I TRIED OUT FOR THE VOICE

I have been singing in public since I was ten years old and somehow I had never had an audition for anything, until….. The Voice. If that seems like an ambitious place to start, let me tell you, waiting until you are 39, with a 20 year musical career and four children is likely the best time to start auditioning.

I was a huge American Idol fan and for about ten years that show was a part of our family culture. We (all except for Barry) packed into our living room every week to witness Ryan wrangle the ridiculous imposters, the crushed dreams and the vocal heroes. We loved to hate Simon Cowell, ran our mouths about the lack of material on Paula & Jen’s outfits and cast votes amongst ourselves every week. My youngest boys tried to do their hair like David Cooke for two years.  For the record, Fantasia Barrino is the winner of all the seasons and David Archuleta was robbed, in my very authoritative opinion. One night, after a rousing episode of Idol, when I was tucking 8 year old Russell into bed, he said to me, “Mama, if you tried out for American Idol, I think you could do…….pretty good.” A ringing endorsement from my own flesh and blood! I was long beyond the cut off age and it was enough for me to know that my own son thought I could do “pretty good” at attempting to become a national singing icon.

One of the things I loved to make fun of the most on American Idol was how most young contestants put literally ALL of their hopes and dreams into their potential success on this carnival-ish singing contest.  Some of them were not even 21 and would cry into the camera, talking about how this was their one shot and if this didn’t work out, they just didn’t know what they would do. Hah! I thought they were pathetic and needed to go ahead and mail order a life. How narrow were your dreams if they funelled you into a nearly mathematically impossible success plan? Pshaw. I felt sorry for them.

For some reason, I never watched The Voice. Not even once. I think since I was such a die hard Idol fan that when a new take on a National singing contest popped up, I just ignored it. The show had been on the air for one year when I moved to Dallas. One of my girlfriends sent me a message telling me that auditions for The Voice were coming to Dallas and that I should try out. Since I had never even watched the show, I was dubious. She insisted that I should do it and I googled it. There was a fancy page with an audition registration form and the auditions were going to be less than twenty minutes from my house. I watched some youtube videos of snippets of the show and heard singing that I thought I could match or beat. “Alright,” I thought, “I’ll do it.”

Annnnnnd then I started thinking about it every second of every minute of every single day. The strange, American “this is my one chance” syndrome took over my life in the weeks between signing up and auditioning. It snuck up on me and before I knew it, I had become what I used to make fun of. I was a 39 year old, crying into my internal camera about this being my last chance. I played it cool though and acted like it was no big deal to me. It was a big deal to me. I am embarrassed to admit that I took it as far in my head as, “How is my family going to do with me being in California for so long?”  Bahahahaha. The very thing I used to mock was happening to me.

I had never auditioned for any singing event in my life and wasn’t quite sure how to even get ready. I had to get a strategy together. I went on “recital diet” and eliminated all inflammatory foods to make my best singing possible. I posted potential audition outfits on FB for help in choosing one. I chose a song I thought would showcase all kinds of great things about my voice. I made sure my bio on the audition registration page was dramatic and enticing. I sang my song all day long. I sang it to my husband in the car. I sang it to my kids in the kitchen. I sang it in the shower. I sang it in front of friends to get used to singing it in front of people. (Thanks Tony & Christina). I am not sure I could have been more ready for the thing I was pretending I didn’t care about.

A mutual friend from my hometown in Colorado advised me of a fellow hometowner, Katy, who was flying in to Dallas for the audition. I talked to Katie online and we decided to meet in the arena parking lot and do this together. Let me tell you about Katie. She is like glitter and girly and badass and country and show stoppingly gorgeous. I knew this from her facebook profile but meeting her in person was even more spectacular. The moment I saw her, I was second guessing my vintage Ann Taylor flowery-cowel neck- Leave-it-to-Beaver’s-mom’s dress. I suddenly felt like Laura Ingles or Anne of Green Gables compared to her shiny, blonde, Nashville perfection aura. Despite our different presentations, we made fast friends. We moved through the lengthy line ups together and chatted up a storm. Once we got to the cattle call seating, we told each other what songs we were going to use to audition with and she checked my lipstick for me (I figured I could trust her judgement.) By the time we had been moved to the second seating area, our nerves were in full swing. We were called into two different audition rooms and I watched her walk magically and blondely to her room while my throat went void of all moisture.

About ten of us were herded into a small conference room with two rows of five chairs facing each other. At one end of the chairs was a tape line and at the other was a table with a preoccupied girl in her mid-twenties seated behind it. She ignored us and stared at her computer screen as we walked in and took a seat. She didn’t even look up as she explained how this would work. “You will walk up to the tape line, and no further, when I call your name. You will state your name, age, where you are from and the song you will be singing.” I watched several others make their way to the chopping block and my nerves were getting kind of haywire. I had to work to slow my breathing down and to keep my hands from shaking. What the heck? Who was this person?? I had sung in front of thousands of people by then! Here’s the deal, the song I had chosen, “The Story” by Brandi Carlisle, was tricky. If you start that song too low, you’re done for. If you start it too high, you’re equally as done for. I knew this and I had a tiny piano app open on my phone where I was repeatedly hitting my starting note so that I would not forget. When I was finally I called, I even introduced myself in the note from the piano app. But somewhere between speaking and singing, I lost that note and started the song about two whole steps too low. This meant that when I sang, “All of these lines across my face”, what everyone heard was, “All of these lines across m……….   …….” My lips were moving but no sound was coming out. Mortified, I sputtered out, “I’m g-g-g-going to have to start again”. The girl glanced up from her computer screen and I started again. But I knew, what was even the point? If thousands and thousands of people are auditioning for this show and you botch your opening four words, you are going nowhere.  During the “feedback” portion of the audition, the preoccupied girl told me that I should look into taking some voice lessons. I have taken voice since I was 12 and was teaching voice lessons at the time of this audition. Why I oughta…

I met Katie in the hall and was happy to hear that she had had a much different experience. She received a warm reception and had almost made the cut. She emerged encouraged and raring to go. We saw people stumbling out from rooms all around us in tears, devastated. Their one chance! When I saw them, I realized that I was not even remotely devastated. I wasn’t even disappointed. I was cracking up and a tad sheepish at my own attempted Barry White delivery of a folk/rock song. (I wish wish wish it had been on tape so I could have been on the “imposters that needed wrangling” portion of the show.) I hugged Katy goodbye and headed straight to Krispy Kreme.

I can tell you that the best moment of the whole experience was realizing that truly, it had no bearing whatsoever on my “one chance”. A preoccupied 25 year old behind a table in a room with a tape line was never a “chance” for me or anybody else. I have a career of “chances”. For whatever blessed reason, for 25 years now, people have been giving me “chances” to sing for them in living rooms, town halls, auditoriums, churches, coffee shops, bars, on the radio and online. I get the “chance” to sing my own music and songs I love that my favorite writers have written. I have already had more “chances” than most singers ever get. My audition for The Voice, my one and only audition for anything, ever in my life, was a delightful wake up call to my own beautiful reality. I don’t have just one chance to cry into the camera about, I have a lifetime of chances and I’m going to be grateful for every single one. I think saving my first audition for when I was 39, with four kids and a musical career was the perfect time. There’s no need for a star to hitch your wagon to if you already have your wheels on the ground, humming along with your babies and your partner, taking all the chances you come up on.

Here is “The Story” by Brandi Carlisle, as it should be sung.