and that person has been part of these meetings for years. It should have been held in the Google eggs...might have been much better!

I walked out when it was over, nearly ran down the stairs and out the door to breathe some fresh air.

It's not always like that, but some days it is. I don't like it one bit.
But my arrival home was greeted by the news that my composer/musician partner needed me to sing some backup vocals on a track he's working on.

Let the celebration begin!

I love to sing, though I think my voice is of the "that's very nice, dear" variety. It can be strong if required, it's generally on key but I'd love to have a distinctive growl or SOMETHING that sets it apart and makes it memorable. But I have what I have - and fortunately it's good enough for some support work on my guy's records, which is a treat beyond treats for me.



So that horrible, nasty, discouraging meeting was blown out of my head by donning a pair of headphone, cozying up to a microphone and singing along with my guy.
The next day, more Boris-ing in the morning.
I guess the trick is to dwell on the good stuff.

Shameless Plug Department

My guy, the very talented Mr. Kevin Bartlett, has a new album out. If you know anything about indie music, you know it's not easy to get the word out without the big record company machine behind you. So you get help from your friends.

Go here. Listen.
If you like it you can buy a CD or download there or on iTunes.

I have been hearing this EP evolve for the past two years and have fallen madly in love with every single song. I am biased, yes, I am. But I'm not alone. This guy, known for gorgeous, lush, symphonic movie soundtracks has suddenly stood in front of the microphone and recorded songs that are singable, intelligent, interesting and just plain fun to listen to. And that's what other people are saying. I could say much more.

If you want a giggle, pay attention to the white girl church choir backing vocals on "Dear" in the Headlights and the bridge in Cool Thing. That would be me and, on Cool Thing, my daughter.

Another fantasy fulfilled. I got to sing backup on a rock album! My next fantasy is to be able to sing like the way-cool wailing backup on Cool Thing. That's Machan Taylor. Maybe in my next life.

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/kevinbartlett1

What Makes A Performance or The Joy of Men in Kilts and Pigtails

My guy is a prog/glam rocker from way back. He probably has a photo of himself in his silver sequined miniskirt somewhere. And if you're not a performer, you probably think that's just strange. I can now attest that it makes perfect sense.

Here's what happened: we went to see Steve Hackett over the weekend. Steve was part of the original Peter Gabriel era Genesis band. He's a gifted guitarist. What he is not is a showman.

The show opened with the lead performers lined up across the front of the stage. At one end there was a slightly overweight guy wearing baggy black pants and shirt with a jacket (or a vest - I'm unsure). He would have looked at home working in your local hardware store. Beside him was a tall blonde with shiny, straight hair dressed in a loose black top, wrinkled black skinny jeans and high black boots. They were both holding guitars. Then came a skinny blonde with platinum pigtails, chiseled arms, a black kilt, high black socks and clunky black shoes holding a bass. Then there was a young guy in a cap, black version of the shirt the Monkees used to wear, jeans and Chuck Taylor sneakers holding a saxophone.

My guy looked into the wings, wondering when Steve Hackett was going to come out. He was already there. Hardware Store Boy was our headliner.

The show began and Steve was wonderful but my eyes were glued to the Amazon with the bass guitar all night long. I knew it was a guy within 30 seconds but my guy, my daughter and her guy were confused all night long. What was clear, however was that we were watching an amazing bass player and a terrific showman.

Nick Beggs has been doing this awhile. Remember Kajagoogoo? He clearly gets stage performance and he was great fun to listen to AND watch. He moved with the music, he emoted, he was absolutely wonderful. And talented though Steve Hackett is, he was thoroughly upstaged.

My daughter's guy, who is an aspiring musician, totally missed Hackett's guitar abilities. His verdict? "Nothing outstanding."

I'm convinced it was because Hackett looked most comfortable when he finally had a stool, an acoustic guitar and began to noodle some classical stuff. He's not an extrovert, he's not a ham and if you want to put on a good show you HAVE to be.



Kevin Bartlett

My guy will be touring now that his new EP is out. This new CD is new school rock and roll and he sounds like the lovechild of David Bowie and Lou Reed. The music's great - but performance is a whole different challenge.

I have only seen him perform in small venues but I'm sure I know on which side of the performing bar he'll fall. He may be a bit of a hermit, he may be a bit shy, but he's also a ham and when he turns on the personality he takes over a group.

I guess we'd better get the kilt out of the back of the closet.

