Learning With Loaves

Failure and I go way back...  I've failed so many times at so many things, I've had no choice but to call it "friend." I've learned to embrace failure like a family member; one that I get along with, but also one that I effectively ignore, for the most part.  I'm okay with Failure, Failure's okay by me.
Like I said, we go way back.
So, this weekend, when I started working with dough and baking bread again -- something I had not done due to the success (sorry, Failure!) of The Real Drunk Housewives of the San Fernando Valley for the last eight months -- .I had to expect that my bread chops might be a little out of practice.  And they were.
It's weird how something you make from water, flour, yeast, salt, and heat can have so many things go wrong. For bread to have flavor, the process can take two to four days.  Fermentation is involved.  Yeast, water and flour have to do their part.  Fresh & Easy might bake cheap fresh bread daily, but your tastebuds have to work overtime.  Not a great trade-off for a 98 cent loaf of bread.  It's the fermented "sponge" made the day before that gives bread a particular taste.  A little salt slows down the fermentation.  Heat and water give the loaf its crust.  Five or six cups of flour are there for the ride.  It all works.  As long as you manage the time and manage the temperature.  And, to be certain, as long as you measure and manage your ingredients.
My first misstep in "How to make 2-day bread in four days," meant misreading and mis-measuring the amount of water to be used...it was supposed to be 1 1/3 cups of water, not 1 1/2 cups.  The bread rose looking like a manta ray.  Even that little bit of extra water meant it couldn't bear its own weight and kept flattening out.  Fixed it a little bit by drying out the loaf with more flour.  Put it in the oven -- two loaves, actually, I was being ambitious -- and found the two loaves too big for the baking stone, so one hung over the side and started burning almost immediately.  Third misread was that I was supposed to put the stone on the lower middle rack of the oven, not the oven floor (which I use for pizza) and even the surviving loaf ended up with a burned bottom.  We ate both loaves anyway because burned bread still has more flavor than Fresh & Easy bread.
Instead of quitting for the night, I immediately began the new sponge of water, flour, and yeast.  Let it ferment for three hours and then put it in the refrigerator for overnight.  Next day, took it out, started the second half of the recipe, properly measured out the water and put the baking stone at the proper level in the oven.  Made just one loaf this time.  Success.  It came out gorgeous and we gave it as a gift (at nine o'clock on a Sunday night...hey, it's fresh bread!).
Baking bread always reminds me that failure isn't the same as defeat.
Failure only becomes defeat when you surrender, throw your hands up and walk away, never to return to that oven, or those mixing bowls, or that script, or that joke, or that song, that keyboard, that music program, that book, that essay, that story, that concept...
Can't do that.  Well-made bread tastes too good.
Success is worth the failure.

The Sweetland Link

Seth McFarlane studied voice with my beloved and highly respected teacher, Lee Sweetland; the gentleman who, when I asked him for his blessing to teach his vocal technique to other people, said, "Well, Bill, you know everything we know.  Go ahead!"  Now, Lee and Sally, his wife and accompanist, didn't call it a technique and didn't really like it when other folks called it a technique; they preferred calling it a "natural, holistic approach" to singing -- which makes a lot of sense, but also takes more time to describe until someone responds with, "...so it's a 'technique?'" At which point, I would agree and then get down to the question of "why" a potential client wants or needs to study singing.  There are always going to be writers who attack the hosts of  the Academy Awards (excepting Billy Crystal's early years and also when Steve Martin solo hosted), but the most successful hosts have been scamps -- guys with loads of charm who can "get away with it."  Seth McFarlane fits that description for 2013 and beyond.  Plus, he sang great.      

The Electronic Age: It Doesn't Appear To Be Going Away Any Time Soon

"Back in the day" when I was first doing song and dance commercials (1979), performers needed to hire a phone service to catch every phone call on a 24 hour basis.  Personal answering machines were on the verge of hitting the marketplace, but not just yet.  We had to hire a "service" with a service number that took messages from our agents.  It was kind of a Flintstones approach with real live humans/dinosaurs supplying the "beep."  But what was interesting was that you'd have to call IN to your "service" several times a day to make sure you didn't miss any calls.  They didn't call you to leave a message that you had a message...that would have made them instantly irrelevant.  So, the game went on.  Daily.

