Danielle Blog

Our first performance

Jenski left this comment on the last post, and I’ve decided to just write my response into a blog post.

“Sounds like so much fun!! Do you guys have plans about how/when/where you want to perform yet?”

YES! It IS so much fun!

And yes, we have our first performance planned already! We are singing at a surprise 60th birthday party in a couple of weeks where the sons of the b-day woman are renting out a local, renovated theatre and having an “informal” music jam of sorts. I guess one of her favorite things is to hear “her boys” play and sing music. Her sons are not the guys in our band, but they are friends with the two guys in the band and they want someone with better sound to kick off the night. This birthday party is actually what drove the two guys in the band to FINALLY get together and figure out some songs (they’ve been talking about it for 10 years). It is sort of an interesting story, so I’ll go ahead and tell it here. But stick with me, it is a bit round about.

Both fall semesters at school, I’ve sung in a faculty/staff gospel band at school with several vocalists, and a handful of instrumentalists. So, the lead singer (we’ll call him CK) had kind of heard me sing in that, because he sang and played guitar in the band. And he sang this really gorgeous a capella solo of “O Holy Night” at last year’s school Christmas party; I knew his voice was amazing from that.

This semester, I’ve attended a Chapel service a couple of times where friends have heard me singing, and they suggested I sing a duet with another woman at the school. She emailed me and she has been working on finding a good duet for us. At our school Christmas party, I ran into her and she suggested that we ask CK to play guitar with us (and maybe even sing).

So, at the party, I found CK and explained the situation to him. We were discussing music and such, and then the second guy in the band (we’ll call him SG for super-guitarist) walks up.

Short, but critical tangent: I know SG from a band that he is in comprised of people from school, he plays amazing electric guitar in that band. That band does classic rock (Eagles, Beatles, Jimmy Buffett, etc.), and every time I hear them, I wish I was singing with them! I’ve been looking for an opportune moment to offer to sing back-up vocals with them, but had yet to find a moment.

And here I am just finishing my conversation with CK about music and SG starts talking to him about the idea of getting together over break and working up some songs and something and something I wasn’t entirely following. BUT I start to realize that they are talking about the difficulty of getting the entire band that SG is in together because of the holidays, vacations, and such. “AHA! This is my moment!” I think “they are short on people!”

I basically said that if they needed a back-up singer, I’d love to sing with them. And immediately CK starts telling SG how great I harmonize and how wonderful it would be for me to sing with them! (a great boost for my confidence, let me tell you) You have to realize, SG had never heard me sing before, but he trusted CK’s judgment. Then, we got down to the nitty gritty details, and I realized they were talking about NOT SGs band, but starting something new! ooooo! even better!

I got them to nail down a practice date about 5 days away and I put my contact info into SGs iPhone to seal the deal, so to speak.

And the band was formed. Tah-dah!

We opened our first rehearsal with Country Roads by John Denver, and it sounded like we’d been singing and playing together for weeks. It was truly amazing and magical.
When we were done with that song, we all sort of just grinned at each other in a stunned sort of way.

Like I said, that birthday party, our first performance, is in 2 weeks! We will only sing & play for about an hour with the 3 of us, because SG has to go play with his other band that night, but we’ll start the night and then the sons of this woman having the birthday will play with CK and me, and then the sons will likely take over and CK and I will be more peripheral. It is going to be sort of impromptu as far as that goes.

The great thing is that since we’ve had a goal, we’ve made a point of practicing every week and we are getting serious about building a set list and really perfecting our songs.

Once we get enough songs, we’ll see if we can find any other venues to sing and play! cool, huh?