I've been reminiscing lately. Thinking back on the far past, the not so far past and the recent past. I've been trying to analyze actions that lead me to where I am today and how things might be different if I had made different choices.
Don't get me wrong, I have regrets, I think we all do... but I'm fairly happy with where life has taken me so far.
Most of you know that I didn't start public singing until about 1998 when my parents and I visited a local bar that just happened to have this thing called karaoke.
I think my mom knew that I liked to sing, my dad probably did as well. As a kid, I used to lock myself in my room and sing to Beatles songs all day long. Don't get me wrong, I was very social as a child though too.. I played road hockey every day during the summer, we had leagues and I'm sure that I won MVP at least two seasons, one as goalie and one on offense. (we'll save these stories for another blog post) :)
Back to the singing thing.... stop distracting me! LOL.
After lots of pressure from my family (Mom, Dad, Aunt and Uncle) I decided to get up there and give a song a go. At this time I was into rap, but I wasn't about to do any rap at karaoke and oh yea - they didn't have much, but I'll tell you how I worked around that later.
I searched through the book and I found that they had some Travis Tritt, one of my favorite country artists, and so I decided to sing "Help Me Hold On".
I can remember going up to the host and introducing myself. The host was George Goulet and at the time I didn't realize what a large impact he would make on my life. George had two helpers who have also played big roles in building my confidence.
George handed me the mic and I remember trying to stop my hands from shaking. My legs felt weak and I swore I was seconds away from falling.
I'm sure I eek'd out the starting notes, but this was a song I was very familiar with and one that I truly felt emotion in through the lyrics. I don't remember how the whole song went, but at the end I remember that the people clapped. I couldn't believe it, I had made it through the song and apparently people liked it... how could this be?
I came back to the table and everyone commented and gave me a great confidence boost.
Before the night was over I had to try another song, so I started looking in the book and found Elton John's, "Your Song", again another song that I knew well enough to not be terribly scared about messing up and another song that emotionally affected me and made me want to sing it with my heart.
As I left that night I was hooked.
I came back week after week, trying new songs every week and people started to be impressed by how many song genres I knew. That's when I started to reach into the obscure and try and turn people on to songs that they may have never heard before....
These songs included tunes like "Wake Me Up, Before You Go-Go" by Wham, "Twisted" by Keith Sweat, and even "Bust A Move" by Young MC (one of my fav rappers in the early nineties). "Bust A Move" became a crowd favorite and I was made to sing it each and every week as it got everybody up and dancing. George loved my singing, but he also knew how to use me to change the flow of his show.
I can remember walking around in a grocery store downtown Windsor with my cousin and someone walked up to me and said "hey - you're that singer from the Foreman's Club, right? You sing the rap song and that other one..."
First - it was insanely flattering having someone walk up to you and recognize you, let alone for doing something that you love to do! I said "Thanks" gave my usual shy look and moved along with shopping. The compliment pretty much made my day/month/year.
The other song that the person mentioned was one that had come out recently on the radio and was by a newer artist named Ricky Martin. The song was "Livin' La Vida Loca" and as soon as that tune came available on karaoke CD's I made sure that I had it and sang it. I had multiple people tell me that I was the first one that they had heard sing that song, before finally hearing it on the radio. One person even said that I sang it better than Ricky... I assured them that they were just drunk when they heard me sing it, which was more than likely true. :)
Fast forward some time and George had passed away (trust me that I'm not making light of this - if you ever ask anyone in my family about how this affected me, they'll tell you how much I cried when singing at a tribute gathering to George at the Foreman's Club after his passing) and now I was hosting my own gig at the Foreman's Club. It was very cool... I even had my alias up on the mini-marquee.
Back in these days I went by "JDelite" or "J-Delite".
I was creating compilation CD's off all my favorite songs of the year and releasing them to friends (and some Blockbuster shelves) and basically anyone who would listen to them. These CD's were called "J-Delite Presents... The Next Level" and had the year at the end of each title. I still make these each year in case you're ever interested. For several years I even made covers and did all the artwork!
Around the year 2000 I landed a job in the information technology field at Creative Solutions in Dexter, MI. I had some previous offers from companies over in the U.S. before including DexTech and Adval Communications, but CSI would be my best career move ever!
I commuted for the first several months, I had to give up my gig back in Windsor several months before getting the new job at CSI. After a couple months of commuting I ended up moving in with a co-worker, Matt Towers. Matt was a highly musical guy and played guitar, piano and sang! Another co-worker introduced me to a local bar called "The Alley" which just so happen to have karaoke. The Alley became my stomping ground early in 2001. It was a great place for co-workers to get together, have a night full of fun and singing and whatever else may come. :)
Around this same time I started listing myself as a vocalist looking to collaborate with people on the internet on a site called "Tonos". I was able to work with quite a few songwriters that had come up with the songs and just needed a vocalist to lay down the vocal tracks. The internet proved very good for collaboration and still is today.