No need to review the number of communications options we now have, but communication is now a skill to be cultivated.  Who knew that answering the phone and making a call would now serve as the cornerstone of our business as celebrities, entertainers, producers and content providers?  Funny thing is, we need to communicate WITH our fans or our base almost as often as we had to check in with our phone services 30 years ago.  If you're an entertainer to any degree and still avoiding Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, and any others that crop up in the next 15 minutes, it only means you really like being left alone.  And your art, your talent, is private.  And not for sale.  

Navigating The Waters

Each one of us is the captain of our own ship.  We set sail at birth.  And if we have good parents, teachers, mentors and friends in our crew, we are more than likely to navigate a course through life utilizing the wisdom of their experience combined with our own best instincts, education and desire.  If we only experience rough waters in our youth, then dangerous seas can become difficult to determine in our adulthood; after all, the eye of the storm is placid, but an inexperienced sailor might still try getting out through hurricane gusts and 30-foot waves.  Fooled again.  Now that I'm 55, "navigating the waters" has become my mantra.  If, for fear of sinking, I leave my ship moored in the bay; I go nowhere.  My sails are never filled with the wind energy of life and the potential of my very being remains untested.  If, in lieu of all outward signs of danger, I set sail during a storm, my chances for success become extremely limited.  Not that I won't be able to successfully get through the storm, that's always a possibility, but upon that one success, the odds are that I'll continue to launch in storms only to learn too late that patience can be a virtue.

Launching a show or a career is like sailing from port to port.  The ideal situation is to leave your berth with clear maps, clear weather and the right course.  Then, as is usually the case, after a few days, the sea begins to have its own ideas -- which don't include you.  This is why we shouldn't take storms personally.  They're storms, get over it.  If you can navigate those waters, stay upright, keep the crew from mutiny, maintain the integrity of the vessel, keep your eye on the horizon and still get to your destination port; whatever treasure you claim at the end will still not be nearly as rewarding as the minute-to-minute experience of living life as a creative being "navigating the waters."

6 Months And Counting....

This weekend will mark the start of our sixth month of Real Drunk Housewives shows in Hollywood.  CBS2 came out to cover us last Friday -- due to the presence of our newest member; Big Brother and Amazing Race reality superstar Rachel Reilly (who has worked her ass off to be in this show) -- and we will be hitting it hard through February -- at least.  I came up with the idea for Real Drunk Housewives a year ago.  In January.  I was watching a friend perform standup at Oh My Ribs (the theatre-that's-not-a-restaurant and the place where we've actually been doing our show) and one of female comedians did a set where she was inebriated to the point where I'm sure she could have blown a .16 into a breathalizer.  The comedian, Amy, was really cute, funny and everything, but had had one too many glasses of boxed wine and I remember thinking that she was "really drunk" which led me to think about "real drunk comedians" which then led me to ponder my wife's obsession with "real housewives" who are usually filmed after drinking a few glasses of pinot, so they're basically "really drunk housewives" which led to the basic truth/parody of the Bravo franchise which is "These are Real Drunk Housewives..."  That's how it started.

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The Difference Between Needles In The Eyes and a Knife In The Heart

So, yeah, I was picking on Henley the other day for his published comment comparing singing "Desperado" for the umpteenth time to "needles in the eyes." Case in point: here's Springsteen, no spring chicken either, performing his epic "Jungleland" in 2009. He recorded it in 1975 and has been singing it ever since. 34 years later, the tempo is a little slower, the beat just a little bigger, and his voice is, admittedly, pretty shot, but the intensity is unmistakable. He meant it then and he means it even more now. He's not blowing through the lyrics like Bob Dylan and he's not phoning it in like many other stars have admitted. We're comfortable with the framing of the camera being that tight on Springsteen because he's present. And while every moment might not be new, it is realized, and he's telling his story as only he can tell it.

