ROSIE NARDI: JANUARY 28, 1939 - MAY 14, 2008

My mom passed away on May 14th, 2008 at around 11pm in Toronto. The main motivation behind my record has now left the earth. It’s like now that my record is done, it was okay for her to leave. It’s very surreal. She not only has seen me every step of the way in my life, but she was a big part of my creative journey in the making of this record. It was because of her, it was for her - it will live on for her.

In the days after the funeral, I read through a journal of my mother’s I had found not too long ago. In this journal, she wrote about her life in Canada, how she came here, what she did, what she dreamed of, what she dreaded. In those pages, I read that she had dreams of becoming a singer. That she would sing to her cousins all the time. That she loved to sing anytime she could and that she would’ve like to become a professional singer. But she knew that it took more than a good voice to do so; and I guess she felt like she didn’t have “it”. Then I read that she also had dreams of playing the piano. That when at school, with the nuns at the convent, she’d sneak into a room that had a piano and would touch the keys. She was so poor that her parents could not afford to send her to lessons. However, she had rich cousins who had a piano in their home so anytime she was there to visit, she’d play the piano.

These are things about my mother I never knew. I mean, I knew she loved to sing and play the piano, but I had no idea that she had dreams of pursuing these activities as deeply as she expressed. I guess this is why she stood behind me all these years in my pursuit of my dreams. She has had her dreams dissolve many times before her eyes. She was not going to let that happen to her baby!

So, here I am. Finishing off the artwork for The Rose Tattoo and working on the promotion for it. Here I am anticipating a release in the fall. Here I am putting the finishing touches to something which will honor the most important person ever in my life - my mom.

The universe has a strange and mysterious way of providing what we need when we need it. I thought that I wouldn’t be able to continue working on this record because the pain of this death for me is too intense. But in a strange and beautiful way, the more I focus on this cd and what I need to do to get it out there, the closer I feel to her. In a strange and mysterious way, I HAVE to continue and get this record out. It seems that it is more necessary for my healing than anything else.

The Road to the Rose - No Voice

Greg and I started pre production/production in January 07. I had brought a bunch of rough demos that I had done with the band, to see what we could salvage, what we could use, what was suitable, what wasn’t. I can not tell you the amount of times we twisted these tracks into various forms to try to find the right “home” for the song. It never is easy to make a record but this time, it was even more difficult. I was forming a new band, I wanted to go into a new direction - and I had no voice.

I started having problems with my voice about 8 months prior to hooking up with Greg. I felt like I had no power whatsoever in my voice, not only singing but speaking voice. People had to often lean in and say “what did you say?” I was apparently inaudible. I felt like I had no control of my voice, that I was unable to do the things I used to do. At one time, I had studied for many years with a classical teacher. My voice was so strong. It was like training for the Olympics. I loved the vocal training I went through then. So, I was kinda coasting on the strength I had built. But this strange little passage with my voice was very strange indeed. I thought I had something seriously wrong, like nodes or something. I looked up one of Toronto’s well known ENT doctors, Dr. Hands - funny huh? He is an ear nose and throat doc but his name is Hands?!?!? Made my appointment and the journey began.

He checked out my chords. No nodes, no polyps. Thank god. Did a whole scope analysis. Video camera down my throat so I could see my chords. They looked tired to me. They looked worn out. They looked unhealthy but not damaged. The speech pathologist told me that most likely what is going on is just - stress!! That with all I have been enduring with my mother, my throat and my voice have taken the hits. I had a lot of tension built up around my voice box and neck. As a result I was using my speaking voice in a very unhealthy way. Bad habit compounded by another bad habit. I began a series of speech classes with him in order to help restore my speaking voice. But what about my singing voice??

The hunt began for the right teacher to help me rehabilitate my singing voice. I asked around, fellow singers, to see who could help me. What I came to realise fairly quickly was that there wasn’t anything wrong particularly with my singing voice. It was there. It just needed to be worked on again. My main impediment was the stress and what it was doing to my mind and my body. All that tension and all that anxiety had just shut me down. I mean, who wouldn’t be locked up when they were told their mother was going to die?

A friend had introduced me to his teacher, Falconer Abraham. He was great. He had the whole pop/r&b thing down. My voice was beginning to find its shape but something was still missing. The first person who made me aware of what was missing was Jean Stilwell. She is one of Canada’s finest Mezzo sopranos. I had a few lessons with her and the biggest thing she brought to me was the body awareness. We often spent a good part of our lessons just becoming aware of the body, where the tension was being held and finding ways to release it. Technically though I needed more and she offered to introduce me to her teacher - Neil Semer.

Neil has worked with the Canadian Opera Company and many heavy duty divas in Canada and throughout the world. He is the REAL F*&KING DEAL! Working with him was like doing dance classes. The vocal stretches, the awareness of the body and its affects on the voice. He is the guru. Coming out of his classes was like coming out of a retreat. I felt more connected to myself, to my voice, to my soul. I still continue with him to this day. The only challenge is that he comes up once a month from New York, so I only get to see him when he is here. I still needed someone who could help me weekly….a funny thing happened on the way to the yoga studio.