If you do a search for Simon Read / Tom Rae on Google, you may even find one of the tunes where I did the vocals... here let me do it for you.
Around 2002 I wondered what it would be like to write my own song. I discovered the software from Sonic Foundry called "Acid", which was a song arranger and loop construction product. They had a website called AcidPlanet.com where you could submit your songs, and enter into weekly re-mix contests that they had. I found out tonight that this site is still up and that my artist profile is still in place! Check it out here. What a handsome dude!!! LOL!
Go ahead - check out some of the tunes... these are all me... and Glen Peppers on one of them... I think even my mom is on one of the tracks... called "Motion Alley". "She's His Girl" was the first song written by yours truly. I used Acid for the instrument loops, came up with the vocal melody and lyrics one night while being inspired by heartbreak. :) Heartbreak, pain, sadness, anger, happiness, solitude, love, hate, death... these are all the drivers of great lyrics. Sometimes I wonder if I don't try to self sabotage some areas in my life, unknowingly, to keep me in the creative zone. All I know is that I've had up and downs, but I've been writing lyrics for as long as I can remember, way back I just called them poems.
"She's His Girl" probably wasn't the best song in the world, but man was I proud of it!!
This is also when I learned if you write songs, be prepared to discuss or make up a good lie for where they came from... or who the song was written about. :)
As I learned more about the song writing process and the collaboration process I started really enjoying doing these things. I met up with a co-worker and we were discussing what we were both doing musically and we thought it would be a cool thing to collaborate on a song or two. This co-worker was Andy Valentine and the timeframe was around September 2002. We sent some files back and forth and out came our first idea for a song called "Here's To Goodbye". I met up with Andy soon after in Jackson, MI to record the full song at his place and soon after he sent me over a couple more ideas to work on. "Sad Eyes" was an early favorite of mine, but Andy hated it - or maybe he just knew we could do better. Early 2003 saw us come up with the idea that would be "Simple Days" and we knew that we had something good going on.
Over the next five years Andy and I collaborated on an additional 29 songs.
During that time I not only sang karaoke at The Alley, but eventually hosted it and met some of the nicest people I know. The Alley became "Katie's" and I continued to work with Andy on songs, sing karaoke, turn out Next Level compilation CD's, and collaborate as a vocalist with others. In 2005 my vocals appeared on a Valentine's CD that was released in France and on the site music75.com. The song was written by Lucian Blaga and Dean Taylor. Come to think of it - I've done other vocals for Dean Taylor as well. I almost forgot about those. I met Dean on the "Tonos" website.
Here is a review of the song "Could There Be", written by Blaga/Taylor. I was geeked that I wasn't completely torn apart on this one as the vocals took me some time to get to this standard, which wasn't as good as I'd like them to have been.
Around this time Andy and I found GarageBand.com and posted our music under the band name "The Back Alley Project". We also posted it on SoundClick among others.
We received some great reviews for "Simple Days" - the good, the bad and the ugly can be found here.
In 2006 my Dad passed, I won't lie - many of the songs that Andy and I wrote around this time were influenced by his illness and passing.
Near the end of 2006 I started taking piano lessons from a music student in the Master's program at U of M. Although I really liked it, I didn't stick with it. I did manage to squeak out a song idea called "Thirteen Days" - I'd have to dig around to find that one... but it's funny to think it's me on piano!
Since then Andy and I have been working on and off on recording our first album. It's been a slow process, but I'm not worried, it will get done and I'll be extremely proud of it as it will mark another milestone along the way.
This brings me to this weekend as I work through Jason Blume's "6 Steps To Songwriting Success" book and one of the exercises had me analyze songs of some of my favorite artists. I pulled a John Mayer song called "Love Soon", Glen Phillips "Easier" and James Taylor's "Fire and Rain".
These really got me thinking about the songwriting process and where I'm at musically today and how I've got here. Sure there were many more musical influences that my parents introduced me to, but I really think them taking me to karaoke in '98 started the ball rolling.
As I look to the future I have nothing but positive thoughts. I'm currently taking guitar lessons at Herb David Studio in Ann Arbor and I'm enjoying it. I thrive to learn more about the songwriting process and what it takes to write better songs. I look forward to working with Andy, finishing the first album, and starting our second which should have a much more matured sound and improved songwriting skills, and maybe even me on rhythm guitar in some songs! :)
So if you ever wondered about me on the musical front - you now know way more than you wanted... and I probably missed a bit here or there.
If you weren't totally bored maybe I'll do the same for how I got involved with the web, the cars I've owned, my road hockey career highlights, or a look back on past relationships. Actually scratch that last one.... :)
