Hey Joybell fans!  Here's the final chapter in my AGT saga!  Thanks for following!

Chapter 4

I waited just outside the back stage area for about 10 minutes. There was a guy who fitted me with a mic that I was to wear only in the backstage area. I would have to take it off when I went out on stage, as it would interfere with the mics we set up during our sound check. I should mention that as a contestant, you are video taped all the time. There were cameras in the holding area on us every minute. Even back stage, every movement you make, and every word you say is taped. (And of course, AGT owns all of this footage.)

They finally showed me in to the back stage area. I’ve been in plenty of back stages before, and this one wasn’t much different, except for two main things: one, Nick Cannon, and two, you could see the celebrity judges sitting in their places out front. The back stage was fairly dark, and totally no-frills. You could see the cat walks overhead, the workings for the curtains, the monitors for what was being taped, equipment, cameras, mics, and lots and lots of crew members. I was backstage right, and backstage left had all of my (and the other acts’) equipment. Meg and Miguel, the producers, were there with me, along with the producers for the other acts that were waiting and performing. It was quite crowded. They sat me down to chat with two of the other contestants while we were waiting for our turn. My attention kept wavering from these chats, though as there was a contestant performing the whole time, and I kept hearing the crowd applauding, the crowd booing, the judges’ buzzers. I couldn’t actually hear the performers very well. And I was all up in my own head with the pending performance, and these noises—especially the buzzers—added to my anxiety big time! I was trying to remember what the producer said about the procedures, and what to expect: Just before we left the holding area he said, “The stage hand will bring you a mic to talk to the judges before you play. Go out and stand on the big red X. Remember this—the celebrity judges are highly paid and highly opinionated. At this point in the competition you will need a ‘yes’ vote from all four of them. No majority here—it’s all or nothing. But if you hear a buzz, don’t worry about it. Keep performing. If you hear two buzzes, keep going. Three, keep going. But if you hear four buzzes, you have to stop playing. After you’re done performing you go back to the big red X and stand there and talk to the judges and get your votes. And remember, out of 100,000 contestants, you are one of only about 800 that made it this far. You can be proud of this accomplishment! Also remember you have a good chance of being seen by millions of viewers, and this exposure can be great for you, even if you don’t make it to the next round in Vegas. Talk to the judges. Argue with them, if you want. Stand up for yourself and make your voice heard.” So I’m trying to keep all this in mind, and nerves are right up there, and Nick Cannon is talking to me, asking me questions about what I’m going to do, and I didn’t tell him I was playing “Like a Virgin” because Meg said to keep it a surprise for the judges, and Heidi and mom and Kirt are there supporting me (although Heidi is a bit gaga over Nick Cannon!) When it finally got to be my turn, they took the mic off me and I walked out there and stood on the big red X.

My eyes gravitated straight to Howie Mandell. I really didn’t know the others except by reputation, which wasn’t that encouraging. I thought of Howard Stern as kind of a hard guy, a bit crude and rude; I thought of Heidi Klum as a model (what does she know about music, anyway?) and the “clueless” one of the group; I didn’t really know Mel B, because I don’t know the Spice Girls, but she was the only musician in the group; but I had seen Howie in Mt Clemens last year, and I thought of him as good natured and a nice guy. I found myself looking right at him and saying, “HI!”. He gave me a huge smile and a huge, “HI!” right back! He asked about the bells, and I gave him my speech about having 37 handbells, usually played by a group of 10 or 11 people, and told him how I had written my own arrangement for the bells and the orchestrational accompaniment on my digital keyboard. He seemed intrigued! The other judges let us talk. I felt like it was just nervous rambling on my part! But I felt like he was trying to put me at ease when he said, “Great! Let’s see what you have for us!”

I was ready to hit the “play” button on my keyboard and begin, but a stage manager held up his hand and said to wait. Evidently there was a technical problem, lighting, sound—I never found out. But I had to stand there with my finger on the button in front of the judges and all those people in the bright spotlights and just….stand there! I got to thinking about it later. When I start my show I like to come out and start playing. I don’t talk first—I just come out ringing. It’s part of the timing of the show. I think it’s important to the “wow” factor. Anyway, I’m sure this horrible silence lasted at least a minute. Maybe two. It was an eternity, anyway. I started doubting. I had a sudden impulse to turn the keyboard volume down, but I resisted it. We did our sound check—just leave it alone! I was sure my jacket was riding up in the back. Crazy thoughts! Finally I got the go-ahead, and I hit the button.

