Episode #25 Karen Mason Award-Winning Cabaret Broadway Singer/Actor
Welcome to Living A Vocal Life: A Podcast For Singers!
Welcome to the Living A Vocal Life Podcast where I interview singers who have succeeded in creating a life in music. You’ll hear from vocalists of all genres, in different stages of their careers, including singers who’ve been on the Billboard charts and those who are teaching the next generation. What do they have in common? They're all performers with amazing stories to tell and experiences to share.
In our conversations, you’ll learn what inspired them to become a singer, the kinds of challenges they’ve encountered, and how they've overcome them. I'll also share what I've learned on my own journey as a singer and educator — practical tools and insights that will help you to live your best, most authentic vocal life.
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My guest this month has been called a poet of the vocal cords and "the Queen of Cabarets." Karen Mason originated the role of Tanya in the Broadway production of Mamma Mia and has had starring roles in Wonderland, Hairspray, Sunset Boulevard, and the first U.S. tour of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Love Never Dies. She's shared concert stages with Michael Feinstein, Jerry Herman, Chita Rivera, Luciano Pavarotti, Rosemary Clooney, Liza Minnelli, and John Kander & Fred Ebb, among others. Karen's performed with major symphony orchestras and headlined Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, and London's Royal Albert Hall.
A 14-time Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs Award-winner, she received the MAC Award for Major Female Vocalist of the Year for six consecutive years and was honored with the MAC Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019.
Her television appearances include the hit dramas “Ed,” “Law & Order: SVU,” and, most recently, an appearance in the Netflix series Halston starring Ewan McGregor.
In our conversation, Karen talks about what the differences are between cabaret and Broadway and pushes back against those who claim that Broadway is the superior of the two. She also shares how she prepares for both types of performances and how she finds the story in a song. We discuss how to handle hecklers and how she works on patter - the talking that goes before and after songs.
We talk about our crush on Ewan McGregor and what it was like to work with him on the series Halston, her new album of songs, Let The Music Play, and much more.
Karen is an accomplished vocalist and actor, but she's also a delightful person. She's smart, thoughtful, kind, and laughs easily. She's the kind of person you'd love to have for a friend. I'm grateful for the time she shared with me and now you.
“I used to say yes to everything. I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to enjoy what I have. What we do takes a lot of time and energy and devotion and passion and love and concentration. And you give up an awful lot for it, for the ability to share that gift.”
Links:
You can find Karen on her website, Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube.
The songs from today’s episode are Don’t Rain On My Parade, Steppin’ Out, and Let The Music Play, and are from Karen’s CD, Let The Music Play (used with permission.) You can listen to the entire album HERE. To purchase go HERE.
Theme music for the Podcast was composed by John Smith. He helps me edit all the podcast episodes too. (Thanks honey!)
“Be fearless, but always be willing to learn. Always keep your eyes open and keep learning. There are so many people to learn from, and so many things to learn about yourself as an artist, as an instrument. And, you know, it’s not going to be what you expected, so try not to expect too much. Just be in the moment.”
Here’s a wonderful example of some stage patter before a song.
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Valerie: Hi, Karen, thank you so much for your time and being on the podcast today.
Karen: Oh, Valerie. It's my pleasure. You know, singers always love to talk about the process of singing and, you know, and what they've done and how they keep themselves together. And you learn so much. I feel even at my age, there's so much more I still have to learn.
Valerie: I love that. I'm a lifetime learner as well, and I just love talking to singers because there's different perceptions that people have about this thing that we do. And I just love hearing people's stories about that.
So anyway, we're going to start at the very beginning with your first memory of singing. Do you remember how old you were and where you were?
Karen: Well, I remember we always had music around the house. My mother was a pianist and she loved music so much. And my mother always would have musicals or Beethoven or Frank Sinatra playing, you know, she would wake up and music was on. And my sister, my older sister, and I would do these shows. And my first memory of singing is doing a little show that Kathy had put together, that's my sister. And we called them 4th of July specials.
Valerie: I love that.
Karen: And you can imagine how great they were. And, um, so we, we did these little shows. And Kathy uh, is four years older and, you know, she was the bossy older sister, so she got to write the script, and be the star, and direct it, and produce it and do everything.
And, one year I was very, very, very lucky and I must have been maybe, oh, I don't think more than six, seven, maybe not even that old. And I got to sing, um, Gigi, am I a fool without a mind, or am I really just too blind to realize, and that was my big solo while twirling an umbrella and walking across the stage.
