My friend Boz has been visiting this past week and I took him to Glide yesterday. He skipped the 9:00 AM celebration in favor of breakfast, and I planned to collect him in time to score a good seat for the second service.
I hadn't soloed in quite awhile due to my strep throat, so I figured the odds were good that I'd get called on that morning. The congregation doesn't realize that the choir rarely has advance knowledge of what we're going to sing. What we rehearse on Wednesday night may not have any bearing on what we sing Sunday morning. As a soloist, I have to recognize the opening chords of my song and get down to the microphone in time to sing the first phrase. It can be more than a little nerve-wracking.
But yesterday I was hoping for the chance to sing. And I was glad that Boz was coming to the second service, so that I could warm up during the 9:00 AM and feel a little more secure with my song. We hadn't rehearsed it in quite awhile.
Sure enough, the final number of the morning turned out to be 'Smile Again'. I heard John murmur to the band, "Keep your head up!" which is a line repeated in the chorus. Suddenly a wave of nervousness flooded through me and my legs started trembling. I took a few deep breaths and directed a silent prayer toward the stained glass window in the balcony. For some reason, I always feel like God is hanging out back there.
When I approached the mic I'd regained a measure of calm. The anticipation is always worse than the act; once I open my mouth there's nothing to do but plow forward. You've just got to sing.
"Tell me how you feel..." I began.
"When you're all alone / No one to say, 'I love you' / You feel all your hope is gone." My voice came out strong and smooth and I relaxed into the song.
"You call your best friend / And she's not there / So you wind up feeling empty / Feeling like nobody cares." I glided through the first and second verses. Things were going well, and I felt confident enough to throw in a few vocal squiggles.
That may have been what tripped me up.
After the second verse there's a bridge to the chorus. As we approached the bridge I felt a flicker of confusion; it didn't sound as though the band was heading in the right direction. Instead of building to a crescendo they were pulling back, and seemingly leading me toward the quieter vocal improv section. Had we already done the bridge? My brain hit rewind as I tried to remember, but everything was a blur except those damn vocal squiggles. I was so focused on my embellishment that I'd lost my place in the tune.
Afraid of being left out there on my own if I belted out the bridge, I began the improv - and immediately realized that I'd skipped ahead. Crap. I'd jumped right over the bridge and the chorus and cut to the finale. Oh well. The song would just be a little shorter.
"Ooh...ooh, ooh..." I crooned my way through my mistake.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dee dah doo dah, dee dah doo dah..." Have I mentioned that vocal improv is not my strong suit? Feeling like a bit of an ass, I made a mental note to enroll in that improvisation class at the
Berkeley Jazz School.
I glanced behind me at the choir and threw them an apologetic smile. "Oh well," it was intended to say. "Let's just take it to the finish." But the choir didn't come in with the chorus - and rightly so; they were looking at our director, which is what I should have been doing. But when I glanced over at John he was frowning like thunder and I panicked and launched into the improv section again.
"Oh...yeah...Doo doo doo, smile again..." Oh dear God. Why wouldn't they cut to the end? The band just kept playing so I just kept
ooh-ing, and then I started gesticulating with my free hand to seem more sincere.
"Oh yeah!" I sang, waving my left hand spastically.
"Dee dah-duhn, dee dah-day! Smile again!" I made a quarter turn to the left to grace that side of the audience with a few
doo-dahs and glanced surreptitiously at John. He was scowling at me. Wide-eyed, I shot him a pleading look: End it! For the love of God, end it! But the band played on. They launched into the verse again and I followed them helplessly into a third round of be-bop hell.
With glassy eyes and a plastic smile, I tried to communicate to the audience that everything was A-OK. "This is the way the song goes," I
ooh-ed at them reassuringly. "No need to feel worried or uncomfortable. There's supposed to be three verses of improv here, honest!"
Beyond the dull roar of panic in my ears I heard John holler to the guitar player, "Take it up!" And with a metallic
Thwang! we lurched into the new key, mid-verse. Undaunted, I threw out an
"Ooh yeah!" before I recognized that the band's crescendo was intentional; they were trying to drown me out. Tim began his guitar solo and I took a step back. The smile stuck stubbornly to my face but inside my heart sank; the vocal improv section comes
after the guitar solo. I was going to have to do the whole thing over again.
Oh, kill me now.
Usually I say a little prayer during Tim's part, something along the lines of, "Lord, please guide me through this next section." But God appeared to be just as shell-shocked as I was. In my mind's eye I saw Phil Hartman dressed as Jesus, shrugging his shoulders at me. So I stretched my face into a grimace-y smile and plunged ahead into one more round of vocal gibberish.
We reached the pinnacle of the song, where I belt out a note and sustain it for eight beats. Halfway through, I felt all the moisture in my mouth dry up at once. I finished the note with a croak and desperately tried to conjure up some spit to get me through to the end. But I couldn't do it; my tongue felt like sandpaper. I rolled my eyes heavenward, but now Phil-Hartman-as-Jesus had covered his face with his hands.
I stifled a coughing fit.
"Yeah!" I hacked.
"Ooh yeah!" I wheezed.
"Smile again! Smile again!" With blessed relief I heard the choir rolling to a stop behind me and I heaved out a final phrase:
"SMI-I-I-LE again, yeah yeah yeah-eh-eh-eh!" Then I gave a weak smile to the congregation, a quick hug to each of the pastors, and scooted my ass right off that stage.
It was over.
After chugging a bottle of water and hiding out behind the robe racks for a few minutes, I went to find John. Glenn and Eddie (the bass and drum player, respectively) were sitting on a bench in the hallway, taking a break during the sermon. "Hi guys," I waved sheepishly at them. "Um, I'm sorry about that."
They chuckled. Glenn shook his head. "Don't sweat it," he said. "Yeah," added Eddie. "You did all right. You kept going. At least you didn't get that 'deer-in-the-headlights' look." Then John came out of the office. I met his gaze with some trepidation.
"You forgot the turnaround," he said to me. "And without the turnaround we couldn't change the key."
And without changing the key, they couldn't end the song.
Ohhh.I cringed. But then I rallied: "I didn't forget the turnaround. It didn't sound like the band was going to go there. I thought you guys had skipped ahead, so I skipped ahead too."
John replied, "You're the soloist. We'll follow you."
Right. I knew that. I felt a little dumb.
After a minute John conceded, "We might be able to take half the blame." And we all started laughing.
John turned to Glenn and Eddie. "She started going,
'Hmm, hmm, hmm,' and I was like, 'What the hell is she doing?" He bent in half, wheezing with laughter and the guys started cracking up. Tears were coming out of John's eyes, he was laughing so hard.
Well, come on guys. It wasn't
that funny.
I toyed with the idea of falling into a funk, but decided against it. Instead I found Boz, stationed him in a prime spot, and squared my shoulders to do it all again. And I'm proud to say that at the second service, I kicked that song's ass.
This time I looked at John right before the turnaround. He rolled his eyes at me and looked away. I smothered a grin and leaned into the key change. And when the improv section came along, I sang those little
doo-dahs like I was born to it.
(Click on the photo to buy tickets.)
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