I played through the first chorus of the song and the crowd started clapping along. That was extremely encouraging! New York City loves me!! I started into the first verse—all was well! I was smiling large and jumping around totally happy. And then bursting into my utopia came the unmistakable, undeniable, utterly obnoxious, out of tune with my beautiful song, sound of the dreaded buzzer. Now I don’t know how many of you are handbell soloists, but maybe you can imagine the amount of concentration it takes. That awful buzzer is a major distraction! But I remembered that the producer said to not worry about it—just keep going. It was hard, but I managed to keep my concentration and did not miss a note. I kept going. I wasn’t smiling as much after that, maybe, but I was still doing a good job. But I started into the final chorus and got another buzz. I only had about 15 seconds left of my song, so I finished it up. I don’t actually know if I made a mistake or not. My mind was a bit mushy at this point. But I remembered to go back out and stand on the big X, and the stage hand brought me a mic and I heard from each of the judges. First thing I did was look up and see who buzzed me. It was Howard Stern and Heidi Klum. Mom and family told me later that Howard buzzed first. Nick Cannon came out to get the judges comments started, but I barely saw him. Howie was first. He was very nice, actually. He wasn’t one of the buzzers, for one thing. And he said, “I have never seen anything like that in my life before! I feel ‘Like A Virgin’!” Again, he consciously or unconsciously put me more at ease. His comment was that he couldn’t tell the difference between the keyboard track and the bells. I did actually say something to him about being proud of my “blend”. Mel B was also pretty nice to me. And she recognized that what I played had a high level of difficulty. But she also commented about my sound. Too much accompaniment. Then came Heidi Klum. She was the first nasty one. She said my performance lacked energy, and that it was the longest 90 seconds she had had to sit through that night. I looked at her like she was crazy. I mean, my feet left the floor a couple of times, and everything! All I could say to here was, “Really.” and shake my head incredulously. But the real nasty guy was Howard Stern. He said my act was boring, he didn’t like that I never looked up at the audience, my arrangement was too repetitive, and a bunch of other criticisms that sort of flew over my head. The one thing I remember clearly was that he actually said that handbells had the most annoying sound he’d ever heard. I just said that I had to disagree with him on that. Then Nick asked Howie for his vote, then Mel, then Heidi, then Howard. All no. Two buzzers and four “nos”.

And then it was over. I turned to my right, but there was no one to give my mic back to, so I turned back to my left and went off stage with it. Nick Cannon was the first person I saw. He put his arm around my shoulders and said, “Don’t listen to them. You’re terrific! And don’t stop playing!” Meg said she was “so sorry”, and Miguel, well, I just remember his stupid grin. Someone took the mic away from me. Kirt and my Heidi and mom were there, but I can’t remember what they said. A camera man approached me and asked me to go over what the judges had said, and what I thought of them. I couldn’t think very well, but I was a little proud of myself later when I told my sister what I said and I saw her reaction. I said, “Well Howie was very nice, and so was Mel, but Heidi was mean, and Howard was just….annoying!”

By this time it was 9:00 PM, and I was thoroughly exhausted.

A stage hand took us around the back to the other side of the back stage so we could get our equipment. I felt a little dazed and punch drunk as I put the bells in their cases and Kirt and I packed up all our things. One of the stage hands told me the same thing Nick said about my act, only using a bit more “colorful” language! We got everything on the cart, and Heidi and Kirt took it out the back way, and a stage hand came to guide mom and me back to the holding area so I could get all my stuff. But he didn’t know where he was going. Granted, it was a huge building, but you’d think they’d allot this task to someone who knew their way around! We ended up taking the longest route possible to get back to the holding area. I bet we walked for 15 minutes. My feet were killing me!!

We finally got back to the holding room and I found my belongings, and went to check out. They gave me $50.00 for my promised meal allowance and a form to fill out to get reimbursed for my travel expenses. Another person told me how wrong the judges were, and how great I was. We walked back to our hotel. Everyone was hungry, so I went with them and tried to eat a salad. I paid enough for it—I figured I should at least eat it! But I didn’t get too much down. My sister, Vicky and her husband, John and her son, Brian had been in the audience. They sat there about 3 hours until it got to be my turn. They told me stuff I couldn’t see from my vantage point on stage. Vicky told me that when they started the taping and introduced the celebrity judges, Howard answered the “how are you” question with a very crude remark involving his crotch, so I felt my instincts were right about him, anyway. Vicky also told me that as soon as Howard buzzed me, Nick came out on stage (behind me—I couldn’t see him), and threw his arms out and down and mouthed, “But Howard—it’s ‘Like a Virgin’!” as if to say, “What in the hell are you thinking??”. That made me feel slightly better, too.

But all I wanted to do was go home. It’s my go-to place when I’m upset. But we went up to our room. It was nearly midnight by this time, the room was paid for, and I knew we could leave in the morning.

I did sleep for a couple of hours, but got up around 2:00 or so and wrote in my diary. I had time to process the experience and I kept thinking. Too much thinking keeps you awake! My main thought was that they messed up my sound. They had the keyboard too loud, the treble bells too loud, the bass bells too soft, and the middle bells not at all. At least, that’s what I kept getting out of the judges’ comments. I was filled with regrets for not doing a better stage check. But I had put my trust in the professionals. I started to realize how unrealistic this was. I’ll bet you anything none of them had ever miked a handbell in their lives. Probably never even saw one up close before. Later, when mom and Kirt and Heidi and I talked about it I found out that they didn’t like the sound at all during our stage check. But they never said anything. I got mad at them all later! But now, several months after the event, I realize that the judges remarks conflicted with each other. Howie said he couldn’t tell the bells from the keyboard, and Howard said the bells were too loud and super annoying.

My only consolation was that I may still get on TV, and millions of people would see a handbell solo. But it was nearly 2 months before the AGT season began. The first show was set to air on May 27, and I didn’t know if I would get on that show, or a subsequent show, or not get any air time at all. I did email Meg to find out, but she said they don’t actually know who will be on a taped show until a week before it airs. She said I would get an email letting me know. And she was right. I got an email from her on May 21, which was like a form letter, addressed to me and several other contestants, saying I would be on the show that aired May 27.

