Spiegel Spiegel!
Right! So! Earlier this week I had some exciting news... I had an email from a famous person wanting me to play with them.
I responded to her email immediately and then spoke to her on the phone the following day. I asked her which songs I should start with (I had spent most of the day working out several of her songs on the piano). She surprised me by saying "Do you know Bob D - oh what am I saying - of course you know Bob Dylan,"
"Yeeees," I replied tentatively. "I don't have all of his albums or anything, but I am familiar with him..."
She then proceeded to give me half the name of the song she and her husband had been working out. She told me she'd send me the Mp3 later when Shane was home to do "all that techo stuff". I spent the ensuing hours trying to locate & download a copy of the song, to no avail (I don't have itunes or anything). It finally came through and I had a listen.
"You might not like it," she had warned. "It's really sweet, almost too much so."
To Make You Feel My Love was indeed very sweet, but not over the top and I could imagine her doing a beautiful version. She has a rather husky, quite low voice, and I was excited to hear how it would sound.
At first I was a bit daunted by the number of chords in the song. I managed to find a few versions of the guitar chords on the net (all conflicting of course), and extracted the correct progression, then transposed it into the key Rebecca wanted to try. I was hoping like hell this key would work because it was a bitch to transpose and I didn't want to do it again!!!
After a few plays through I realised it was quite a simple descending pattern and could easily venture into cheesy musical theatre territory. I would have to keep it very simple. Which suits me fine, I can only think of one thing at a time anyway!
She mentioned another song of hers "Keep Smiling", might also work well as a duet, so I spent the next day working on these two before our scheduled rehearsal at her place at 4.00. "Are you sure you don't mind coming to our place?" She asked. "I don't want to put you out." I don't think she understood that for me this was an opportunity of a lifetime, something I never thought would happen, and I would have driven to Sydney if I'd had to. Plus she lives just over the Westgate bridge from me, so it's literally a 5 minute drive.
Their house was just as I would have imagined it. Beautiful, slightly wild garden, lots of artwork and books everywhere, and of course music. Several guitars, piano, a wall of CDs... mmm.... heaven.
And Rebecca was gorgeous. She's much older than me, closer to my mum's age, but not condescending at all. We bonded immediately over dogs - their little bundle of energy Foxy greeted me at the door and I told her he was not much bigger than my little Chester and she demanded to see photos of him. I found some on my phone and it was love at first sight.
I met her husband and son who were off to cricket practice and we got down to business. They had a lovely upright piano in their living room, so that's where we rehearsed. It was very casual, but she was SO encouraging. After we ran through the Bob (as we called it) once, she said "Awwww, that was beautiful!!" And during another song when I piped in with some vocal harmonies she said "and you sing like an angel!". Which I know is far from the truth but it certainly bolstered my confidence!! Our voices did blend well together, we both have quite a breathy sound and she's so easy to sing with.
When I made a mistake & played the completely wrong chord, we would both burst out laughing and the same when she stuffed up. I'd say it was the funnest rehearsal I'd had in a long time.
We ran through several of her songs before deciding on Fortified as the one to do if they wanted a second song for the radio show we were doing.
During the session we had a visit from her mum, as well as several phone calls from musicians, some quite famous. No names, sorry!
After her son came home and kicked us out of the lounge room so he could watch Foxtel, we gravitated to the kitchen/dining area, a huge room with a massive table. She went to her computer to check out myspace... one of the musos she'd spoken to told her about a girl she was seeing in a local band & she wanted to check it out. She ended up asking me for help with adding videos to myspace and i became her favourite person!!
They ended up asking me to stay for dinner so I found myself sitting round the dinner table with two bona fide rockstars munching on Cambodian take away and sipping pinot gris.
I headed home after dinner to pinch myself and figure out whether the last few hours had actually happened. The best thing was that Rebecca was happy with how we sounded so I was definitely doing the live radio broadcast from the Spiegeltent. YAY!!!!!
****
The next day between practising the songs, I looked up the Spiegeltent website. I couldn't find the live broadcast anywhere. Hmmm... maybe try the ABC. Yep, there it was. Big Top Radio. Live from the Spiegeltent Forecourt... hang on. The Forecourt?
The whole reason I was doing this with Rebecca was that there is a grand piano in the Spiegeltent that she was dying to use. The Forecourt is the area outside. There is definitely no grand piano outside. Uh-oh...