So that's really the first time I remember singing in public. So there must have been singing before that, that we just did, you know, in the back of the car singing, um, for my parents. And, you know, that's a way to keep us occupied was to, to keep us singing.
Valerie: Well, that's fun. We grew up singing in the car too.
Karen: Yeah, of course.
Valerie: It's a great, uh, way to hone your, your harmony craft.
Karen: That's right.
Valerie: Especially, if you're not the oldest. I'm the oldest. So I sang the melody, but my sister she's so good at singing harmonies because she was the third child. So all the other parts were taken. She had to come up with some interesting ways of, making her voice known.
Karen: That's right. Yeah. Being part of it.
[00:06:47] How Does A Girl From The Midwest End Up Singing On Broadway?
Valerie: Yeah. So how does a Catholic girl from the Midwest end up singing on Broadway?
Karen: She moved here. Yeah. Growing up Catholic, I, you know, my 12 years of Catholic education. And, and then I went to college and you know, was not totally happy there because the school that I went to didn't really have a combination music and theater department. You know, now it's, you learn everything, you learn dance, you learn music, you learn acting.
And at that time it was much more separated. And the school of, drama was very different from the school of music and nobody really, worked together on things and I wanted to do musicals. And so I didn't do very well in school.
And after about three years after graduation, I, uh, was doing a lot of community theater cause I was kinda lost. I didn't really know how to get things going. You know, I didn't have an awful lot of confidence and just wasn't sure where I fit in or how to make myself fit in. And I went down and auditioned at this restaurant in Chicago called Lawrence of Oregano.
Valerie: Great name!
Karen: Isn't it. And they had singing waiters and waitresses. And I went and auditioned and as luck would have it, I met a gentleman I worked with for 16 years, whose name was Brian Lasser. And we worked together and, and, you know, kind of built up our identity, our musical identity with, you know, together and apart. And then we both decided we wanted to move to New York and, uh, pursue theater. And, you know, the kind of the choice was either Los Angeles or New York and New York just seemed, that's where our hearts really wanted to be, you know, with, with theater.
And so we moved in, I moved in 1978.
Valerie: Wow. So he was your partner in many ways.
Karen: Oh yeah.
Valerie: He was a composer, lyricist, arranger, and accompanist for you.
Karen: Truly a mentor.
Valerie: So what did you do when you got to New York?
Karen: Brian was much more of the go getter than I. And so I just basically attached myself to his wagon and he had a lot of friends. Brian was a very friendly and, you know, really wonderful guy. And so he knew a lot of people. And especially from college, you know, a lot of people that he had done shows with in Chicago or at the university of Illinois downstate, he knew all these people and they all got together and I just kind of tagged along. And then we started looking for places to work in cabarets. And, as luck would have it, there was a little place down in the village called The Duplex, which had just been bought by these two guys from Ohio, Irv Rabel and Rob Hoskins. They had just wanted to move to New York and purchase something. And they bought this club and we started doing every Saturday. I mean, it was just that juncture of, of luck.
Valerie: Kismet.
Karen: Yeah, truly. And we started doing every Saturday and then we'd go back to Chicago to make enough money to come back to New York to live. Cause certainly w you know, working in cabaret with a place that seated 60 and just trying to get people to show up, you know, there's really no money there.
So we would go back to Chicago and make, you know, do a big concert or private party, do something in Chicago where we had made our name and then come back to New York and spend it. And we did that for about a year of doing every Saturday.
Valerie: Wow. What a great way to hone your craft and to also make inroads into that community.
Karen: And, you know, it's such a gift that does not exist anymore. At least not in New York, that continuous work just is not offered. It's not available. You know, you have that opportunity for one show and then what? You know, how do you learn from that? How do you, how do you learn from doing just one performance of anything?
Valerie: It's so hard. I'm totally with you. We worked for seven years in clubs and sometimes it was, you know, two to five nights, a week, four hours a night.
Karen: Wow.
Valerie: And so we, we got to set up and be in one space. Which also is unheard of now because you don't get a chance to you don't get a chance to come in and feel the room and get a, a feel for the sound of the room and, you know, kind of get used to that. It's just so different. I feel bad for the singers coming up, who don't have that, get to have that experience. Maybe there's some way to do it, but I don't know of it..
Karen: I don't know, I'm not sure you can ever learn. And this is perhaps really horrible English. You can never learn as maybe as efficiently and as thoroughly as being in front of an audience and having an audience like you and then dislike you and and heckle you and look at their watches.
And, you know, I mean, all those things that audiences do that you boy, you really learn how to not take it personally, but to figure out a way to keep everybody's attention for however long the show is. And the only way you can learn that is, is through doing.