Then I started to really get nervous. My biggest fear was that they would make me look like a clown. They had hours of video footage of me—much of it when I wasn’t aware I was being filmed. They can put all that into whatever context they want, purely based on their definition of “entertainment value”. I was a total wreck all week. Finally the night of May 27 arrived, and I made Kirt sit next to me and watch the show. I don’t watch much television, and when I do it’s usually something I tape so I can watch it without the commercials, and at a time at my own convenience. But I couldn’t wait that long. I watched the whole show live, annoying commercials and all, torturing myself the whole time with projections of imminent public ridicule. This feeling intensified severely when one of the acts came on—a singer who got four buzzes within the first 15 seconds. They did everything they could to make him look as foolish as possible. I just couldn’t shake the thought that maybe that’s what Meg wanted me for all along—clown material. And I found it hard to be proud that I was one of 800 who made it out of 100,000 contestants when this guy made it, too. Speaking as a musician I can safely proclaim that he had no talent whatsoever! What in the hell was he doing getting all this air time? They actually let him do his whole song, even after he had been buzzed. Finally they showed my act. Well, they showed about 15 seconds of my act in a video montage of losers who got buzzed. They decided to air Heidi Klum’s comment about how bored she was, and in the clip of Howard Stern watching me play, they showed him smiling like he liked it! And in the clip of Howie they showed him with such a confused look of unreality, like he wasn’t sure he was really seeing someone actually playing a bunch of bells. And he was the one who was the nicest to me! Reality TV my butt!

So that’s where it ended. All those months of writing and practicing, all those heart-skipping moments when I’d see an AGT email in my inbox, all those hours of nervous waiting in the holding and backstage areas, all the thrill and agony of the performance, and it came down to a 15 second clip and they never even said my name.

So I have decided that what the judges said about me doesn’t really mean anything. It took me weeks to come to this conclusion. I can’t tell you how many nights I went to bed playing it over and over, that bright stage permanently imprinted on my retinas, hearing the buzzers and bad comments, and feeling so bad, and how many mornings I woke up and all that was the first thing on my mind. It really dominated my thoughts for weeks, making normal tasks very difficult. I just felt so humiliated. Performers are ego creatures, to be sure, and this big a blow to my ego was a bit overwhelming. I felt my career was halted, I had let the handbell world down, and I didn’t know what to do with myself: basically all the major overreaction stuff. It took a long time to put it into a more realistic perspective.

Some people have said that I should try again, but I don’t think I will. One thing I have learned from this experience is that I don’t really want my show to be a Las Vegas act. If I was a singer, guitar or piano player, I could have a lot more shows than I book now. But handbells don’t fit comfortably into the entertainment industry; at least not yet. But every time people like me work up the courage and do something like this, it brings more and more attention to the handbells. Maybe some day they will be treated like a real instrument!

Okay, y'all!  Here's the next installment of my AGT adventure!  Don't forget, if you'd like to follow the blog, just go down to the bottom of the page to subscribe.  Thanks!!

Chapter 3

So it was March 23^rd, and I still had one more rewrite on “Like A Virgin”.  Producer Meg said that she thought the chorus had the biggest “Wow” factor, so she wanted me to start with that.  I had originally started with the verse (like Madonna had done).  So I rearranged it to start with the chorus, and I used a couple of octaves to cover those few measures, went through the verse, hit the chorus again, and then used pretty much the same ending I had used before.  The arrangement was meant to hit them with a “Wow!  I can’t believe she just did that!”, and on the second chorus it was supposed to be a “OMG she did it AGAIN!” thing.  And we only had 10 days left before I had to pack up the bells and head to New York. 

We did decide to drive, although we could have shipped the bells and flown. Or we could have taken the train.  AGT would have paid all that.  They did give us a travel reimbursement for driving, though, so we thought it would be better to drive ourselves.  They also provided lodging (one room) for the person or people who were actually going to be performing, for two nights.  We were to arrive in New York on the evening of the 3^rd, check in to the hotel, and then I had a stage call (basically a sound check) scheduled for 10:00 AM on the 4^th:  the day of the actual taping.  I had a bunch of family coming to see me perform, too, but they weren’t provided transportation and lodging.  My daughter, Heidi Scheiderer, who lives in Indiana, drove up to Toledo to meet us and we spent the night of April 2^nd there, and got a really early start to New York on the 3^rd.  My mom, Janet Mullennix, my sister, Vicky Sleziak, and her husband John were flying.  My cousin, the pilot, Fred Deakins, helped arrange their flights,  (Thanks, Fred!), but he couldn’t be there. And my nephew, Brian Brown (Vicky’s son) lives in New York, and actually works a few blocks from Madison Square Gardens Theater.  So it was Mom, Vicky, and John on the plane, and Kirt, Heidi, and me in the car.  And off we go!

