The Only Thing He Missed Was The Sound Of Frothing Milk...

This quote, I think, captures the essence of what it's like to scratch away as a singer-songwriter. It was originally printed in the inside of the gatefold cover of Gordon Lightfoot's album GORD'S GOLD:

"Playing in bars had its advantages. You could try out all kinds of new things and make all kinds of mistakes and hardly anyone ever noticed. Sometimes you could hold the audience by throwing in some off-color humor and following it up with a good up-tempo country song or a bawdy ballad. Sometimes they'd be watching the hockey game on TV with the volume turned up so you couldn't sing over it. So you just sat down, waited for the period to end, and got a few songs in during the intermission. But that was O.K. It was paid rehearsal." --Gordon Lightfoot

Phil and Don Were Really One Singer

I have to say: I think that this performance of "All I Have To Do Is Dream" by the Everly Brothers is one of the most amazing pop vocal duo performances I've ever heard.



If Phil and Don were just playing it straight, up-tempo, singing the melody unembellished with all of the phrasing that they'd employed in the original recording, I'd be unimpressed.

But notice how they not only slow the tempo down, but they bend and stretch the phrasing, playing with the lengths of notes and rests... and yet, for all of the liberties they take with the song, never once do their voices veer from each other. Both of them are synchronized, note-perfect, from start to finish, around every melodic bend and stretch of phrase. Amazing.

How many times have you seen a pair (or more) of singers try to do this very thing with a song, and one (or both of them) is off, and their attempt at playing with the phrasing and timing falls flat and fails because one is lagging behind the beat while the other is ahead, or vice versa?

I stand slackjawed in awe. Again, I mean: Really. Freakin'. Amazing.