[00:12:37] How To Handle Hecklers!
Valerie: I've never talked with anyone about hecklers on, on the podcast before. I, oh my goodness. They do teach you a lot. Don't they? I mean, they, in a way they make you bring your A game. Because I don't know about you, but I get this feeling inside, like, okay, well, I'm going to show you then, you know?
Karen: Yeah. that's right. That's right. You think you're better than me? Oh, ho!
Valerie: Yeah. Wait til you hear this next note!
Yeah.
Karen: They're, they're fascinating. And I don't think, I think most hecklers, I mean, I would venture to say that most hecklers really feel like they're just kind of helping.
Valerie: Uh, you know, that's a great way to look at it actually, but why do you say
Karen: Certainly there's those people who just want to hear themselves and they think they're funnier and better than you. There are those, but I, I think a lot of times people feel like they like you and they want to help you in some way, you know, either by showing you how involved they are in your show and screaming out some random thing, or, you know, I, I try to think of it not as, oh, good Lord, they're coming for me as, as you know, okay, we're in this together and you're not going anywhere and I'm not going anywhere. So let's see if we can work this out.
Valerie: I love that.
Karen: Yeah, it becomes a little bit more of a negotiation. Let me just also say that that does not always work.
Valerie: Right.
Karen: But you know, if you approach it from that way, it makes it not quite so adversarial.
Valerie: Right. Cause it is a conversation. You have a relationship with this audience and maybe there's one heckler, but maybe there's, you know, a few other people who are feeling the same way and just too scared to show the show. It makes you, makes you change tack somehow.
There's a guy named Tom Robbins who teaches stagecraft. And I loved it when he said, you know, really it's like 80% of the audience will always be with you. They're rooting for you. They want you to succeed. Then there's, you know, that 1% that no matter what you do, they're going to be pissed off. They're not going to like anything that you do and you can't even think about trying to please them.
And then there's a few other people who may be just your it's like you're dating, it's and you're on a first date and they're not sure yet. And so, you know, you're not married like you are to the rest of the audience. And so you have to let them in, you have to let them know who you are. And I just love that, you know, because there are some audiences where you walk on stage, they know who you are. It's like you've been going out together for ever. And then there's other audiences where they don't know who you are and you've got to get to know them. And they've got to get to know you. It's interesting.
Karen: I really do believe that the only way to learn that is through is through the doing. You know, not every audience is going to be all your friends. And, and, um, the only way you learn how to handle people is by being among people.
Valerie: Yeah, I agree.
[00:15:49] Cabaret vs. Broadway
Valerie: So you've had such a wide ranging music career from your roles on Broadway to cabaret and now film and television. And I have so many questions to ask you about how you prepare and think about these different types of performances.
But first I'd like to kind of clear something up. I was, um, I know here's my hard ball, Terry Gross question. Um, when I was researching your interview, I came across an online discussion about cabaret versus musical theater. And some say that those who can't sing on Broadway end up doing cabaret and cabaret is a lesser art form.
So for those who aren't familiar with cabaret, how is it different from musical theater? And what would you say to those who don't believe it to be a serious art form?
Karen: Uh, listen, I still fight that. And it's oh, please. In New York you still fight it. Well, you know, I don't go to cabarets because blah-blah-blah, you know, 16 reasons because it's always going to be some bad person, some bad singer. So I just come. Come and experience it and then we'll talk. It's always somebody who's never been in a cabaret who has a very, um, loud opinion about it.
Uh, cabaret to me is about a conversation. It's a conversation with music and with personality between the audience and the performer. It's an intimate conversation. You know, there's, there's not a separation. In a theater, you're separated, you the proscenium and you're there, you're separated that audience is viewing what's going on. To me, in a cabaret, the audience is an integral part of the experience of a cabaret. It resonates with the singer, with the performer. You feel the energy in that room and it bounces back and forth between the stage where the performers are and the audience.
It's definitely more of a conversation than it is a viewing.
Valerie: Yeah, that's, that's a good description of it.
Karen: Yeah. I went to see my friend Klea Blackhurst last night. And you know, she is such an honest human being. And her passion for what she was doing and her joy is palpable. And you cannot manufacture that. You want to be around it. Not all people who do cabaret are this proficient and this exciting to be with. But then not all theater is that way either.
So to just, cut off an entire art form because you've seen one, not particularly great person do a cabaret, I think is an injustice to the entire art form.
There are so many great people, um, Marilyn May is one. And all different, all very different. But all give you so much bang for your buck and so much happiness and joy and great music. Billy Stritch, uh, Klea, Ann Hampton Callaway, and Liz Callaway. I mean, these are really phenomenal talents.
