Just SING.

The first time I knew that I could probably sing, I was standing in the pit of the auditorium at Hill Park Secondary School on Hamilton mountain.

A little sidebar, I actually thought Hamilton Mountain…which is really an escarpment…was a REAL mountain until I saw the Rockies, which is not the point of this tale but I thought it needed to be said…
…because perspective is absolutely everything.

That day in the auditorium pit I was thirteen years old, leaning on an old-as-dirt upright piano, with Ms. Mac (for short…I cannot remember what it was short for…that is what we called her) our high school musical musical director (yes, I said “musical” twice but it holds) as she bashed out the titular song MAYBE from Annie…a show I still hate to this day even though I took my turn as Miss Hannigan in grade twelve to fairly rave reviews…which I hope does not make me sound TOO full of myself.

BUT while I was not really great at singing the song MAYBE in grade nine, I sang it well enough to get cast in Hillpark’s production of GUYS AND DOLLS in which I ended up playing a HOTBOXX DANCER…a character description that did not really bother me till far later in life…I mean, HOTBOXX…we were teenagers.
BUT that was back in the day, you guys.

Anyhow,  I know now that when I sang MAYBE that long-ago day when I was thirteen,  it was slightly out of my vocal range. I wasn’t a really flashy belter with C’s and D’s (musical notes).  I ALSO now know that having to wrangle my non-flashy belter’s voice, a voice that broke a note or two below ALL broadway money notes, was a “flaw” that would encourage me me to build a strong high-end head voice, something that would serve me well for many years.
Perspective, see?

And, if I may, my B back then was pretty awesome for a thirteen year old.
Again, it just was.
As I worked on my higher end, it lost some of it’s luster but I gotta say, it was worth it.
I’m grateful for the vocal longevity it gave me over any short term volume and chest-belt-height any day.
Again, perspective.

For anyone who is not a singer, I hope this isn’t too technical…but I think you can get the general idea right?
I could sing loud but not as high-loud as some would like…but the loudness I had was not too bad at all…and I worked hard to make it work for me.
That is about it, really.

I loved singing.
I loved to lay my head back and work that pretty B.

There was a time when it felt like I could sing forever and my voice was just plain iron.
I could stay up late, drink a bit, have a blast…and then get up at 11:00am, clear my throat and do a matinee of Les Miserable, NO PROBLEM.
My voice never left me. Ever.
It was dependable.
It was the way I earned my living by the age of 21.
What a lucky duck.
Truly.

The first time it left me?
It left me hard.
I’d just started to have some severe anxiety and was performing the Narrator in Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat while rehearsing for The Music Man movie for Disney.
It was a crazy time, should have been an exciting time, but I was very tired, SUPER anxious and when my voice faltered? I was totally terrified.
Up until that moment, it had been indestructible. It NEVER let me down.

The only thing that kept me going when it finally did let me down, the thing that got me through that month long period working on both the movie and the stage show…
…during which one of my agents at the time, when I asked for some help in the situation, like possibly to get me out of Joseph earlier or faster, suggested that I maybe get a cortisone shot to bridge the gap…
…I didn’t get it…honestly, I was too scared to get it…
…the only thing that got me through that month was my head voice that I’d worked so hard for.
Perspective.

After that weird time of vocal failure, I became wary, even after I went to Simon McGrail…who was my favourite ENT in the world, may he rest in peace…who came into his office one morning at 7am to look at my vocal chords, then kindly told me they were fine, just exhausted.
When I asked him what would happen if I kept singing he told me I probably would not sound very good, but if I took care, I would be fine.
And I was.
But I remained wary.

When something you depend on betrays you, wariness ensues.
It makes sense, right?

But I kept singing.
I sang some fine shit, too.

Songs for A New World.
Madame Thenardier…which was more of a lyrical yell, but still wonderful.
The Narrator in Joseph again…I don’t care what anyone says, that was one of my dream roles…I loved singing it.
Mayzie in Seussical.
…and BOATLOADS of amazing tunes in my cabarets.
Bohemian Rhapsody
Creep
Stop in the Name of Love.

When I started to finally tour my cabarets around the world…something that was a goal and a dream…I began to consistently sing two sets of 45 minutes (about 16 songs a night, 8 LONGS songs a set, with storytelling, ALONE) almost nightly, AND my world got smaller, then my preciousness about my voice became more pronounced…and all of a sudden, singing was a job.
A serious fucking job.
A lonely, monastical-type-of-existence job.
I know this sounds a bit boo-hoo…but it was a fucking bummer, honestly.