But before I go there, I have to also say I spent this whole year studying the voice. Internet research, books, lessons with so many teachers to try and understand how the voice works. From hygiene to technique - I wanted to understand. But not only from a physical standpoint. There is truly an emotional and spiritual components to the mechanics of the voice. These components are often abandoned by many teachers. I often kid around with the idea of teaching voice one day. I feel like I am so not there yet. There is still so much to learn. But where I think I would strive is in the awareness of the body and the mind. My yoga training has helped work that skill and now the voice work is helping in honing it further.

And yes, yoga. Yoga - Iyengar Yoga, to be precise - has been an incredible tool for body awareness. Through my classes, I managed to meet a woman, who also teaches yoga but is a classical singer. She has done some pretty high level stuff and also teaches at a high level. I thought what a perfect combo - yoga teacher and voice. I started classes with Jayne (Smiley) about 5 months ago and she has been an important player in my voice care team.

Greg and I would get together a couple of times a week and tear the songs apart. I’d spend time programming, either at his studio or at home. He’d take what I came up with and would add some things to it. But it was much like sculpting a lump of clay. Here is this mass, sitting right in front of you and you just don’t know what to do with it. So, you dig in. You pull, you punch, you tear. You take your hands to it until some kind of shape begins to form. And sometimes that form doesn’t realize for quite some time. We were beginning to have some shape to some tracks but something wasn’t quite there. We still needed a live band as the foundation. We went through a couple of drummers and bass players but it just wasn’t the right fit. So, we continued along with the electronic elements until the time came where we knew, we needed the live musicians.

All the while, my mother was undergoing chemo treatment again for another tumor that had emerged in her left upper thigh/hip area. Like I didn’t have enough stress? Talk about a test for my voice. My mother had to be transported to hospital via ambulence every time we went to the hospital because she was unable to sit up as a result of the tumor. Six months of chemo passed. And the whole while, I was in studio, trying to stay focused and be creative. As a result, I often had to cancel time in the studio because I either had to be at the hospital or I just did not have the energy to do anything else but sleep.

My mother made it to her last chemo treatment and made it to surgery - again! July 07, she survived another 14 hour surgery which removed the tumor from her leg. But my voice did not survive. Greg and I were moving towards completing three tracks for a sampler of the new record when my voice gave out again. I had no voice. I was hoarse, I had laryngitis. I didn’t know what was going on with me. Went to my ENT who recommended on go on Prednisone to bring down the inflammation. PREDNISONE?!?!??! I never in a million years thought I’d ever be taking a steroid to help me sing. But this is the thing about singers. We are so vulnerable to the elements. Our instrument is inside of us so everything can affect it. And me, the lucky sensitive one, gets hit even harder!

So, again, I had to stop production because I couldn’t sing. The inflammation had to come down. The drugs worked, no doubt. But let me tell you something about prednisone - don’t come off of it if you are feeling like there is nothing wrong. You have to be tapered off. I found out the hard way. I thought I was doing alright, stopped the drugs then bang! One night, I thought I was dying. My head felt like it was ready to explode from this intense, radiating pain. My chest then began to radiate pain as well. It wouldn’t stop. It would only intensify. As I found out later, prednisone will do that. The body needs to adjust to the fact that it is now having to produce cortisol on its own, not via the drug. But it doesn’t make that switch instantaneously. It needs the time to adjust. Great!!!

After a couple of weeks, I was back in the studio and we were continuing along our path. Until the creativity by committee hit…..

Stay tuned…..

The Road to the Rose

Cancer. Chemo. Bronchitis. Lost voice. Prednisone. No money, lost funding. Started with one band. Ended up with another. Chronic fatigue. Writer’s block. Creativity by committee.

The road to the “Rose” was paved with great intentions….we just had a few speed bumps along the way.

September 2004, my mother - Rosetta “Rosie” Merigliano Nardi was diagnosed with an aggressive malignant Soft Tissue Sarcoma. Within six weeks, the tumor inside her abdomen grew into 9 pounds. Essentially, she had a little pumpkin taking up space in her abdomen. She lost her appetite, her vitality. She was losing her life - rapidly. She was admitted to Princess Margaret Hospital and given three months maximum to live. I was told it would be a miracle if she made it to the summer. This is where it all began as my mother’s life was coming undone.

