I'm So Mean.

I was really mean to Kim Kardashian in my previous post about the Celebrity Nullification Game. I'm sure she's a very nice lady. I think I'm just allowing her to embody the kind of TV celebrity most of us love to hate. Hey! They put themselves out there. Jeering from the sidelines is part of the show, isn't it?

So I was mean. But it totally subverts my angelic sweet guy image.

In acting class, I learned that I've not been speaking with my real voice. That what I think is my real voice actually sounds like a phony voice and me speaking in very low tones is actually my real voice which sounds like my fake voice (to me). It's a trick that played by your cranium.

That's why we hate recordings of our own voice.

So, I need to find my true voice! It's so weird to think that my real voice is not my real voice, but a phony voice that's hiding the real voice.

Today, we were at a memorial service for a Broadway actor named Kevin Gray. I didn't know him. But there's a kind of communal spirit in theater that's similar to church. Traditions they hang onto that tell them who they are. These memorial services are done sparsely. Usually in an afternoon. By permission or even a donation by the theater owners and performers. No one is ever "introduced" before coming onto the stage. They just come to the mic and speak: co-actors, friends, family.

The story they told of Kevin was that he was a most fearless and powerful singer/actor/dancer who changed a lot of people's lives in the theater by being a generous actor, and hilarious and fiercely professional. The stunning revelation was a video of him with Marie Osmond in The King and I. She was fantastic! And there's a clip where she talks about how he really just made her so comfortable. In the clip, I saw it. The way his King was more aggressive in taking Anna's waist. Pulling her closely with a strong jerk. Taking control. Brilliant.

When your entire life depends on going from show to show, stage to stage, as a gypsy, you find these rare people who simply make you happier because you get to be around them. A community is passed on, one person at a time. His death was shocking. A heart problem. He was still young and about to go into teaching, and he dropped dead shoveling show.

The heartbreak in the room was palpable. This was one of the good guys.

While waiting for Jim, who was having lunch with his Character Man team over a bowl of soup at the Polish Tea Room, I paced in front of the Majestic Theater, and like a prayer, recited my Richard II scene in my low voice. I sent Jonathan Marro an email about it and he said he was also practicing his very low tones. We're both looking for our real voice and we're gonna find it.

I wasted time and now doth time waste me
For now hath time made me his numbering clock

Yes! Do it now! 

The Celebrity Nullification Game.

Celebrity Nullification, the game. My new favorite game in this overly-connected world.

THE RULE: Identify a particularly obnoxious, untalented and ubiquitous celebrity while they're on the rise and then avoid ever hearing them speak until their celebrity cycle has run its course.

A perfect celebrity example would have been Paris Hilton, but I wasn't playing the game back when she was famous for doing nothing.

So, you have to be ready with the remote because they're likely to appear on commercials, the Internet, their own manufactured reality shows or talk shows.

If you ever hear their voice, even one time, you lose the game.

The current celebrity: Kim Kardashian.

I have never heard this woman's voice, nor have I watched a single second of her on TV except through imitators on Saturday Night Live. So, the only Kim Kardashian I know is the one making fun of her.

They almost caught me when I saw her face pop up on a commercial for California -- really? They think people will want to vacation in California because Kim Kardashian told them to? But I managed to hit the mute button on the remote just in time.

I have never seen one second of her TV shows. I do not wish to "Keep Up..." with her or her ridiculous family members. And it's amazing how the world looks when you see the face and body plastered on the cover of almost every grocery store check-out stand magazine and you still have no idea who she is or why she's famous -- and that becomes part of the game, too.

To figure out why is she famous. What does she do? I still don't quite know since I only know her through tabloid headlines.

She is also, apparently, a vampire.

Apparently, she's famous for her ass and is obsessed with being "pretty."

She has a mother who is competing with her for attention and is terribly jealous. Sisters who may or may not be going through the horror of being fatter than she is and who are also competing for attention.

She either hates her big ass or is proud of it. She is pregnant by some rich and famous entertainer of some kind and is going through all kinds of angst over her newly ballooned body. One week she hates it. The next week she's showing it off.

She is also, apparently, ridiculously stupid and untalented.

Our first Celebrity Nullification object happened by accident. It was when we were flooded with some celebrity on a show called "Kate Plus 8." It was a mother with 8 kids. And we could tell just from the flood of publicity we were not going to like this person, who seemed to be getting more airplay than anyone in the US -- for no apparent reason other than she had 8 kids and was divorcing her husband.

We hadn't necessarily intended to nullify her. It just kind of happened. She was suddenly everywhere and we didn't know why. Then we decided we never wanted to know why and started flipping the channel whenever she was announced to be on something.