Who gets into singing because it’s a job?

The show title had my name in it, so there was no understudy…and if I didn’t play? I didn’t get paid.

During this time of my life, the first thing I did every morning was open my eyes, take in a breath and sing a low note to see where my voice was at…the result of which would make or break my entire day.
Then I would routinely ask myself ALL the following questions like a circle game:
Did I get enough sleep?
Am I getting sick?
Is the person I am sitting with sick?
My allergies are starting.. will my voice crack?
People will think I’m shit if my voice cracks.

And rules for life started to pile up:
Don’t drink any wine.
Don’t drink anything with sodium.
Bed as early as possible.
Don’t go out.
Don’t see people.
Don’t talk too much and never yell.

Melatonin, my lavender pillow, my travel humidifier, sometimes advil (I know) and ricola were my best friends. I sang entire shows with a ricola tucked between my bottom teeth and my left cheek.
I even got a cavity there…a fucking cavity.

My solo shows were my TOTAL way of making a living for almost ten years, so while I enjoyed some wonderful success and had some excellent experiences, it felt like I was standing on a beautiful leaky boat a good deal of the time.
Thank fuck for my head voice.
Truly.

I didn’t love singing anymore.
I tried to…but I didn’t.
But I kept going…because WHO in their right mind would stop with the momentum and traction I had gotten in cabaret?

And then? Around the time my husband starting cheating on me…I started to lose my voice.
I was hoarse almost all the time.
It took me hours to warm up.
I had almost no life inside of touring.
I went to the ENT…not Brian, sadly…and he said my chords were fine, that it was allergies, and gave me tons of meds.
Allergies…all year long.
It was a fucking struggle.
It was frustrating as fuck.
It was…not the performance life I dreamed of…but I kept asking myself how could I ever get off the merry-go round?
How do I admit that I was struggling…and was existing joy free inside something that should be filled with joy?

Then the universe sent me Frankie Drake Mysteries, which saved me in a million ways, and even though I was still performing cabaret, I could really dial it back…and I didn’t have to depend on it to keep me afloat.
While I still suffered from a hoarse voice, it didn’t derail me anymore. I just accepted that my voice was fucked in a way that medicine could not understand.

Shortly after my marriage ended, I went to see Aaron Low, an amazing speech pathologist, who was recommended to me by at least ten entertainers that I really trusted.
The day I booked him, I decided that he would be my last stop before I would just let singing go.
I seriously was dealing with SO much at that time, I just was searching for some peace…and a road towards some happiness.

The first thing he asked me when I walked into his window-surrounded office was about a time line around my hoarseness.
I pulled out my phone and together we looked over the calendar.
When we did the math, I was shook.
Honestly, I could not believe I’d never clocked it all before…but perspective, right?

I scrolled back two years to a particularly hard cabaret workshop I’d done in April of 2016, which was the first time I really taken in the severity of the hoarseness…which was the month that my ex had started cheating.
Which was when I started to feel a wrongness inside my marriage, inside myself, my confidence…a wrongness I kept trying to shake off, a wrongness I brought up a million times to my ex, a wrongness that made me feel crazy and silly and paranoid…a wrongness that I kept ignoring.
Aaron was very kind.

He said that my throat had no choice but to close itself.

He wondered aloud if holding all my truth in was literally choking me…had choked me for about two years.

He continued to muse that ignoring my actual inner voice made my outer voice do everything it could to achieve silence.

I’m sure you can imagine that in that moment I melted like an ice cube in a cup of tea.
I fell apart like cotton candy in water.

I had to lie down on his couch…for about a half an hour…and later, after I got my shit together, he called a cab to take me home.

For the next week I stayed in my apartment.
I laid on my couch, opening my wretchedly broken heart and befuddled mind, further realizing that about the same time my voice became hoarse I’d stopped listening to new music, I’d stopped singing in the car…I only mouthed the words to songs as I drove…I never sang them out loud.
I’d become so afraid to make a sound, I didn’t.
I only sang if I had to.

So, I made the decision to take the pressure off myself and stop for a while.

During the blessed next season of Frankie, I shot the show and did a couple gigs…JFL, the CBC upfronts, a Women in Comedy event also for CBC…but mostly I didn’t sing.
And then the next season I took NO extra gigs, and I stopped pretty much all together.
I didn’t want to push myself anymore, and honestly, I didn’t miss it too much.
I didn’t want to keep surviving life…I wanted to thrive.
It was a HUGE relief not to check on or worry about my voice.
AND it was not a super sad thing, really.
I really enjoyed the break, to be TOTALLY on the square.

