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Margret
Avery Talks About Her Music |
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There have been many well-known and outstanding singers who have
almost had their careers sidetracked due to stage fright, stars such as
Barbra Streisand, Fiona Apple, Adele, Beyonce, Andrea Bocelli and Carly
Simon had stage fright to such a degree that she once passed out during
a performance and Renee Fleming. We mentioned all of those people,
because our guest at Riveting Riffs Magazine, Margret Avery is also an
outstanding singer in her own right and she had to learn how to cope
with stage fright, as well.
Margret Avery grew up in Ohio where when she was growing up she sang in
school productions.
“The first things that I sang when I was very young were Hungarian
Christmas carols. Later I had a girl group that I put together. There
were four of us singing (again) in school productions and we did some
classic Motown things. It was a lot of fun. We didn’t go anywhere with
it, it was just something that we enjoyed.
I started to develop some stage fright and when I made my plans to come
to New York to go to college I put it (singing) on the backburner. I
decided to make a different career choice, but I had a roommate who
would hear me sing, while I was doing my homework. I was sitting there
as a designer stitching and sewing and she could hear me sing. She would
pop her head around the corner and say to me, what are you doing with
that voice? (She laughs). She said you could be making money, why aren’t
you singing? I said maybe another time. She tried to introduce me to a
couple of people, but I just wasn’t motivated and I knew I had to battle
stage fright. Here is the
story that clinched the deal for me.
There must have been three thousand kids in this room. I walked in and
she walked in. A man walked
up to me and he said can I help you? I said yeah, a man stopped me on
the street. He said wait right here. He said do you have a headshot? I
said what is a headshot? He said I need a headshot and I thought I am
standing here. I had been
living in New York for a couple of years, but I didn’t know anything
about the steps or the protocol. He went into a room and then he came
out and he said you are going in next.
I went in next and there were all of these people sitting in
chairs lined up. I was a wreck. I turned my back to them and I said can
I sing this way? (She bursts out laughing, as she remembers that day.)
The nerves really kicked in and I could barely get through the song.
I kept thinking why am I doing this? This is not what I should be
doing with my life. They thanked me and they were very sweet and
patient. They said take your time and try again. They were really
encouraging me. I wasn’t
ready, I wasn’t prepared and I didn’t know what hit me.
When they opened the door my friend Debra fell in, because her ear was
pressed against the door. It was hilarious. It was a Lucy moment. My
friends say I am a combination of Lucille Ball and Pamela Anderson.
She fell in and they listened to her next. The door opened
fifteen seconds later and I said what happened? She opened her mouth and
no sound came out. We were laughing so hard.
After the audition I kept singing up a storm, feeling relieved it was
over, and I met a young woman who said she thought I had a really good
voice and she asked me if I was studying with anyone. I said no I just
like it. She told me I should c all her dad’s vocal coach. I said who is
your dad? She said my dad is Joel Grey. You might have heard of him? I
was talking with Jennifer Grey. The whole thing was serendipitous. I
wasn’t pursuing singing at all, but it just kept coming to me like the
universe pushing me saying you have to do this.
I studied with this vocal coach for quite a few years and she only
wanted to train everyone in Opera.
Her theory was if you could sing Opera you could sing anything,
but my heart wasn’t in it. If you are going to do Opera you really have
to be into it. It is like a ballet dance, you have to really want to do
that. She was very excited to be working with me. It was a joyful
experience, but I wanted to do something else. I felt more like Pop,
Jazz and Blues and with some R&B in there.
I wanted to do some things that were more modern.
I studied with Joel Grey’s vocal coach for quite a few years and then I
went on to work with a piano player who did some arranging for me. We
did a lot of rehearsing and he encouraged me to put together my own
show. That is when I started doing different shows around New York. I
moved on to different vocal coaches and one day one of them said to me
Margret what about writing your own song? I said I keep thinking about
writing my own song. Every year I would make a New Year’s resolution to
do something different in music that I had not done before.
That was the year that I said I would like to write my own songs.
She said you can do it just start. It felt like a black hole that I was
diving into and I didn’t know what to do. She said think of a melody and
just start thinking of the words and they just came spilling out (for
emphasis she repeats they just came spilling out).
The title of my first CD is called
A Place That’s Make Believe
(It is also the name of the title song),” she says.
As for the song and the album “A Place, That’s Make Believe,” she tells
us that it really is about a place that is make believe.
“It is about the freedom that I felt after going through divorce.
Over time as I sing it (now) it has different meanings. It is a
classic Blues song. It is about finding your own freedom. It is the key
that unlocked the door for me to walk through it and for me to start
feeling braver about writing my own material.
It is about having a fear of entering this territory that I had
never been in before.
There are no rules. I have written a song by hearing a melody. When I
hear a melody I feel like the music is talking to me and there is a
story under that melody line. I have also written songs when the lyrics
come first. In writing ‘No Dance Without You’ I collaborated with two
producers, David Andronico and Peter Macchia. We wrote the song based on
one of my poems. In just a couple of hours we re-worked the words and
came up with the melody line between the three of us, and the song was
born. I thought now there’s a piece of magic. That was nice. I love it
and I want to do more. I have volumes and volumes of poetry waiting to
be born into song,” recalls Margret Avery.