Finally, though, I lost the game when I accidentally heard her while flipping past a talk show called The View. She was a co-host and I heard her voice.

GAME OVER.

Damn.

And now she's gone from the airwaves. If I could have just held on a little longer, I might have made it through her entire celebrity cycle.

If any of you are inadvertently playing the Celebrity Nullification Game, please let me know which celebrity you are nullifying. I'd love to know I'm not alone.

Manhattan Video Diary -- April 2013 Pt. 2

A walk up Broadway from Union Square. A bus ride to the United Nations building, a trip out to Coney Island for a fundraiser and much more!

Inside Every Piano Is A Song

i
Inside every piano is a song
A song only this piano can play
There's a soul of the guy who got drunk one night
Or the girl who threw up in his lap
A songwriter pounding the last songs before he dies
That spinster in her turn of the century dress

A barefoot kid just noodling around

A wannabe Bernstein
A wannabe John Lennon
A wannabe
Next
A wannabe Next

And all these people
Remain in the strings by the small damages
Each one does during the playing
A loosening of a peg
Wear on the moving parts
Each person hurts it a little
But it all adds up to a sound
Based on woulds
And a sound is a soul
And soul is a sound

I actually believe this

People are constantly asking me what I believe
I believe this

That there is a song in every piano
And if I don't find its song
I might miss out on having written
the Song
The song that will heal the world

ii

Over on the west side of manhattan
She is waiting for me
She does not know I'm coming
We have flirted with each other
We have even slightly kissed

But she will not remember me
She will never remember me
And she will have been with many others

Church girls
And folk guys in their cut-off jeans
And hairy chins
Jazz pros in porkpies
Classical students with backpacks

And yet, when I saw her,
It was like she'd been forgotten
Stuck in a corner in a tiny booth

All for $125 per hour

iii

They asked if I wanted her tuned
NO! For god's sake
And suck out all the soul?

She's been pounded, beaten, stroked, massaged
Felt covered mallets, dampers and pedals
Like driving a car
Like riding a bike
I even brought songs to get her started

Inside every piano is a song
That only it can play
A sound that only it could make
And I look for the sweet spot

It may be anywhere on the keyboard
But when I find it
When the vibrations in that spot start to line up
In that way that makes my body feel
Suddenly cleansed
Like a river of woodsound
Pouring into my lap
And up into my body

A song gets born
Because the sound begets the song
And those two beget a generation
Of still breeding vibrations
And those vibrations make more vibrations
And it's all specific to her
The imperfections are what make her beautiful

I've played the Antarctic Suite
On many pianos
But it only truly sounds like itself
On the lounge piano of a certain ship
At 7am approaching Antarctica

And Connected
On Jim's old piano now in residence
In Southern California
In the home of a treasured family

iii

So when I sit with you
My virgin bride
My job's to find the sweet spot
The spot that makes you jump
Right into my skin

let us find each other in the dark
I'll be there on the 15th

And I'll bring the $125 per hour
You won't remember me when I'm gone
But the others will know I was there

iv

"I've booked two hours and I'm going to record an entire album." I said to choir members this past Sunday morning, some of whom looked at me like I was some kind of nut -- and others who gave me a knowing smile, like "Yeah. It's about time."

The normal procedure for making an album is you spend hours and hours on each track, adding things, multiple takes, etc. working feverishly to process every bit of sound until it sounds and feels machine-made. It costs gajillions of dollars and me standing in a vocal booth, walled off from humanity. (Some a genius at it. I'm like a statue.)

So, I'm going to simply sit at this piano and get to know her.

Whenever I walk into a room with piano, I have to put my hands on her. I have to play something. I can feel this physical excitement coming from my mid-section. The vibrations of a piano -- string against wood -- bathe you. Embrace you.

So, he's gonna hit the ON button and I'll start playing. And we won't stop between takes unless I just need a break.

The songs from this album will have been written for various projects, but have mostly been sung by others, such as the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus and various singers (internationally!) who write and request material.

I wanted to find the most personal of these and do a definitive "Steve" recording, if only for myself, to remind myself what they sound like in their purest form.

Manhattan Video Diary - April 2013 Pt. 1

A great story about Milton Berle, a little Marilyn Monroe from them who was there, and meet my foot doctor plus lots of Manhattan and Jim and Steve take their daily exercise.

But we start with a cat in a pizza box.

Jim Brochu sings with the Great Marilyn Maye

This was completely improvised. Billy Stritch on piano. Marilyn Maye is a national treasure. They were raising money for Zani's Furry Friends, a pet rescue group.