We arrived in New York right at rush hour.  I live near Detroit, and I thought I knew traffic, but you don’t know traffic until you hit New York at 5:00 PM.  We were in New Jersey, about 30 miles from the New York border, and we just kept going slower and slower. Those last ten miles before the tunnel took us at least an hour and a half.  And then it took us an hour to get though the tunnel.  But it was exciting to see the New York skyline all around us—it was our first trip ever to New York—that we really didn’t mind that much.  Well, Kirt did, but he was driving!  Heidi and I were snapping all kinds of pictures!  It was great!  We finally arrived at the Affinia Manhattan Hotel, unloaded all our equipment and luggage onto carts, gave our car to a valet, and finally got inside.  It was a really cool old hotel.  We were on the 14^th floor, and there were still a lot of floors higher!  We had a great view of the Madison Square Gardens Theater (right across the street) from the window of our room.  The room only had one bed, and Heidi wanted to stay with us, so we got a cot brought up for her (which we had to pay for). 

the room had a big “living” area including a curtained off section with a big desk, computer hookups, and coffee pot.  Oh, and a great big walk in closet (which we didn’t use) and an itty-bitty bathroom!  But it was a very nice room.  We went downstairs to the restaurant for something to eat, and then went back upstairs and tried to get some sleep.  Mom and Vicky and John were staying in an apartment they were able to rent for two nights (arranged by a friend of Brian’s) and they and Heidi did a little sight seeing before they turned in.  Kirt and I stayed in.  We had a big day coming up!!

We knew we had to be in Madison Square Gardens Theater for a 10:00 stage check, but we really wanted to leave early, because we had been told we couldn’t take our cart in the front doors.  There were areas that there were stairs blocking our way, and we couldn’t push the cart straight through.  So we were told to go clear around the other side of the building (the building took up 4 square blocks), and go in that way.  It was difficult getting the cart over the curbs, and we nearly dumped it once.  It was also starting to rain.  Poor Kirt had an awful time.  We (Mom and Heidi and I) were trying to help, but we weren’t much good!  After we got all the way back there we found out we couldn’t get through security.  I got confused.  If I had called Meg or one of the other people who had been emailing me, they would have come back to let us through.  But my brain was really not functioning all that well!  Mom and Heidi stayed with the cart and Kirt and I went all the way back to the front to get security clearance.  A lot of walking!!  I was very glad we left early.  The four of us finally arrived in the theater with our cart just before 10:00.

There was a security checkpoint just before the entrance to the theater.  No big deal there, and there wasn’t even a long line yet.  We got right in and got our first look at the theater and stage.  The stage was not overly large, and it was wonderful to see it all lit up, decorated with AGT banners and lights.  It was a beautifully bright red, white, and blue display (mostly blue), lit up like a Christmas tree. I couldn’t wait to get up there and set up!  I think they told me the theater seated around 2000—a nice sized room.    The four judges seats were up on a platform facing the stage, and the four buzzers—big red buttons—were the only ornaments on their table. 

But wait, we did.  And wait and wait and wait.  They told us they would start taping the show at 1:30, and I didn’t out there until almost 1:00.  It was mostly the fault of one act who was having trouble with all their staging.  They had a bunch of car doors they were trying to set up on cement blocks.  I think they were going to play music on them or something.  It took forever.  I heard some of the stage hands complaining that they would not be able to get through everyone’s stage check if they didn’t hurry up.  They still had to do the final set ups for the taping, too.  I was getting anxious.  I’m an instrumentalist, and sound is everything.  At long last Kirt and I went up and set up the tables and bells back stage and got them ready.  It would take four people to move the two tables as one, but the stage hands were fine with that.  We waited back stage for probably another 20 minutes, and when it was finally our turn they helped us take it all out onto the stage.  I should say, four of them picked up the bell tables and two of them carried my keyboard on it’s stand and they took it all out there and put it down right in the center of that beautiful stage.  I was in my glory!

I knew they were rushed, and I was anxious to not be a problem, and I thought they would handle my sound—get everything balanced and performance-ready for me.  Every show I’ve ever done where they have a sound guy for me, it’s always his job to make me sound good.  And these guys were professionals.  I asked for two mic stands with mics that would pick up a wide area.  I wanted them placed in front of the bell tables—one in front of the G4, and one in front of the G5, each about a foot above the table.  This gives most of the amplification to the bass and middle bells, and less on the top bells, where they’re so much more shrill, they don’t need as much help.  But the sound guys told me the mics would be in the way of the cameras, so they wanted to suspend them overhead on their fancy tall mic stands.  So I ended up with a mic over the bass bells on a stand that was to the left of my tables, and a mic over the treble bells that was on a stand to the right of my tables.  I had my keyboard volume all the way up, and I figured they would tell me to turn it up or down as needed.  I played through my song.  I asked them how it sounded.  They said it was fine.  I should have stopped them right there and asked mom and Kirt and Heidi, who were in the theater watching, for their advice.  But everyone was in a terrible hurry, and I didn’t want to be a problem, and I trusted that they knew what they were doing.

They picked everything up and carried it back stage with all the other acts’ equipment, numbered everything, and assured me that everything would be set up properly for me when it was time for me to play for the judges.  Then someone took the four of us back into the holding area where they had lunch for us.

The holding area was just a bunch of chairs spread out all over the place in no particular order.  There was a lighted make up station (two sided, so two could use it at once), there was a small platform “stage” area for the performers to warm up (used mostly by dancers and tumblers), and there was a couple of banquet tables set up with a couple of AGT employees working.  There was a big barrel of bottled water (room temperature), and a table for the food, which consisted of sandwiches and chips.  There were AGT guards at all the exits to the room.  There were also a couple of interview stations.  Basically, it was just crates and chairs, cameras and mics, and the area was used to interview and tape each contestant before they were called to the stage.  My interview lasted over an hour.  They asked me a lot of questions, and often told me how to respond.  They didn’t want me to sound like I was answering questions.  They wanted it to sound like I was just talking to someone who couldn’t be seen on camera.  There were about a hundred people in the room at first.