I emailed her immediately. She responded later that day confirming that we would indeed be outside and this does indeed mean no piano. Bugger. But, she said she would come over the next day anyway and see what it sounds like with my Roland digital piano.
Arrgghhh! It dawned on me I was going to have a celebrity in my house. Better clean up!
I did a bit of tidying that night, and did so much more last minute tidying the next morning that I had just made breakfast when she arrived. So she sat on the fitball in the kitchen while I scoffed my sultana bran, muesli, yoghurt & fruit concoction and we discussed naturopaths. I gave her the card of mine, I think she's going to go see her.
You can probably gather by now that we really clicked. I don't know whether maybe she's the kind of person that really clicks with everyone, but if you think about it we're very different in age and experience and it's not a given that we would get along so well. But we did.
Anyway rehearsal went really well, by now I had memorised the songs and was feeling pretty confident. She was happy with how the digital piano sounded and so it was on! Yay again! She was going to pick me up at 8.00 and then afterwards I would go with her to see her husband play at the Spanish Club.
****
I don't want to tell you how long I spent getting ready, but lets just say that once I picked the dress, I tried on about 8 different bras to find one that worked, ended up wearing the first one i tried on but pulling my slip up over my boobs so that the lines of the bra weren't so obvious. Then I couldn't get my hair to do anything. I tried replicating this amazing french roll thing I fluked the other day, but of course it wouldn't work, and by the end there was so much hair spray and crap going on I didn't know what to do. Finally I shoved a comb in the top bit and pulled the rest into a low side pony just over my shoulder - sounds awful but actually very cute. And since I was wearing a yellow frock I bought in Hawaii and cute pink heels, cute was in order.
I was ready and had all my gear packed up when she got there (thank god I'd started getting ready so early!) and we got there in excellent time. I was surprised (for some reason although I'd texted just about everyone I know) to see several familiar faces sprinkled throughout the audience.
After a nervous wait, we were finally on and to my horror I could barely hear the keyboard at all. Due to this I got distracted and played the intro progression of Bob once instead of twice, without even realising it until Rebecca said 'sorry' under her breath, as if she'd missed the entry, not that I'd stuffed up. What a professional. I just played the first chord for a bit longer and she started and the rest went without hiccup. Oh, if you don't count the marching band and opera singers going on behind us in the Spiegeltent. And the music playing in the bar nearby. In fact, it's surprising anybody heard us at all!!
The second song was much easier, Rebecca was playing guitar and it was a lot less chords. And I got to sing.
While the presenter was chatting on air to Rebecca between songs, I went to the sound guy & asked if I could turn my keyboard up a bit, I could barely hear it. They ended up turning a speaker round for foldback, which made things much easier.
So Fortified went really well and I even managed to look up and smile at my friends, who were snapping away with their cameras.
Afterwards, Rebecca leaned in to kiss me on the cheek and looked happy with how it had gone. "That was great!" she said. Phew!
And my friends all congratulated me and said I looked "amazing". Which was pretty good considering the 8 bras and bad hair day!!
These are the photos Sandra took.
****
In the car afterwards Rebecca was very pleased with how it had gone. I said to her that I know it was a risk getting me to do it and thanked her for taking that risk. She shrugged it off but I was glad I'd said it. She certainly did not have to get some unknown piano player half her age to play a gig with her, but she genuinely seemed to enjoy it.
The Spanish Club was fun. My sister had achieved her monthly target in her travel agent job, scoring her a trip to New Zealand. So she met us for some celebratory sangrias. We met Rebecca's friends and various rockstars, and at about 11.30 Rebecca dropped me home, helping me unload all my gear and seeing Chester one more time. I think she might look after him when I go to Sydney/Brisbane next week. Oh, and in the car on the way home she talked about rehearsals for her real Spiegeltent gig coming up in 2 weeks.
"So, for the Spiegeltent gig, we could just use the piano at home again, and rehearse there if you like?"
In my head I'm going: "YES!! YES!!! AWESOME!!! WICKED!!! FUCK YEAH!!! WOO HOO!!! I'M IN!!!!"
Out loud I said: "Yeah, that sounds fine."
I guess I knew that tonight had been a sort of audition for the real show, and this was the final confirmation that I'd passed. Yay again again!
This morning I was a bit tired and slow-moving due to overexcited and vodka, and I never want to hear Bob again... well at least for a few days, anyway...