Landfill Harmonic.

This is the kind of thing that brings tears to my eyes and takes my breath away.

One New Hell (the original).

I received a request through Facebook yesterday by a guy named Nick Pierce, had posted a youtube of "Save Me A Seat" on his wall.

Hi steve it was great finding you! I just had to post that song on my wall. I found it looking for one that was not in the Last session but was on a CD i got at a performance of Living In The Bonus Round before it transformed in The Last Session. I had the cd up until about 5 years ago and i have not been able to find the song. 

a line in the song goes..."I'm living one new hell after another...."

So, I went back through my folders, looking for "One New Hell" and was unable to find it. I thought it was on the Bonus Round Sessions CD, but it wasn't there. And then I remembered...

First of all, "One New Hell" was featured in "The Big Voice: God or Merman." But it was a rewrite of the earlier version, which is the one he was talking about -- which was featured on the very first CD I released called "Living in the Bonus Round with Steve S. and Friends."

Only 1000 copies of that CD were made and quickly sold or given away. It was a quickie I threw together even before the first NY production of The Last Session, using whatever demos I had lying around at the time. A few of those tracks were repackaged when I re-recorded most of the main songs, and added a bunch more, the CD that became The Bonus Round Sessions. (This is what you get when you are your own record label and everything is homemade -- stuff gets lost).

I looked everywhere for that version, and finally found it on the last pristine copy of that initial CD in the big bag of stuff that producer Carl White gave us last month. You can see it in the video diary from March 2013. I even mention in the video, when it popped up that I didn't have a copy of that CD.

And there it was. Wow! I had forgotten all about how blazing hot this performance is. I was all over that piano. It's a hard rocking song -- and the original lyric was based on an essay by a punk rocker named Billy Valentine in San Francisco about his time as a hustler/drug addict. I tried searching for him online, but to no avail.

Amy Coleman also recorded a version of this when we did the TLS-Souvenir CD featuring the L.A. cast, speaking of blazing hot.

I don't know why I left it off the repackaged Bonus Round Sessions. I guess I just thought it wasn't relevant to what was going on, or we had run out of space.

So, for you, reader, if you are interested here is a link to a download of the original ONE NEW HELL. Enjoy!

Think-piece on sitting at a piano alone and just playing music.

Yesterday, I sat at the piano, cleared my mind, and just started playing songs in no particular order. Jim had gone out to see Mark Nadler's new show at the York -- a last minute invitation and I was too exhausted from a long day of walking and socializing with some friends.

So, he went off to see it (and said it was fantastic). I knew Mark Nadler way back when, doing piano bars in the Village, a job for which I was not suited but wasn't bad at. At long as people could talk and drink, I was fine to have in a corner. Mark was more ambitious. I had no idea how be a night club entertainer. Did I mention Jim said it's great?

So, I was home. I watched a bunch of "Arrows" episodes, which put me in a zen mood and then I went to our little upright -- or, rather, Sylvia's upright. Barbara Spiegel's mother. She lived here until she died. Barbara says she would love knowing her piano is being used and sung around.

Knowing I'm going to be singing "Rescue" and "Lazarus Come Out" on Saturday, I started with them. Cindy Marchionda, from my acting class wrote me and said she wanted to be part of the Bonus Round Band that night. She asked, "How many are there?"

I said, "I don't know. Maybe just you and me."

That morning, I had worked out a duet arrangement for us and revised a "Lazarus" score. She'll lead the audience plus anyone else who comes to be in the band. (She didn't know she'd be the band leader. Never volunteer for anything; they may make you do something). So, I knew I needed to review those changes.

We're gonna turn "Rescue" into a love ballad. Not change any words. Just have a little fun with the animalistic imagery. And "Lazarus," it needs a new score. I've learned so much with Mark Janas as my musical mentor. Now I can look at it and know exactly how to write out the score.

But I didn't want to think about any of that.

I wanted, last night, to return to the original source. Open my heart and sing whatever came into my head. That's what I did with The Last Session. Over and over. And I still love singing those songs. They've become richer and more meaningful to me over time. I will sing them until I die (again).

And I didn't want to think about "shows." I wanted to play the songs that turned me on the most. And I'd know them because they'd be the ones to rise to my consciousness as I finish the current one. But that was my starting point.

Rescue -- and because we're making it a medley -- play a segue right into "Lazarus." Which, when I tried it, worked beautifully. Rescue is in E, so the B is common to the key of G, which is where we're going to get to "Lazarus." So, instead of playing an E chord at the end of "Rescue," I played a G chord, downshifting into the octave pulse in the left hand.