The first thing to strike you about Margret Avery’s vocals is the deep,
soulful quality.
“I think it is because life and life experiences mold you. The beauty of
music is when you are connected again to what you are saying with the
music it just pours forth. That richness or the depth comes from the
experiences that you are holding within your soul and you are releasing
it and getting it out and sharing it basically without telling the whole
story,” she says.
“There are five originals on the album and the rest are covers. There is
a song that was written by my friend Luke Walter Jr. and he was from
Belgium. He had a very soulful voice. (Luke) and his wife came to hear
me sing a couple of times. His wife happened to be a photographer that I
worked with and that is how I got to know him.
They invited me to dinner one night and he played some of his songs for
me. He was signed to BMG
out of Belgium. He said I would love it if you would take a couple of my
songs and sing them however you want. I said what a gift. That is so
great. He said however you want to interpret them and however you want
to sing them is completely fine.
I took the songs home and I listened to them. One of the songs on the CD
is called “September,” and I was so excited for him to hear what I was
going to do with the song. He had cancer before and it came back with a
vengeance. He became very sick, while he was on tour and he returned to
New York. He lay down on the couch and he didn’t get up. He never got to
hear…and I always say I hope he is hearing in the heavens. I love the
song and I know I gave it a completely different slant than he did,”
says Avery.
“September,” is a stirring song and Margret Avery’s vocals are emotive
and powerful.
Margret Avery shines on the Bluesy, fun “Wild Women,” a song that begs
the question why was this lady never signed to a major record label. It
is a song that stops short of being bawdy, but it certainly can be
described as playful, evidenced by the line “You don’t get nothing by
being an angel child…” The song however, is also one of empowering women
in relationships, albeit in a somewhat fun manner.
Our conversation circles back to how it began talking about stage fright
and if there was a particular event that acted as a catalyst.
“I didn’t have any one traumatic thing happen to me. There are people
who are afraid to get up and speak in front of a crowd, so to get up and
sing… (voice trails off). One
of the things that I struggled with is you have to be emotionally
connected with what you are saying. Sometimes I felt I would just fall
apart if I was going to sing a certain song. Am I going to lose it on
stage? Will I start crying? Will I be bouncing around and dancing? All
of that comes with training, but I didn’t have that. I was just raw.
(Many) entertainers have had that to a certain degree, but you have to
find a way to deal with it and that is what I did. I studied very hard.
I studied with great teachers and they all helped me to understand the
preparedness of not just the song, but of my own emotional connection.
One night after performing and my knees were shaking and I was not sure
I was going to get through it. I looked at people’s faces in the
audience and everybody relates a song to their life and their own
experiences. I thought I have to relate to the lyrics I am singing or I
can’t sing the song. It is really that simple to me. You have to find a
way to be connected to the song, but you also have to understand that
everyone is going to take what you are singing and they are going to
relate to it (in their own way). That is why certain songs become
favorites more than others. We all have a song or two that brings back
memories or that we can relate to.
Once I realized that I was able to be as connected as I wanted
and as passionate as I could be about the song.
No one is going to know my story unless they know me personally.
Nobody is going to know. They don’t have a clue, because they don’t know
my life. That was a light bulb moment for me.
They are going to take the passion and the song and they are
going to (apply) it to their life.
Sometimes before a performance when you can chat with the audience about
a song that you have written you can say this song was born out of this
experience. For my last performance there was a song called “Love Is the
Source.” The music was (composed) by someone else, but I wrote the
lyrics, shortly after my brother Greg passed away from the AIDS virus in
the nineties. It was a big shock to all of us in the family and it hurt
a lot. There were hundreds of other people in the industry that I knew
who were passing away. It was devastating. I chose in that time to bury
my grief as much as possible. I took the inspiration, love and guidance
that I had from so many men and women who had passed from this horrific
illness and I put it into lyrics. I sang it in my last performance and
everyone loved it. I am really glad that I wrote it, because it is very
cathartic. It is all about them and keeping their legacy alive,” she
says.
Margret Avery is many things, including being a prolific poet. One of
her poems became the song, “No Dance Without You.” She collaborated with
producers David Andronico and Peter Macchia to rework the words and to
create a melody. It is a beautiful love song that says, “There
is no tango without you / I don’t want to dance without you.” Let’s
hope that soon we will hear more of Margret Avery’s beautiful words put
to song, words that are as beautiful as her vocals.
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After
I got out of college and I was walking down the street with a friend and
we were on a lunch break from a hair salon and producer and assistant
director Michael Hausman stopped me on the street to ask me if I was an
actress and I said I am not. He said are you sure you are not an
actress? Can you sing? My friend kept kicking me on the shin and she
said yes she can (She laughs heartily) and he gave me a flyer and he
said please come to this audition on Saturday. We are having an open
call. I took the piece of paper and later I threw it in the garbage. The
friend that I was with was yelling at me and she pulled it out of the
garbage. She said you are going to this! I am going with you. She was a
frustrated Rock and Roll singer. I said if I am doing this you have to
sing. We went to this audition on our lunch hour. 