If you want to find my guy's music, you can download it here or on iTunes. Just look for Kevin Bartlett.
Songs for the Big Kablooey

Singing My Life With His Words

I haven't had many deep thoughts lately. I've been busy. I'm preparing to start a new job, figuring out how to continue to do part of the old one on a part time basis. Shopping for career clothes, high heeled pumps, getting my aging car in shape for a new commute.

But weekends are for music around here. My guy works a vampire schedule all week; rising as late as he can, working til the wee hours. And I get up early, so I say goodnight just as he's getting revved up and fall asleep as he fine tunes the songs that apparently will begin to hit the radio this spring.

On weekends, I can push my bedtime back and sometimes I get a call from the studio down the path..."I need ears." That means he's done something new and needs a pair of ears to check it with.

I love being his "ears". I bounce down the bluestone path whose creation destroyed his knees and both our backs and sit down. I listen. Sometimes I have nothing to say beyond, "I love it." Sometimes I have a question. Sometimes, more often lately as I get more confident of my ears, I have a suggestion.

Last night I suggested a backwards calliope was the sound missing behind a verse.

"What are you, George Martin?" he laughed.

"Backwards flutes, then?"

He discovered that there was already a great part that filled the gap perfectly - it just needed to be a bit louder. That's the kind of fine tuning he does endlessly, relentlessly, before he's confident that a song is "done".

We sat and listened to some other music, music he said he thought might have a similar feel to this piece. And I asked about the lyrics.

To me, this song is, as so many of the songs on this album are, a conversation with the human race.

"But that's not what I meant," he said. "I can see how you'd take it that way, but that wasn't what I was thinking at all."

That interests me. I listen to a song and immediately personalize it; I think we all do. How strange it must be for the person to write it to speak with someone who feels like they "get" it.

"I understand exactly what you meant," the fan might say.

But it would soon become clear that they didn't understand at all.

And yet that connection, even if it's a misunderstanding, is exactly what makes a song important to us.

That, plus an unforgettable hook and a beat we can dance to.

Thought Trails As a Baby Sleeps

The picture was taken through our front window. Miss Jane Doe, as we called her, was apparently dropped off by her mom very early in the morning and told to stay put while mom ran off to do a few deer-errands.

She can't be more than a week old - her body is just about the same size as our fat cat's, though her legs are impossibly long.

I watched her all day, compulsively checking on her through the window to be sure she was okay. We have coyotes here. In fact, the first week I lived here, before KB got here, I heard a deer being killed under the weeping cherry on the other side of the house. I have never heard anything so horrific, ever. I hope never to hear it again.

So my concern was legitimate, and I was fully prepared to go out and defend her with a baseball bat if necessary.

It wasn't.

She stayed curled up in a ball all day, occasionally waking to look around, once standing up and peeking out from her sheltered spot behind the flowers, then blinking and curling back up to sleep some more.

By ten pm, we were worried. She was still there. It was getting colder. I'd already gone online and saw that the number one rule with "abandoned" fawns is to stay away. But what if mom didn't come back?

It was a rough couple of hours - an attempt to distract myself with television led me to an insultingly simplified yet hope-crushing view of the future on some network. The gist was that climate change would be creating disaster, even with heroic attempts to address it, and things were going to be pretty damned grim even in my own children's lifetime. Thanks. That helps.

I've been fighting a sense of hopelessness for a while, and it's shaking my sense of myself as an optimist and an idealist. The issues are so huge and humans have such basic errors in their assumptions that solutions seem like an incredible longshot.

Take food, for example. Do we really understand the cost of what we eat? No, no, no, I'm not some holier than thou vegan fanatic. I should be vegan. I can't be holier than thou since I know the reasons why and I'm still not doing it.

But Jenny Stein and James LaVeck came over recently to show KB the nearly-final version of Tribe of Heart's new documentary, "Peaceable Kingdom". It tells the story of the transformation of three farm families who suddenly questioned the assumption that everything in the world is here to serve humanity.

What if Man isn't the crown of creation? What if we treat animals like sentient beings? Can we then even bear to think of what we do to them?

But challenging that assumption is massive - it goes against even what many religions have institutionalized: God put Man in charge and everything in it is here to serve his needs.

That's put us where we are. That removes us from the web of interconnectedness that is our ecosystem, and entitles us to exploit all resources for our own comfort and gain. Drill, baby, drill. Suck up all that oil so we can drive. Breed those animals so we can eat. Develop that land so we can shop. Test those toxins on animals so we're safe. Dump that waste someplace and to hell with the consequences because we NEED that nuclear energy, that chemical, that drug, that plastic, that road, that fuel.