I thought about the show. That's how we'll do it. Easy.

Then, I sang it and tried to forget about Saturday's show. I am singing "Lazarus," but I"m thinking, "What song do I want to play next?"

Then I remembered "The Craving."

"The Craving" is a very dark song. It's about addiction. But there's something in the music that haunts me, and it reaches some very deep levels of sadness, which made me think of "Dead Inside."

Suddenly, I'm Tom Waits, I guess. Can't find the downside of low.

There I go again. For my next song, the Downside of Low by Roy Orbison.

Rescue Lazarus Come Out

The Craving

Dead Inside

Well, as long as we're in hell, we might as well go for the jugular.

Holy Dirt

Holy Dirt, the anti-hymn. The place where everyone dies. Now, normally, in New World Waking, we would go into "Lazarus Come Out." But I've already sung it and Holy Dirt is so very D-flat. I love D-flat. What else do I have in D-flat. And there it was, like a gift from above.

At A Hospice, In the Atrium

The sound of sadness. The comforting sound of letting it all go. Of being nothing. 

Richard II: No man with nothing shall be pleased until he be eased by being nothing.

"Hospice" ends on a healing note. So, time for change of pace. 

Franco Ate The Paperwork

He’s Coming Back

My Thanksgiving Prayer

War By Default

And then I got tired of not remembering the words to War By Default. So, went back and sang "Rescue" so review the changes. It'll be nice doing it as a duet.

That was the approximate order, at least as how I could reconstruct it. I didn't turn on anything to tape it nor did I stop and take notes. This was just what I wanted to hear at that moment. I was actually surprised that there were so many.

"Franco" and "War By Default" are from New World Waking. I was shaky because I couldn't remember all the words, but what was interesting to me, as a musician, was how I jammed on the music instead of playing them as written out in the piano part of the score.

This used to intimidate me when I was making the transition from singer/songwriter to "composer." How I never played any song the same way twice, because I've always played according to how I felt at any given moment. The emotion would color which octave I'd play in, and the tempo. 

And I felt this put me at a disadvantage in the world of theater because the goal there is to write down something very specifically for the musician/accompanist who is looking at it for the first time. In bands, we just wrote down chords. And you can do that, to a certain extent in score music, but for the most part, the more specific about which note, where, the better a chance that it will be played in a way that won't make you cringe.

A choir or chorus needs specificity.

I felt like a bit of an idiot when I began with TLS. I didn't know how to write any of it down except for the most rudimentary notes and chord symbols. And in that first workshop run, on Melrose Avenue I didn't "arrange" the vocals. We just made them up on the spot.

Then, one day, you wake up and someone says, "The producers would like to see a score."

Gulp. I don't think I had ever even seen the score to a show, much less have the knowledge to write it out to professional standards.

So, when others came along and began arranging and playing and changing things, I was utterly lost. Even if I didn't like something, I didn't know how to tell them what was wrong or how to do it right. And I'm not blaming them. This is what was in my own head. I was an amateur to the process -- and I was dying, a not insignificant part of the story. 

We didn't have time to teach me four years of music theory.

But, before all that. Before The Last Session was even conceived as a "show," there was just me at a piano playing what came to me with no rules, no expectations. They came from me in a flow. 

They were nothing. Just songs I had to write. Like any of another million gazillion songwriters. 

But they were things I need to say. Things I needed to express, and all I had was my mind, my voice (which is really the whole body) and my piano. (We always picture "throat" when we write "voice," but the voice comes from the whole body).

Just songs that I had to write. Songs I needed to write. Songs that, when I was in the pocket, actually heated me up from the inside. A furnace fires up when I'm just playing what comes when I think no one is watching.

When I go into the studio on the 15th, even though there will a guy at the board, and maybe a friend of two, I'm going to try to get into that head space and just play it like I'm feeling it. Shut out the rest of the world and just go in. Feel for the inner heat and then follow it like a puppy dog.

First New Bonus Round Recording Session, May 15.

I feel like Gideon in The Last Session. I have now booked a studio for two hours, two weeks from yesterday.

Two hours with John Kilgore in his studio here in Manhattan. We met briefly yesterday when I went over to check out the piano, a deliciously seasoned Yamaha grand. John, a veteran on the New York scene, knows all about live studio recording, so the plan is to be relaxed and just get a real performance.

He asked if I wanted it freshly tuned. Oh hell no. Absolutely not! And kill all the soul?

It's tucked into a corner of the studio. I sat down. Started playing Db chords. Actually, I was playing "At A Hospice, In An Atrium." The sound was rich and full and loose. Yummy.

