Emm Gryner - The Healing Power of Singing: Raise Your Voice, Change Your Life (What Touring with David Bowie, Single Parenting and Ditching the Music Business Taught Me in 25 Easy Steps)

June 25, 2000

Worthy Farm, Pilton, Somerset, Glastonbury, UK

Steam rose from the mosh pit. Ecstatic faces, about a hundred thousand of them, fixed their gazes upon us as we walked onstage. A roaring wave of cheers rose to meet us, and I took my place in front of my mic. There were people as far as my eyes could see and all together they looked like tiny flowers on a mammoth sheet of wallpaper. As I imagined filling this huge field with my voice, he emerged, slowly and full of great intention, to a second wave of cheers which engulfed the night sky. Dressed in a shimmering long blazer, his hair blond and tousled, his expression was both serious and bursting quietly with anticipation. The cheer that swept over all of us was deafening, a sound like nothing Id ever heard. Human voices, maxed out and melted together, infused with love, euphoria, and, since theyd all been waiting for him for hours, great relief. The crowd noise blasted past my in-ear monitors. He stood front and centre and the rest of us, his backing band, inhaled. We shot looks of cockiness out to the audience the way bands do when they are about to put on some kind of unforgettable spectacle of musical heroism. But there were smiles, too, and underneath it all, giddy disbelief. How did we end up here? I knew deep down that being on that stage, so high in the sky, in an idyllic corner of Britain at the turn of the millennium, was the stuff of rock n roll majesty. We were on top of the world. And we were onstage with the man who had changed that world: David Bowie.

This book is about how I got to places like Glastonbury, but it also has clear tips on how to sing and what changes you need to make to your life to support your best voice. Through stories, diagrams, and action items that really worked for me, I tell you about my path as a singer in hopes that it sparks a few or many bright lights of inspiration for you.

People ask me all the time, Can anyone sing? My answer is yes. But then I follow it up with more good news: You dont need to learn to become a singer as much as you need to uncover your inner singer.

Most of the tools you need to make everything happen arent hard to find. They are already in you. But the world insists on making things confusing. When it comes to learning the basics of singing, a mountain of advice is out there in videos, books, exercises, and so on. How on earth are you supposed to know whats right and whats wrong for you? How do you know what method is best? You may wonder, How long will it take? Is it even worth doing? Can I make a career out of singing? Wheres my confidence? Why does my dog act unusual when I sing? Beneath the constant self-doubt we feel as a new singer, theres the stuff we tell ourselves that this is singing, not aviation engineering or biomedical research and thereby, right out of the gate, downgrade our dream. We become experts at coming up with every excuse on the planet as to why singing is not as important as our so-called grown-up responsibilities. Yet deep inside we know there is a voice aching to get out. That feeling has led you to pick up this book.

Let me tell you: you can do this.

I was born a terrible singer.

I grew up in the Ontario countryside where I mastered the art of cleaning chicken poop off eggs and shimmying around house corners with a Nerf gun raised high, pretending to be Heather Locklear in the cop show T.J. Hooker. A lot of time was spent at the beach nearby, where I made poorly designed forts out of garbage bags and twigs forts that made the Three Little Pigs straw hut look like a doomsday bunker. My parents ran a newspaper out of our basement called Feather Fancier, a monthly publication devoted to the improvement of chickens. Whoever knew that chickens needed improving? My parents business fed my two brothers and me and paid the family bills for 20 years. Poultry shows and long chats between my parents and other chicken enthusiasts were normal occurrences in my childhood. Never once did I question such commonly heard phrases as sexing waterfowl or best cock in show.

I never sang when I was a kid. I knew nothing of pageant stages or reality-show singing contests, nor did I collect any trophies for singing at the local music festival. I was painfully shy, almost mute. At church, purely out of obligation, I grunted through hymns, ramping up the volume only a couple of decibels towards the end of the service, knowing that a bonanza of sugary treats awaited me at the variety store. Ask, and a box of Gobstoppers shall be given you; seek that pouch of Fun Dip, and ye shall find: Gryner 7:7.

Even though I didnt sing, our household was musical. My brothers and I were put into music lessons by our parents. I studied piano with an elderly lady named Miss Fawcett, and my lessons with her were excruciating. Every Monday after school, Id trudge over to her tiny white house and push myself through a squeaky screen door, school bags in tow. Miss Fawcett would have homemade soup on the stove and the CBC playing on her fridge-top radio, and shed leave both on a little too long as if to say, Before