I responded to her email immediately and then spoke to her on the phone the following day. I asked her which songs I should start with (I had spent most of the day working out several of her songs on the piano). She surprised me by saying "Do you know Bob D - oh what am I saying - of course you know Bob Dylan,"
"Yeeees," I replied tentatively. "I don't have all of his albums or anything, but I am familiar with him..."
She then proceeded to give me half the name of the song she and her husband had been working out. She told me she'd send me the Mp3 later when Shane was home to do "all that techo stuff". I spent the ensuing hours trying to locate & download a copy of the song, to no avail (I don't have itunes or anything). It finally came through and I had a listen.
"You might not like it," she had warned. "It's really sweet, almost too much so."
To Make You Feel My Love was indeed very sweet, but not over the top and I could imagine her doing a beautiful version. She has a rather husky, quite low voice, and I was excited to hear how it would sound.
At first I was a bit daunted by the number of chords in the song. I managed to find a few versions of the guitar chords on the net (all conflicting of course), and extracted the correct progression, then transposed it into the key Rebecca wanted to try. I was hoping like hell this key would work because it was a bitch to transpose and I didn't want to do it again!!!
After a few plays through I realised it was quite a simple descending pattern and could easily venture into cheesy musical theatre territory. I would have to keep it very simple. Which suits me fine, I can only think of one thing at a time anyway!
She mentioned another song of hers "Keep Smiling", might also work well as a duet, so I spent the next day working on these two before our scheduled rehearsal at her place at 4.00. "Are you sure you don't mind coming to our place?" She asked. "I don't want to put you out." I don't think she understood that for me this was an opportunity of a lifetime, something I never thought would happen, and I would have driven to Sydney if I'd had to. Plus she lives just over the Westgate bridge from me, so it's literally a 5 minute drive.
Their house was just as I would have imagined it. Beautiful, slightly wild garden, lots of artwork and books everywhere, and of course music. Several guitars, piano, a wall of CDs... mmm.... heaven.
And Rebecca was gorgeous. She's much older than me, closer to my mum's age, but not condescending at all. We bonded immediately over dogs - their little bundle of energy Foxy greeted me at the door and I told her he was not much bigger than my little Chester and she demanded to see photos of him. I found some on my phone and it was love at first sight.
I met her husband and son who were off to cricket practice and we got down to business. They had a lovely upright piano in their living room, so that's where we rehearsed. It was very casual, but she was SO encouraging. After we ran through the Bob (as we called it) once, she said "Awwww, that was beautiful!!" And during another song when I piped in with some vocal harmonies she said "and you sing like an angel!". Which I know is far from the truth but it certainly bolstered my confidence!! Our voices did blend well together, we both have quite a breathy sound and she's so easy to sing with.
When I made a mistake & played the completely wrong chord, we would both burst out laughing and the same when she stuffed up. I'd say it was the funnest rehearsal I'd had in a long time.
We ran through several of her songs before deciding on Fortified as the one to do if they wanted a second song for the radio show we were doing.
During the session we had a visit from her mum, as well as several phone calls from musicians, some quite famous. No names, sorry!
After her son came home and kicked us out of the lounge room so he could watch Foxtel, we gravitated to the kitchen/dining area, a huge room with a massive table. She went to her computer to check out myspace... one of the musos she'd spoken to told her about a girl she was seeing in a local band & she wanted to check it out. She ended up asking me for help with adding videos to myspace and i became her favourite person!!
They ended up asking me to stay for dinner so I found myself sitting round the dinner table with two bona fide rockstars munching on Cambodian take away and sipping pinot gris.
I headed home after dinner to pinch myself and figure out whether the last few hours had actually happened. The best thing was that Rebecca was happy with how we sounded so I was definitely doing the live radio broadcast from the Spiegeltent. YAY!!!!!
****
The next day between practising the songs, I looked up the Spiegeltent website. I couldn't find the live broadcast anywhere. Hmmm... maybe try the ABC. Yep, there it was. Big Top Radio. Live from the Spiegeltent Forecourt... hang on. The Forecourt?
The whole reason I was doing this with Rebecca was that there is a grand piano in the Spiegeltent that she was dying to use. The Forecourt is the area outside. There is definitely no grand piano outside. Uh-oh...
I emailed her immediately. She responded later that day confirming that we would indeed be outside and this does indeed mean no piano. Bugger. But, she said she would come over the next day anyway and see what it sounds like with my Roland digital piano.
Arrgghhh! It dawned on me I was going to have a celebrity in my house. Better clean up!
