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!

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.