I’m making a slight departure this week. Some of you know I am a multidisciplinary artist - a writer, photographer, graphic design artist, musician, and songwriter. StoryLife is part of a transition I am making from a career as a professional songwriter and regional touring performer to building a life on pillars of writing, design, and photography. Today, something blasted me into the past - and the future all at the same time.
During the touring years, part of my income came from working for a music placement service. I listened to hundreds of songs and voices per week, tasked with picking out those that fit our company's film/tv requests. Occasionally, a song or a voice would cross my desk that excited me enough to pick up the phone and call someone about it, or send an emphatic email ending with, Listen to this!!!!!!!
I lived in Los Angeles for five years, and was a staff songwriter for Warner-Chappell Music, experimenting with playing in a rock band. When we weren't gigging, we went to other bands' gigs. There was a club called Silverlake Lounge - one of the oldest bars on the Eastside of LA.
A friend told me about a band playing one night, "You should go see them."
I walked into a dingy, dark, crowded place with low ceilings and a tile floor. The bar sat at the back of the room with people standing three-deep, waiting to get a drink. Loud cover music was blaring through the speakers. I stood at the edge of the dance floor while my boyfriend Tim, an outstanding rock-n-roll bass player, stood in the fray to get us a drink.
A woman with brown shoulder-length hair and sculpted bare arms stepped onto the stage, picked up the bass guitar, and slung it over her shoulder. A young man with floppy black hair sat on the drum throne, adjusted some cymbals, and picked up a couple of sticks. Another player stood at the keyboards, and the lead singer grabbed the electric guitar. They didn't say anything. The musicians all hit the downbeat at the same time, and an electric feeling pulsed through me.
By the second verse of the first song, goosebumps stood up on my arms. It was a unique sound, not what I would usually consider, "my thing." But the woman radiated rock star energy, and the man's voice was raspy, full of emotion and dynamic.
Tim walked over by the time they were crescendoing the end of the song, handed me a vodka cranberry, and said, "What is this shit?" He nodded towards the stage.
"This is the next band that's gonna make it," I said. This band would be noticed, signed to a label, and would succeed. I knew it. I felt it in my bones, validated by goosebumps on my skin.
Tim laughed, "It sounds like noise to me." I smiled at him. We were in our early thirties, but he was old-school and considered any music after 1979, total crap.
"No. You watch. They're gonna make it." A surreal sense of knowing set down on me that proved true. That band was the Silversun Pickups in the early days of their career. Two years later I heard them repeatedly on the radio.
This morning I was scrolling Facebook and clicked on a post I would usually pass by. It was a blind audition for The Voice in Norway. I'm typically not into those shows at all, but I gave this video a listen.
Goosebumps stood up on my skin, and a surreal sense of knowing set down on me. I was hearing something extraordinary. The artist is Jørgen Dahl Moe from Norway, and the emotion he expresses through his voice is undeniably powerful.
Stylistically it’s my kind of music - a singer-writer and wonderful guitarist. It may not be the kind of music you usually enjoy or listen to, but I feel compelled to pick up the phone and call you to tell you about it. Or at the very least, send you a sentence that ends in, Listen to this!!!!!!!!
If Tim were sitting here, sipping coffee on the couch, he would likely say, "Who the hell is that?"
I would respond, "The next artist that's going to make it." One way or another, the world will start hearing a lot more from Jørgen Dahl Moe. I just know it.
This guy is amazing!!
I've always relied on the goosebump factor and it never fails. Great article. Write more of this stuff!