I did a bit of tidying that night, and did so much more last minute tidying the next morning that I had just made breakfast when she arrived. So she sat on the fitball in the kitchen while I scoffed my sultana bran, muesli, yoghurt & fruit concoction and we discussed naturopaths. I gave her the card of mine, I think she's going to go see her.
You can probably gather by now that we really clicked. I don't know whether maybe she's the kind of person that really clicks with everyone, but if you think about it we're very different in age and experience and it's not a given that we would get along so well. But we did.
Anyway rehearsal went really well, by now I had memorised the songs and was feeling pretty confident. She was happy with how the digital piano sounded and so it was on! Yay again! She was going to pick me up at 8.00 and then afterwards I would go with her to see her husband play at the Spanish Club.
****
I don't want to tell you how long I spent getting ready, but lets just say that once I picked the dress, I tried on about 8 different bras to find one that worked, ended up wearing the first one i tried on but pulling my slip up over my boobs so that the lines of the bra weren't so obvious. Then I couldn't get my hair to do anything. I tried replicating this amazing french roll thing I fluked the other day, but of course it wouldn't work, and by the end there was so much hair spray and crap going on I didn't know what to do. Finally I shoved a comb in the top bit and pulled the rest into a low side pony just over my shoulder - sounds awful but actually very cute. And since I was wearing a yellow frock I bought in Hawaii and cute pink heels, cute was in order.
I was ready and had all my gear packed up when she got there (thank god I'd started getting ready so early!) and we got there in excellent time. I was surprised (for some reason although I'd texted just about everyone I know) to see several familiar faces sprinkled throughout the audience.
After a nervous wait, we were finally on and to my horror I could barely hear the keyboard at all. Due to this I got distracted and played the intro progression of Bob once instead of twice, without even realising it until Rebecca said 'sorry' under her breath, as if she'd missed the entry, not that I'd stuffed up. What a professional. I just played the first chord for a bit longer and she started and the rest went without hiccup. Oh, if you don't count the marching band and opera singers going on behind us in the Spiegeltent. And the music playing in the bar nearby. In fact, it's surprising anybody heard us at all!!
The second song was much easier, Rebecca was playing guitar and it was a lot less chords. And I got to sing.
While the presenter was chatting on air to Rebecca between songs, I went to the sound guy & asked if I could turn my keyboard up a bit, I could barely hear it. They ended up turning a speaker round for foldback, which made things much easier.
So Fortified went really well and I even managed to look up and smile at my friends, who were snapping away with their cameras.
Afterwards, Rebecca leaned in to kiss me on the cheek and looked happy with how it had gone. "That was great!" she said. Phew!
And my friends all congratulated me and said I looked "amazing". Which was pretty good considering the 8 bras and bad hair day!!
These are the photos Sandra took.
****
In the car afterwards Rebecca was very pleased with how it had gone. I said to her that I know it was a risk getting me to do it and thanked her for taking that risk. She shrugged it off but I was glad I'd said it. She certainly did not have to get some unknown piano player half her age to play a gig with her, but she genuinely seemed to enjoy it.
The Spanish Club was fun. My sister had achieved her monthly target in her travel agent job, scoring her a trip to New Zealand. So she met us for some celebratory sangrias. We met Rebecca's friends and various rockstars, and at about 11.30 Rebecca dropped me home, helping me unload all my gear and seeing Chester one more time. I think she might look after him when I go to Sydney/Brisbane next week. Oh, and in the car on the way home she talked about rehearsals for her real Spiegeltent gig coming up in 2 weeks.
"So, for the Spiegeltent gig, we could just use the piano at home again, and rehearse there if you like?"
In my head I'm going: "YES!! YES!!! AWESOME!!! WICKED!!! FUCK YEAH!!! WOO HOO!!! I'M IN!!!!"
Out loud I said: "Yeah, that sounds fine."
I guess I knew that tonight had been a sort of audition for the real show, and this was the final confirmation that I'd passed. Yay again again!
This morning I was a bit tired and slow-moving due to overexcited and vodka, and I never want to hear Bob again... well at least for a few days, anyway...
posted by Aussie Rock Chick at 5:43 PM
2 Comments:
This is ace!
I am just so excited for you - I just wish I could be there to share it.
And to share the tidying up for celebrities - you know how jealous I am about that?? Your house wouldn't have needed tidying if I'd been staying there, anyway:)
Sx
Dude!
Let me add my congrats.
I've just downloaded the EP. Will listen sometime over the w/e and offer comments to various on-line-type places when I've digested...
Hugs,
TT.
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