At some point, I'm definitely going to invite a Bonus Round Choir. But, perhaps, for this first session, since it's only two hours, and this is a new environment for me, that might be asking too much. Or maybe not. Like I'm going to try to control this? Oh hell no. Absolutely not!

Now to choose a song. "Atrium" is the one that is calling out to me, but that may be because it's probably the newest-ish. But I really want to play and sing "Holy Dirt." Or "Lazarus Come Out!"

Decisions!

REMINDER: Jim and Steve sing for Zani's Furry Friends on May 4 at Birdland. 5pm

And so many stars, including the just-added Marilyn Maye, one of the greatest vocalists of our time.

My Best Vegetarian Chili Recipe

Today, I made the best veggie chili I've ever eaten. I used several recipes and then just started making it up as I went along. I should put a list of ingredients, but I made it up as I went along. So, that's how I'm spelling it out here.

I cut up a BIG SWEET POTATO and TWO CARROTS.

I cut up ONE ONION and TWO CLOVES OF GARLIC and threw them into a frying pan/skillet with a BIG POUR of OLIVE OIL. And threw the SWEET POTATO chunks and CARROTS into the pan with them, and covered it on med-high heat, stirring it around until the onions turned clear.

Into the big pot, I tossed all these ingredients along with BIG CAN OF CRUSHED TOMATOES, THREE CANS OF VARIOUS TYPES OF BLACK AND KIDNEY BEANS, along with the water in the can.

Then, a BIG TABLESPOON of CHIPOTLE CHILI POWDER, and about a HALF TABLESPOON of REGULAR CHILI POWDER.

Then, SEVERAL BIG SHAKES OF GARLIC SALT and SEVERAL GOOD SHAKES of SALT.

Then, ONE BAG OF TEXTURED VEGETABLE PROTEIN.

Then, I brought it to a boil, then down to a simmer. And then cooked it for about an hour, stirring frequently.

I forgot it this time, but a good teaspoon of CUMIN makes it nice.

And when I tasted it, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

TALES FROM THE BONUS ROUND: Portland Oregon 1996

First time a big ocean liner

Sailed up the Wilhammette and docked
In Portland Oregon

They lifted the bridge

Helicopters flew over

Flood lights

Afternoon and evening tv news

On board that ship was a dying man
Taking the last cruise of his life
A cruise to Alaska

He had already celebrated the “last birthday” of his life

The previous October

This was now May

He was also desperate to not die
So he made a decision that he would fight

The diarrhea that was draining the life from his

stick thin body

He drank a narcotic syrup to slow down his system
Anti-diarrhea pills on top of that

And he raided every food buffet possible

Even if he could just gain a pound

He a Stephen King character
A ghoul face poking from inside a hoodie

The image you avert your eyes away from

Wasting away
A barely-walking skeleton

He had already held off his death
For the past year
By writing and singing music
Of brutal honesty

Rage, courage, and hope

Written with nothing left to lose

It had worked

The music had had measurable effects
So, he had come back from the brink before

Now, he needed to play the songs for someone
He needed them to be heard

They had had such a magical effect on him
He thought the world needed them
Maybe they could also heal the world!
But nobody knew him
He was not famous

As he pulled into Portland

He remembered that it was supposed to be a hipster town
There was a singer/songwriter vibe
If he could just find someone

To listen to his songs
Maybe an open mic

The entry into Portland was a celebration

With the news copters overhead

Boats saluting with sprays of water

The ship docked downtown
Right at the end of a
Small maze of streets

With bars

He went looking for something

The ghoul was frail

He walked the narrow, cobbled streets

He said, “I am going to find someone

Who will let me sing”

But it was locked up tight
Bars aren’t open at 10 AM

Then a sign
A blackboard on the street
“Open mic. 9pm”

That won’t work

The ship will have left by 9 pm

The door was propped open. Lights off.

Black interior. The harsh sunlight from the doorway lit

Two guys sitting around

Holding guitars

On break from
Cleaning the floors

Chairs piled in the corner

They’re friendly

“I have these songs.” says Skeletor.

“What do you play?” they ask.

“Piano.”

“No piano here, man.”

“I can sing a cappella.”

Skeletor won’t let them out of this

They listen.

Singing: “I heard of a group
With someone like me
Who felt the way I feel...”

Two weeks later, after the cruise,

After all the buffets, the medicine
Enough calories to feed a small nation
He hit the scales

Lost: Another pound.

That’s when he knew it really was over.

It scared him, but he accepted it.

And when he accepted it
An unexpected comfort and peace
Came over him.