The taping of the show was going to be done in two sessions.  The times were 1:30 PM to 5:30 PM, break for dinner, and 6:30 PM to 10:30 PM. I was scheduled to be in the second session.

I was half way though my sandwich when one of the producers, Miguel, asked me to come back to the stage and alter my keyboard accompaniment.  They were just about to start taping the show, so I had to hurry.  He wanted me to turn down the volume of one of the synth voices I had used on my accompaniment track.  He said it was so they could hear the bells better.  So I did what he wanted, but I wondered at the time why he didn’t say something when I was doing my stage check.  But he listened to it and okayed it, so I went back to the holding area and waited.

And waited and waited and waited!

We were allowed to leave and come back, but we didn’t want to go too far.  It’s like your whole life—your whole future depends on what happens in this building in a few hours, and you can’t bring yourself to wander too far away.  I also didn’t want to distract myself too much.  I would have loved to have done some sight seeing, but I didn’t feel I could divide my attention that much.  I wanted to stay focused on the task at hand.  We did go downstairs, under the building, where Penn Station subways were taking off every few minutes, and found a restaurant for us to have dinner later, but that’s really all we did.  We spent hour after hour in that holding area, just waiting. 

The room kept getting emptier and emptier as the first taping session was finishing up.  The camera operators kept asking us to shift our chairs, sit back to back to each other, in order for the cameras to keep up the appearance that the room was full of contestants.  The TV shows make you think that the first thing you do is wait to play for the celebrity judges, but that’s not the reality at all!  We were also asked to hide our coats under our chairs, because the show airs at the end of May, and goes through several weeks of summer, and they wanted to create the illusion that it was summer outside, which adds to the illusion that everything that happens to a contestant from January to the present only takes a few hours (or minutes). 

I really wanted to know what was going on in the theater, but we couldn’t hear or see anything at all.  My interview was finished around 3:00 PM, and after that there was nothing to do but wait.  They did tell us ahead of time to bring something to do, and I had my Kindle and a puzzle book to help pass the time, but they weren’t much help after about the third hour of waiting.  We ate our dinner in the holding area and waited some more.  I went through periods of lethargy followed by periods of anxiety followed by periods of intense boredom followed by playing games on my Kindle for an hour followed by more boredom, anxiety, lethargy, puzzle book, boredom, lethargy, anxiety—it was brutal!

The second taping session was scheduled to start at 6:30 PM, but they were a bit late getting started.  Around 7:30 PM someone finally told me I’d be on in about an hour.  I went to spruce up my makeup, check out my costume, fix my hair, and get ready. When I came back from the restroom there were still 25 or 30 people waiting to go on stage.  I started hearing whispers that some of us may not get to go on tonight, and would have to wait for one of the taping sessions tomorrow.  After all that waiting!!  Nothing like increasing the anxiety level!  Whether or not anyone didn’t get to perform that night, I never found out.  They finally came and led me to the back stage area, where I was fitted with a mic for more interviews backstage.  (The mic would have to come off for my performance.)  I stood outside the double doors leading to the back stage area where Nick Cannon was, along with my mom, my husband, and my daughter, who were to watch me from back stage, too.  My sister and her husband and son were out in the audience—they had been there since 6:00 PM.  I had been waiting now for over ten hours, it was nearly 8:30 PM, and I was finally ready to go on!

Hey, all!  Here's the next chapter in my 2014 Adventure Saga!  Thanks for following!

Chapter two

After the Greensboro audition Kirt went out to the parking garage with our equipment and put it all back in the car, rather than unload it in the hall to our room again, and mom and I headed right back upstairs to our room and got on the computer and Googled Imagine Dragons! I, of course, live musically in the seventies, and mom in the fifties, so neither of us had heard any top forty for quite some time!  We watched a lot of YouTube videos of Imagine Dragon songs, and I liked “Demons” the best.  Mom decided to go back to Michigan rather than spend another night in North Carolina, and Kirt and I stayed because we had booked two nights.  If I had known that we would be finished at 10:30, we would not have spent an extra $200 on the second night, but we did not know that.  I was extremely anxious to get back and start working on an arrangement of “Demons”! So to kill some time we went out to lunch and then found a music store and bought a couple of Top Forty books.  “Demons” was in one of them.

We checked out the next morning.  Some time during the night I was attacked by chiggers (I think).  If there’s a bug in the building it will bite me.  My left arm had a dozen bites on it.  (I thought I should tell the management about it, so I did.  I figured for $200 a night, I should be in a bug free room.)  Anyway, it was too far for Kirt to drive all the way back to Reedy Lake in one day, so we again spent one night on the road.  We finally got “home” to our little Florida trailer on Friday, January 31^st. Then I got to work.