And we DO need much of it. That's the problem. We have created an insatiable society and to step back into the environmental web and take our places as equals rather than rulers, we'd have to completely change how we live.

What are the odds of that? We are some of nature's most helpless creatures with a talent for technology and a massive sense of entitlement.

See why I'm discouraged? It feels to me today like society is hurtling toward its inevitable end while most of us are yelling "faster, faster!" It just doesn't make sense, but I guess that's what denial looks like.

So that's where my head's at and it's not pretty. But there is one bit of good news.

Miss Jane Doe, after worrying us for several hours, quietly disappeared sometime around midnight. I'm hoping that means Mom finally got home.

Tyranny and Tears

A rough few days...my son went into surgery yesterday for a back problem. He's 21 and years of basketball apparently created havoc somewhere in there, leading to constant pain and the sad sight of a handsome, tall fellow hobbling like an arthritic senior.
The surgery went well. But the anesthesia didn't. He's squeaky clean, this guy, and he's never been hit with anything like the load of drugs they pumped into him. They expected him to go home the same day. No way. He was sick for hours and was finally admitted overnight.
He's home now and recuperating, but I spent an entire day worried that we were headed for disaster. I am a worrier. I admit it. But come on...your child is having a bad reaction to drugs and they pump a new one into his IV after saying, "Is he allergic to this?"
I wanted to scream.
I DON'T KNOW! HE'S NEVER TAKEN ANY OF THIS BEFORE!!!
So they took their chances, it was all right, and I spent 15 minutes waiting to see if he'd go into shock. Overreacting, you think? I've watched his sister start to go into shock after being given an antibiotic no one knew she would prove to be allergic to. It's terrifying.
I'm tired and I'm dying to get back to my own bed and I'm very relieved he seems to be alright.
And this, despite all the bad news these days, gave me some hope...

Watch and see if it doesn't inspire you.

The Threat of Tyranny

Life With an Indie Musician

www.cdbaby.com/kevinbartlett2

www.myspace.com/kevinbartlettmusic


America is a very odd place. We love creative people - we admire them, we idolize them when they're famous, we envy them even when they're not. But we sure don't make it easy for them to be creative.

That starving artist in a garret is so romantic. It's one of the reasons we took "Rent" to our hearts...the bohemian rebels who would rather die than conform are the people we wish we could be. Until we get hungry, of course.

I've learned a lot from living with a man who has too much talent, too many ideas and will never have enough time to share all the music he hears in his head. It's a constant inner battle - does he choose security or does he choose to be true to the gift he's been given? Every CD is an open-handed offering of something intensely personal, something true, something beautiful, to the world. And every sale is not only a few dollars to help pay the bills, but a confirmation that those sounds in his head are as unique and worthwhile as he hopes they are.

Why does our country put our artists on a pedestal, but not support them as they do the work we admire? Where is the program that offers creativity the security that allows it to continue?

It's not just musicians. Painters, writers, poets, sculptors, artists of all kinds are forced every day to choose between doing what they know they are here to do and doing what they have to do to eat and pay the rent.

Go ahead - tell me it builds character. I don't buy it. If a child is gifted in math or science, we are thrilled, knowing those studies will lead to jobs that will give them comfortable lives. If a child is a gifted artist we worry.

"How will you make a living?" we ask.

And many, many of them give up the one thing that they truly love to do because it just can't be done in our nine to five world. The world is poorer because of it.

I recently interviewed the author of Furious Improvisation
It's a book about Hallie Flanagan and the WPA's theatre project during the Depression.
It got me thinking. A make-work project for artists launched the careers of Orson Welles, John Houseman and many others. The plays they put on were cutting edge; sometimes so cutting edge that they were considered subversive. They pushed at society's rules, integrating the casts, giving minorities lead roles, dramatizing the social and economic problems of the times. Eventually, the project was abandoned as the country's fear of communism built toward the blacklisting that would eventually rip through the performing arts and leave many careers ruined along the way.

The Depression (and will it still be capitalized once the new depression is upon us?) showed us the best and worst we could do for artists. The government put actors and playwrites to work at a desperate time. And the country's fear and narrow mindedness tried to restrict what those artists could do...finally shutting them down.

I want to live in a country that values creativity as highly as it values money. Does such a place exist?