Me 'n Andy

So, this kid I've been training since he was a sixth grader is now 18 and has been accepted to the Musical Theater wing of the Tisch School at NYU.  Always a good singer, I worked him hard on technique and when he was in junior high, he got a two year gig with The Rockettes doing their Christmas spectacular-awesome-holiday-thing.  I think they did something like thirty shows a day....   Anyway, he had two very fun seasons at Radio City Music Hall but during that time, he did what all kids do; he got taller and his voice started changing.  And the competition got better.  So our next task -- if he wanted to stay in the business -- was that we had to work our way out of cute kid/great singer mode and into the ever expanding and complex universe of performance.  Not easy for a perfect kid who could nail any line reading or inflection he was given by an adult.
Vocal Technique can be learned in less than a year.  Vocal Performance, on the other hand, is a life-long quest.  It's the  process of turning off the cameras of self-observation.  Some poor, tortured performers have quite a few cameras going at the same time.  Their attention becomes compromised when they concern themselves with elements outside of their control -- only to then start focusing on how poorly the elements within their control are appearing.  It can be pretty unsatisfying.  Today in the Times, the Eagles' Don Henley was quoted saying that he only rarely feels the song "Desperado" and that most of the time, it's like sticking needles in his eyes.  Now, I like Don, he's a totally cool guy and a great songwriter but what he is telling us is that, by focusing on the needles in his eyes, he is only observing himself in performance and it's a grind.  Instead of doing everything he can to bring "Desperado" to life for four minutes a night -- every night, he vacates the spiritual realm of the song, parks his intellect elsewhere and goes to a commercial; in front of thousands of paying customers.
Back to Andy; his next performance will be his most important (as it should be with performers...).  He's singing a no-fireworks, simple song out of "Spring Awakening" in front of hundreds of people at his school.  Nothin' too high, nothin' too low, the melody doesn't really go anywhere, but it has tons of lyrical complexity that can take a singer down in a moment if the cameras of self-observation suddenly flip on or if he goes on a mental vacay.
And next year, this kid with more professional theater experience than a majority of his peers will start all over again learning musical theater at NYU.
And, once again, it's time to let go.  For both of us.               

...aaaaand the casting continues.....

Made four offers to four amazing ladies yesterday and received positive responses from each one. Now we have roles yet to fill and a short list of possible alternates, understudies, and subs that have auditioned -- that I will eventually be pleading with on the phone...

ME: "Hi, it's Bill Haller calling to wish you a Happy Arbor Day and ask if you would consider understudying our show...
SINGER/DANCER/ACTOR PERSON: "Eff off!!"
(dial tone)

(End of Scene.)




 

Real Drunk Audition Hangover

First audition day went far better than expected.  Kelly had a last minute, early call in time at Disney, so she was unable to see any of the auditions, which was too bad because she has a great laugh and would have been knocked out seeing the ladies dance to Amy's choreography.  I certainly was.  David came in with a ton of preparation and was in command; fun and decisive in his approach.  His great energy and attention serve to "push" performers into either stepping up and matching the intensity he brings or backing down and retreating into one's personal cave. Auditions, to me, are always an exercise in discomfort, so the sooner we take our frailty and stick it in our backpocket, the better.  Best to get to the task of pretending we're the biggest stars in the world and completely owning the (49-seat) theatre.
Wearing my "vocal guy" hat was probably the simplest task of the day.  Since we are working to track (an iPod into a sound system -- welcome to the 21st century musical audition), the primary criterion for moving forward was "we have to be able to hear everything."  Being close to the action, I got to hear some lovely voices, but if the "Streisand belt" (the way she sounded circa 60's-70's) wasn't a part of the singer's chops rep, there would be relatively little chance for a lovely voice to be heard over a disco track.  Donna Summer is a classic example of a belt that gets heard over booty-shakin'....  
David's going to take a day or two to wrestle with some casting options and then the production team will get into the discussion.  
I'm going to keep posting Real Drunk demo tracks to Soundcloud as a fun exercise.  You might be able to hear me screwing stuff up or laughing or even autotuning like T Pain -- sometimes all hell breaks loose when I layer a vocal while trying to find the right melody.  They're just demos and I continually learn from them.  You can leave comments right on the track at specific parts if there's anything you like or anything that bugs you.  Feel free.
Thanks to everybody for coming out to audition yesterday.  I really enjoyed spending time you and look forward to seeing you again!