We got really lucky that the trailer we rented actually had room for 12 feet of bell tables and my keyboard.  We hauled everything in, set up my computer, and I started writing.  I really missed my studio at home.  I had not brought my piano bench with me, so I had to sit on the couch to play my keyboard, which meant I was sitting way too low to play comfortably—my arms were way up in the air!  So I got a box and a couple of pillows and tried to sit higher!  It worked okay, but it does get your back aching after a while.  I had also left the music stand for the keyboard at home.  I don’t travel with it because I don’t use it for my performances.  But I needed something to hold up my music!  So I got another box and cut it apart and made a make-shift music stand and taped it on the keyboard and tried not to put anything too heavy on it!  Also, when we left from Michigan we had decided not to take a printer with us, and now I really needed one.  So Kirt left me working on the keyboard and went to Lake Wales and found an Office Depot, or something like that, and bought me a new printer.  Just a little black and white thing, but the cost of this adventure kept adding up!  Printer, paper, toner--$100 just like that.  And I did feel sorry for Kirt.  It is very hard to be in a one bedroom trailer when the other person is playing top 40 pop on handbells!  He took off most days and wandered around Frostproof or Lake Wales, spent time at the library, and ran errands.  I also felt sorry for the neighbors, because the trailers were so close together in that park that you could hear conversations around the dinner table!  And here I was playing the same song over and over and over….  Also a problem, I was still on tour.  I would get half a song written and we’d have to pack everything up and put it back in the car and do a show, then come back and unpack it all again and I’d start writing again.  Got very frustrating!  It took me three or four weeks, but I managed to write an arrangement for Imagine Dragons “Demons”, Katy Perry’s “Unconditionally”, and Adele’s “Skyfall”, (which was my favorite).  Then we had to decide which 90 seconds of each song was the best for the audition, get it video taped, download it to the internet, and email it to Meg.

By this time I had received an email from Meg asking if I was still interested in sending a video of a top 40 song like I said I would.  I was so excited that she remembered me!  I answered right back saying YES, but it would be another day or two.  I had them written, but I had to get them video taped for her.

The video taping was a problem.  We couldn’t tape the songs in the trailer—there just wasn’t enough room to get the camera far enough away from the bell tables, and you couldn’t get a shot from the front because I had the tables tight up against the wall.  So I talked to the pastor of Lake Wales Lutheran Church (where we had a show booked in March) and asked if we could bring our equipment and tape the songs at the church or maybe at their school. Pastor and Sue Glamman were good friends that we made from our previous tours in Florida, and they were happy to help out!  We made hurried arrangements and ended up taping in an empty classroom in their preschool.  We decided to tape the songs with my smart phone, as we figured it had a fairly new format and should upload to the internet quickly.  The sound wasn’t that great, though.  The bells reverberated around that small classroom really well, but the keyboard sound didn’t travel as well, and you couldn’t hear it very well on the tape.  I had “Demons” and “Skyfall” ready to tape by then, so we taped our 90 seconds of each (which took about 20 takes each!), but we got it done! (The videos are still on YouTube.  Take time to watch them!)

We also had to do all this without any internet connection at home.  The only company in Frostproof to sell internet service wanted a huge set up fee and large monthly payments, and being a couple of starving artists, we decided to use the free WiFi at McDonalds or at the library.  But it was really frustrating!  The WiFi is so slow at these places.  Kirt said it’s because so many people are using it at once and they didn’t have a very good bandwidth, whatever that means.  But it took 40 minutes (minimum) to upload each song. 

It was funny—we got back to Frostproof to go to McDonalds to use their internet, but there was something going on there, because you couldn’t get within 2 blocks of the place.  Cars all over the place.  So we headed down to the library, but it was getting late in the day and they were closed!  But we did discover that their WiFi still worked at their picnic table outside!  Whew!  It took a LONG time, but we were able to upload the video files and email them to Meg. 

But next day we got an email back from her asking us to upload the files to YouTube, so they would be in a different format.  Argh!  So it was back to McDonalds, more uploading, more emailing, and about 2 hours later we had them in YouTube, copied the link to each song, and emailed them again.  Good grief!

I got more emails from Meg—my heart skipped a beat every time I saw her in my inbox—but I still didn’t know if I had won a place in the next round.  I hoped my audition tapes would clinch it for me.  Sometimes I felt so incredibly excited about the prospect of being chosen to be on the show, and sometimes I felt incredibly stupid to think they’d ever pick me!  I was on an emotional roller coaster that started to really tell on me.  I found it hard to concentrate during a show and ended up making small, silly little mistakes.  I was also extremely homesick—more than I had ever been while on tour.  It was partly because we had just bought a house in November, and it was hard to leave it for two months when I had so much to do there, and then all the anxiety over the audition, audition demo tapes, and trying to work in a jury-rigged studio, along with the “normal” anxiety of being on stage a couple of times a week.  Add to that the trailer we rented was kind of junky (the worst part was the little chameleon lizards—I couldn’t keep them out of the house!), and I spent most of our time there (figuratively) tearing out my hair and (not so silently) screaming “I want to go home!”

I started getting emails from other departments in the AGT system.  I got one assigning me an “account number” and one naming Meg as my personal producer, and one provided me with the dates of the New York and LA auditions (they would be the auditions for the celebrity judges), and one asking which airport I was nearest.  But I still did not know if I was a contestant.  Finally on March 3^rd I got the email that said yes, I had been selected to play for the celebrity judges in New York. I was so excited! Then relieved! Then I got nervous! I posted the news on Facebook, and then realized I probably wasn’t supposed to do that.  I double checked with Meg, and she had me take the post down.  They’re very secretive about things until you actually get on TV.  Once you audition and it airs, you can talk.  Until then—say nothing to no one!  You can be disqualified.