The last music related event I had before my mother was diagnosed was the Rimouski Jazz Festival. I had a blast. It was an incredible festival. I was on a high and was feeling very motivated to continue with my work. But those weren’t the intentions of the universe. Within weeks, I found myself at the hospital everyday for hours waiting for my mother to die. It wasn’t very inspiring. It wasn’t very motivating. If anything I shut down completely. Many people would find this kind of stress and angst creatively inspiring. They would dive into these kinds of intense, painful emotions and pull something out. Not me, no way Jose. I shut down. I did shut down. I was so terrified. I was scared beyond belief. I think beyond what I could comprehend. My mother was dying - how could I be creative? To me being creative was the most selfish, frivolous thing in this dire moment. The last thing I wanted to do was pull some kind of deep thought out of my navel and create something. So, I stopped everything - all music and anything to do with it. Along with that, my voice stopped too. I literally had no voice for at least a year.

Some cold day in January of ‘05, I was convinced that - today my mother is going to die. By this point, she was so emaciated, she had lost all her hair, she was deemed inoperable, the chemo didn’t work. They gave her her death sentence and that’s it - we were waiting. What made this day different was the way she was breathing - and not breathing, the way she was tossing in her bed, the way she said very little. I turned to the window, looked outside at the city. It kept going. Here she is fighting for her life and someone somewhere else, is having a double macchiatto. Life goes on despite it all. It was so absurd to me. So absurd to see all the ant people running around their ant-people hills, going to their ant-people work and drinking their ant-people coffees. Life goes on. Then it hit me. My life does have to go on but I need to celebrate the life I have experienced thus far; the first half of my life with my mom. My next record will have to be about the mark my mother has left on me, the impression the - tattoo.

This was when the Rose Tattoo was born. I recalled the name of a film with Anna Magnani and Burt Lancaster. It was perfect. My mom’s name is Rose and our life together has created an embossed figure on my soul. From that point on, I would start to think of the songs in terms of this theme. Thinking about my life that had been lived up until this point, included me thinking about music and why I chose this path. What music did I love? What did I love listening to? I was brought back to my adolesence when The Police and The Eurythmics were huge loves of mine. I decided I wanted to go back to my pop roots. That I would focus more on melody and really try to write “hookier” melodies like they did. Their songs were so well crafted, so memorable. And musically, I needed to explore electronics as well. I loved all that kind of music including people like Massive Attack and Moby. This is what was true for me. This is where I wanted my music to go. Also, if I allowed myself to feel all that I was feeling, there was a deep need to be more expressive with my anger, my sadness. I wasn’t sitting at the piano or singing ( I couldn’t sing) But I’d think daily, meditate on ideas, have ideas float by in my big sky mind. Over time, ideas for songs collected themselves into a little bundle. I opened up the package when I was ready to which was after my mother DID recover, DID get out of hospital, DID have the operation and DID get on with her life with a redefined sense of what normal is.

For months, I rehearsed with one band, working out ideas and arrangements. We did come up with some really great tidbits but there was something missing. I needed to have the electronic stuff blended in. And I didn’t know how to do that. I knew that I would need a producer, someone to work with to help blend these two worlds of acoustic and electronic. I thought, okay, who in the world of pop music is doing that kind of thing right now? That would be Kipper, Sting’s co-producer. Don’t know what liquid courage was poured into my Cheerios that morning but I found his contact info on the net and emailed him, told him what I was looking for and guess what? HE EMAILED ME BACK. It just so happened that I was planning to go to London for my honeymoon at this time. Kipper and I decided to meet. Oh, it did go well and yes, I was incredibly excited but logistically it could not work. But what a great story.

So the hunt was on for a co-producer. My manager said that he was talking to some guy in Toronto that might be worth a meeting. That you never know, maybe this guy could be “the one” or maybe he could suggest someone else. Well, that guy is Greg Kavanagh. Greg and I had set up a meeting. I really didn’t know what to expect and actually, Greg expected very little. You know how it is, a lot of people want to make cd’s and think they can make cd’s. He has seen a lot of people come and go, with their huge egos walking in first through the door. I can’t blame him; I’d think like that too. But when I told him about my acoustic meets electronic ideas, his eyes lit up. He was looking to work on a project that incorporated chill elements, electronica elements, something new and fresh. Seems like, we had found our musical mate. And in January 07, we began the pre production/production process.

Next week’s installment is the year spent with chemo, creativity by committee and voice lessons.

What a Lonely Blog!!!

Has it been awhile or what?!?!?!?! I know, I’m terrible. My report cards when growing up were consistent: Daniela is a sweet girl, good student but is often inconsistent. Being inconsistent was the only consistent thing about me.

But there truly IS a new record in the works. There truly IS a new band. There truly IS some amazing things happening in the DNAZONE. I just haven’t been sharing it. Classic only child eh?

So this is the teaser that will set up the next entry of when I write about the WHOLE process of recording this new record of mine - The Rose Tattoo. It will make you laugh, make you cry, make you want to eat copious amounts of chocolate.

But I can’t leave you with nothing so here’s a tip: echinacea through the winter months. It’s saving my ass since I am allergic to cold. Really, I am.

Soon
D