It was just a bit odd to me that the break went on and on…and on.

Maybe it wasn’t a break.

Then in 2021, three years later I took a drive across Canada…alone.
I drove Toronto to Tofino.
On a particularly sunny day in Saskatchewan, driving through the gorgeous Qu’Appelle Valley, with Spotify playing Maxwell’s PRETTY WINGS…I just started to sing.
It was this day, actually…

And I just sang and sang…through Mariah’s FANTASY, Chaka’s LOVE ME STILL, LaMontagne’s JOLENE, P!nk’s ALL I KNOW SO FAR, the Commodore’s EASY, the Chick’s JULIANNA CALM DOWN, TLC’s NO SCRUBS, Bridges’ RIVER, Dawes A LITTLE BIT OF EVERYTHING, Ronstadt’s BLUE BAYOU and so, so many more.

When I made it to Jasper, Alberta…and breathed in the Rocky mountains…I started playing Fleetwood Mac’s LANDSLIDE over and over and over…and sang and sang and sang.
Not loud, not well, with lots of cracks, lots of breaks, lots of sliding back and forth from head voice to chest, with no technique and ALL abandon…no performance, all heart and soul…and no audience.

My voice is totally different now…and not.

It’s lower.
It’s lighter.
It’s…it’s different.

There was a time long ago when an arranger that I worked with insisted that I was singing songs lower than I should…that I should be pushing it’s limits…that I was “copping out” in lower keys.
It always made my blood boil that I had to explain to them that I didn’t want to spend a whole song afraid that my voice would break…that I wanted to feel comfortable…that I wanted to enjoy singing.
In retrospect, I hate that I felt I needed to explain myself at all.

Not anymore.
I drove further west on my journey across Canada and planted myself in log cabin on Vancouver Island.
I hiked around Ucluelet, humming SORRY NOT SORRY with Demi Lovato, and I promised myself that I would not explain my voice anymore and if that meant I would never sing again, so be it.

I have to say, it’s been a very epic experience to start singing and enjoy the attention, to continue singing for both the love of it and the future it could bring me, to keep singing as I learned about my own creative voice, to have to pummel that voice as I tried to earn a steady living on it, to then lose it as I denied my feelings…and, in fact, denied my actual voice.

Epic.

Even scrolling back through what I’ve just wrote, I am all bubbles in my stomach, heavy in my heart, while feeling the peaceful movement of healing in my soul…lordy, right? Lordy AND true.

In January, when Chris Tsujiuchi, one of my favourite longtime collaborators, friends and pianists…who is now the associate artistic director of the SING FESTIVAL in Toronto…asked me to be a part of this year’s festival and THEN told me that SING wanted to honour me with an award for singing…I felt a bit like an imposter.
While I’d been a successful singer for most of my life, I felt like maybe that part might be done.
I actually didn’t know if I could do it…or if I wanted to.
It feels very…very…all very complicated still…I wondered if I wanted to challenge my hard earned peace.
But something made me say yes.

What you agree to in January can feel a bit like a cliff in May, let me tell you.

Then, a week ago, I read an article that my pal Ari sent me about a very successful singer who’d been diagnosed with fairly severe asthma, an asthma that developed quite recently and changed her entire voice.
She talked about how she’s striving to accept her new voice…cracks, craters and all its new flavours…because honestly, it’s not the sound, it’s the history and the story.
I read the article, closed the application on my phone, and laid down.

Okay.

This voice I have now, is my voice.
It may not be perfect…whatever that means…it’s not what it was…whatever THAT means…but it’s honest, it’s now, and it’s mine…and I do love to tell a story.

I wonder how I will wield it now?
I wonder what I can learn from it.
I wonder if I can find the joy?

ALL that being said? I wanna say again, it’s not terrible…it’s just different.

And it’s mine.

So, last week I began to rehearse…and I can barely make it through a tune without crying.
But it’s been a true bright light of my day…to sing and stretch my voice.
Imagine that.

So, okay…I am thrilled, nervous, excited, scared, and thrilled again to be singing at the SING FESTIVAL next Monday night, the 29th of May at The Concert Hall on Yonge Street.

I am going to be singing with some truly awesome artists two truly awesome arrangements of two truly awesome musical theatre songs, back to where I began, really.

Neither one of the songs is from fucking Annie.

I wonder what the perspective is gonna look like from where I am now?

Whatever it is, I am here for it.

If you wanna be there?

Get a ticket and do not tell me you are coming.

It’s gonna be a night. : )

https://singtoronto.com/2023-event-details