The next week I was flooded with emails from AGT.  One was about getting tickets for friends and family to attend the taping of the audition show in New York, travel arrangements, hotel info, and correspondence from Meg regarding approval of my accompaniment track and what I would actually play for the judges. I found out that I would not be able to play “Skyfall” because AGT could not get copyright permission from Adele.  I was disappointed because that was my favorite one.  But I still had two songs to play, and I was so anxious to get home to my studio, it was driving me crazy!  But I only had one more week in Florida, so we stopped bringing in the bells and setting them up in the trailer.  I took the week off from writing, and did my last 4 shows in Florida. And we were headed HOME!!

Once we got back to our home in Michigan and I had my studio to work in, I felt much better.  That is, until Meg emailed asking me to call her.  She wanted to talk about what I was going to play on April 4 for the celebrity judges.  She had changed her mind and didn’t want me to do a current top 40 song after all.  After all that work agonizing over three arrangements, writing in adverse conditions!!  Then she started giving me suggestions of songs to try instead.  They were titles from the 80s.  “Aerosmith’s “Don’t Want to Miss a Thing”, Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You”, and “Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”.  I was confused, but anxious to do what she suggested.  I had to hope she knew what she was doing.  She thought “Demons” and “Unconditionally” weren’t right because the melody lines weren’t strong enough.  She was afraid the judges wouldn’t recognize the melodies right away.  She explained that you had to impress them in the first 10 to 15 seconds, or they could buzz you.  I wanted to play something “beautiful”—something like “The Rose”, but Meg didn’t recommend it.

While I had her on the phone, I asked Meg about some of the other procedures.  I found out I would not need more than 6 songs, even if I make it to the finals.  Also, there will be 4 final groups of 12 that make it onto the live shows.  The audition shows begin May 27, and they will be taped, and much edited before they air. The live shows start in July.

I should mention one more thing about the music:  that when I wrote the arrangements for the three pop songs, I thought I was still auditioning.  I didn’t realize I was writing for something to play for the next round for the celebrity judges.  And I didn’t realize I only had 10 or 15 seconds to do it or die.  So this time when I got to writing, I decided to write 90 second arrangements.  Because when I play a 3 or 4 minute song for someone, I usually play a verse and chorus to simply state the melody in the bells and counter-melody in the keyboard.  I like to work up to a musical fever pitch, and then bring it back down to end it by putting the audience in tears, or leave it way up there and end it with a hurray-type flourish.  But it takes me 3 or 4 minutes to do all this.  Now I realized I didn’t have the luxury of that kind of time.  I did the new songs one at a time, video taped them, uploaded them to YouTube, and emailed Meg the links.  It was certainly a huge challenge—I had never written like that before.  One thing I really wanted to accomplish was to make sure the arrangements didn’t sound like elevator music.  I hate that!

But by the time I finished them I had less than two weeks to April 4!  Meg said that the producers all whooped and hollered on “Like A Virgin”, so we decided to do that one for the judges.  It was so far away from what I originally thought I’d play.  And it wasn’t much time!  But it was only a 90 second song.  I figured I could do anything perfect if it was only for 90 seconds!

I practiced the song dozens of times per day for each day I had left.  I swear I could have played it backward if I had been asked to do so!  I did like the song, but I was apprehensive about it.  It just wasn’t my first choice.  But it was too late to make a change at this point.  The accompaniment track had already been sent in for approval, the copyright permission had already been secured, and I was as prepared as I was going to be.  No turning back!

Joybell Adventures 2014

So many of you have asked about my talent show experience that I thought I’d start this blog.  It’s just too much to put in a Facebook post, or even to send in an email.  If any of you out there are thinking of doing something similar, I hope you’ll read and learn!  But even if you’re not going to audition for a reality show, I hope you’ll find this an interesting read.  It was quite a ride!

Chapter 1

The journey began by reading an email I got from Handbell Musicians of America, the handbell organization to which I belong.  The email said they (HMA) had received a notice from America’s Got Talent asking for handbell acts to audition for the show.  This was a big deal, because I’d never heard of handbells being on that show before, and I had always thought the show had no place for them.  But after I read that email, I started thinking of all the people who had told me I should go on that show. I’ve never been one much for reality television shows, and I had always hesitated.  But I felt it had been endorsed, in a way, by Handbell Musicians of America.  The same notice was in Overtones Magazine.  I took it as a sign that it was time for me to audition for the show.  So I started looking into it.

The show’s website was full of information on how and where to audition, and it had lots of information on what to bring, registration forms to fill out, and rules about who could be with you when you audition, and rules about accompanying minors, and things of that sort.  I read everything!  It also had a little window that you could click on for each of the audition cities.  There were dozens of them.  The closest one to Michigan was in Indianapolis, but the dates for Indy were during the time that I would be on tour in Florida. So I kept looking, and found that there would be auditions in Greensboro, North Carolina during the time I would be in the south.  We did have to move one scheduled show to a different weekend, but we managed to get the Greensboro audition dates free.  In November 2013, I registered online to audition on January 29^th,  2014.

It was hard to decide what to play for the audition.  The site said that the auditions were only 90 seconds long.  Of course, all my songs are three times that long.  I ruled out playing a hymn—the show just seemed too secular for that.  I never watched the show much, but I never remember hearing any hymns.  I went to my soft pop stuff and thought about one of those.  I finally decided on my arrangement of “The Rose”.  Verse 3 of my arrangement was 95 seconds long.  I started polishing it up!

