You know those times of your life where you feel complacent and bored? You don’t know why you keep going through the robotic motions of life each day. Maybe you do know why but you aren’t sure how you manage to keep doing it day after day. It can become quickly depressing and you start to lose motivation for other things that are important to you. Exercise, eating healthy and productivity become a thing of the past as you wallow in your oh so boring lifestyle. You need something to keep you going, a productive and healthy change.
My change came via Facebook message and I couldn’t believe it when I read it. All of these years of singing in the hairbrush and I had been asked to sing a song at the next gig for the cover band Bonne Nuit. Excited and nervous would describe it best. It was Lady Antebellum’s Need You Now. I immediately downloaded it on iTunes and practiced my heart out. I practiced so much that my family can barely stand to hear it at all now. But there was one thing I couldn’t prepare myself for and had no idea how it would dramatically change my performing life forever: Singing live!
I showed up for my first band practice pretty unsure of what to do. I think that may have been the first thing I said to the band, “I’ve never sung like this before, so I really have no idea what I am doing.” They were extremely patient and gracious to me. Nice as can be; and from the tone of the room I could tell they were all saying to me, “It’s easy…you just sing into the mic.”
So I did. I sang into that mic and for the first time heard my voice come through an amp shared by guitars and drums beats. It was thrilling, invigorating, exciting and sounded good! I remember a half smile forming on my face as I realized that the voice I was hearing was mine. It may be to date the single most satisfying feeling I have ever experienced in my life. So, it was a good first run through and I couldn’t wait to do it again.
Matt tells me, “Let’s run through it again and this time we are going to turn it way up. You won’t be able to hear yourself sing and we don’t want you to get shocked when we perform live. It will actually be louder the night of, but this will give you a good idea of what it will sound like.” Seemed easy enough and sounded like a really good idea. So they turned it up and started playing. Immediately I felt every chord and beat penetrate through my body like a wave of continual electricity that moved from head to toes and back up again. So focused on this new addictive feeling I almost forget to start singing. I hear the sound of my voice again through the mic amplified by the PA system and just like he said, for the first time in my life I couldn’t hear the sound of my voice echo back in my own head. I could only hear it coming through the speakers. It was thrilling, invigorating, exciting, times 10 and sounded fantastic!
There is no other way to describe what it is like now other than to say it is the most addictive activity I do in my spare time. I craved and hungered after it and every time I got the call for more I couldn’t wait to feed my newfound addiction. I wondered if that feeling would ever go away. The hairbrush never did, so I couldn’t see how this could dull itself. My entire singing career was about to peak and that first live performance was just around the corner.
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