Meanwhile, my busiest season for “Joybell” was fast approaching.  December was coming up, and I had about 15 shows booked, and then we would leave for our Florida tour on January 10^th, and I had to have that show ready to play by the time we arrived.  So I kept really busy for the next couple of months, but always the coming audition was in the back of my mind. 

December and New Year’s came and went and it was suddenly time to head south.  We had rented a small one bedroom trailer on Reedy Lake in mid-Florida, where we would be spending the next two months.  I had several shows when we first arrived, and we actually left for Greensboro on January 27^th, spent one night on the road, and got to the Marriot in Greensboro just ahead of a bad snow storm on Tuesday, the 28^th. We knew the auditions started at 8:00 in the morning on Wednesday, so we decided to spend the night before so we could try to be one of the first in line.  Kirt and I drove together, and mom came down from Michigan to see the audition.

When we arrived at the hotel, we decided to take all our handbell equipment into our room with us, so it would be ready to go in the morning.  I have a cart that we can fit everything on:  four handbell cases, two six foot tables, four pads, digital keyboard, x-stand, and cloth cover for the bell tables.  It’s about five feet tall when you get it loaded.  So I’m pulling suitcases, and Kirt is wheeling the equipment in, and we got up to the 13^th floor with everything, but could not get the cart through our door!  We had to unpack it in the hallway, bring it into the room piece by piece, stack it in the corner, and then repack it out in the hallway the next morning.  It’s just something that handbell players are used to!

No matter how much you read online, you really don’t know what to expect until you get there.  I had visions of thousands of people showing up for the auditions, having to wait in long lines in the snow and rain, and there was even something I read that some people may not get the chance to audition if they ran out of time.  What actually happened was somewhat different.  Kirt volunteered to get up early and get in line to hold our place, and he went down to the lobby around 6:00 in the morning.  But there were only about a dozen other people down there, and he really didn’t need to be there.  Mom and I got up later and I got ready and down to breakfast in the hotel by 7:30.  There was still no sign of the producers and AGT staff.  We figured the weather had delayed them.  But there was no long line forming, either.  The weather evidently kept a lot of people away, which was a boon for us.  I was not able to eat much breakfast—the anxiety of the approaching audition was really starting to get to me by then!  And the wait staff took for-EV-er!  But while I was eating, the staff busses arrived and they set up the security area for all the contestants to go through.  They made all the people waiting in the hotel lobby go outside and stand in line in the snow while they did this.  I was still eating breakfast, but I made Kirt go upstairs and get our sweaters and coats, but we didn’t actually need them.  By the time I finished eating and got out there with my cart, there was no one in line at security!  We got up to the tables and went right through, as fast as you can with all that equipment, anyway.  The security guards had to go through everything, of course.  It made sense that they were there, but I must admit I hadn’t thought about security when I got up that morning.  Neither did Kirt.  He hadn’t thought to leave his pocket knife upstairs, so it was confiscated.  We had already been through inspection, and decided to let them keep the pocket knife, rather than go through again.

After the metal detectors we were taken back to a holding area where I was given a number sticker to wear and a form to fill out.  I was number 53, which told me that 52 contestants were ahead of me.  The form was the same one I filled out online, but I had to do it again, anyway!  We arrived in the holding room about 9:00, and only had to wait an hour or so before they called us to go up and set up.  They called groups of 20 at a time, and we were in the third group.  90 second auditions probably go pretty fast, and I don’t know how many audition rooms they had, but they got us through pretty good.  We were done and out of there by 10:30. 

Since I had so much to set up, they put me in an empty conference room and mom and Kirt and I set everything up in record time.  It was like a handbell pit stop!  The keyboard and X-stand were on top on the cart, so they came down first.  I set that up while mom and Kirt took down the pads and set them aside, and then the tables and set them up.  By that time I was done with the keyboard and mom and I put the pads and cloth on the tables.  While we were doing that Kirt laid out the four bell cases and had them opened for me.  I set the bells out and told the attendant that we were ready.  It was only a few moments and the producer came in.  Her name was Meg.  We talked a couple of minutes; she was very interested in the bells, and my career as a performer.  Then I played verse 3 of “The Rose” for her.  She was thrilled!  She actually went out and got two other producers and came back in and asked me to play it again!  They taped it with their smart phones.  I was very encouraged!  How many people get to play their audition piece twice?  Not many, I figured!  Meg explained to me that the show’s demographics were mostly people aged 18-35, and asked if I had any top 40 pieces in my repertoire.  I had to admit that I did not, but I did tell her I could play anything she wanted.  She gave me the name of “Imagine Dragons”, and told me to look at some of their stuff, and would I be interested in writing something and sending in a 90 second demo video to her?  She actually gave me her business card with her phone number and email address on it!  I was sure she didn’t do that for everyone!  We left the audition room with our equipment about 15 minutes later feeling quite exhilarated and very relieved that it had gone so well.  Whew!  I then was led across the hall to another room where I filled out another form and got my picture taken.

So that was the audition for the producers.  Everyone does that first.  We knew what the next step in the process was: to audition for the celebrity judges, but we did not know if I had made it to that next step or not.  Meg told me we would find out in six weeks.  Six weeks!! And we were also told that if we hadn’t heard anything in six weeks, we were out of the running.

Thanks for reading!  Chapter 2 to follow soon!