But listen, cabaret, I hesitate to say, and, and, you know, kind of also do hate to say that there are a lot of mediocre people doing cabarets. You know, it's an easier thing to produce than an entire theatrical show.
Valerie: Right.
Karen: And so, I mean, it's still very time consuming and very expensive because you pay for your musicians, you pay for rehearsal time, you pay for your director if you have that. You pay for the bass player and you get a certain amount for playing a room.
Valerie: So you have to fill that room. You have to do some marketing around that.
Karen: That's right. All of that goes into it.
[00:19:57] Finding The Story In A Song
Valerie: You've said that cabaret is just acting with a soundtrack. You said it's finding a story. I want to tell through songs and then figuring out how I want to tell those stories. I just love that because actually all singers should have that in their minds when they're singing a song, right? They should have the story, the backstory, the character that they're singing it from.
Karen: Even if you're a jazz singer, you have to have a story. If a composer writes out a piece of music it's with a storyline and that's why there's crescendos and additional sounds that come in and the changes that happen in a composition. You are a part of that orchestra and you should have a story. You know, the making of sound is perhaps the most challenging. It's the telling the story that's the most interesting to me.
Valerie: So when you're preparing for either the Broadway stage or a cabaret show, how do you find the story? I mean, it seems like in Broadway, it's kind of prescribed because you have a character and you're going to play that part. But when you're singing all these different songs in cabaret, you have a really wide range of choices that you have to make.
How do you make those choices?
Karen: Well, what's, what's really great about cabaret to me is that they're my choices. And that no one is telling me this, other character over here will impact you. You get to write it. You get to create it. You get to act it. You're everything to that moment. And no one knows what your story is. As long as you have one, it will take you on a particular journey.
Sometimes that's the thing about acting is making yourself as available to what you're feeling at the moment or what the song is telling you and how it makes you feel about something in your life. Something you want to communicate. Most songs are fairly specific about a story. You just have to let that story talk to you and see where it resonates with your life and your, you know, your psyche and your personality and your emotions.
If you can just give yourself a couple of minutes to see where it lands with you, then usually if you start out with that idea at the beginning, it will take you so many different places every time you sing it.
Valerie: That's the interesting part too, isn't it?
Karen: Yeah.
Valerie: That it never is the same thing twice.
Karen: Because you're never the same person twice.
Valerie: It's kind of, like I said this in an interview and I couldn't believe I said this out loud to somebody, but it's kind of like sex. It's like the same equipment, maybe with the same guy over and over but never the same experience, you know, if you're aware and you're, you know, not just going through the motions, it can be really different every time.
Karen: Right. And sometimes it's, you know, sometimes you're faking it and sometimes it's really deep and beautiful, you know, and you just, a whole different experience for you. And that's, what's so amazing about it.
There's one song that Barry, my director once got me to sing and he, it was, It Had To Be You, which you know, is an old chestnut.
Valerie: Yes.
Karen: And I said, eh, Barry, I don't have anything to add to that. You know, it's I it's been sung. It's been done. You know, it sounds kind of wimpy. I don't know. It just doesn't sound meaty for me. Very pretentiously. And of course, then I sang it and I could not stop crying.
Valerie: Oh, interesting. What happened?
Karen: It just spoke to my soul. The words, if you just read them and you say them out loud are so powerful, so powerful in a way that I did not expect. And I got the picture of, you know, my husband.. And listen. Sometimes he does things that, Uh, I could just kill him. And sometimes he's, the sweetest thing on earth.
And usually if I can muster up a picture of him, you know, in my head at the beginning of the song, depending upon whether he's made me angry or the complicated relationship that all married couples have, or any couples have, uh, that friends have -it's all there. And it colors how you say It Had To Be You. It had to be you, it had to be you. I wandered around and finally found the somebody who could make me be true. I mean, that's pretty fabulous.
And yet if I'm angry with him, it's like,
Valerie: Yeah. It had to be you.
Karen: Yeah. for. It's like,
Valerie: Y
Karen: Oy, yoy, yoy, yoy!, But you finally, at the end of it, it's, it's like you've had a, you've made up with each other and, and there's such a loving ending to it. It's, you know, it's a remarkable, um, transformation is not the word, but journey. It's a remarkable journey when you let yourself go there.
Valerie: Uh, you just, oh, there's so many things I want to say about what you just said. The first thing is I love it that you talked about reading the lyric out loud. Uh, I, I have my students do that sometimes. Just if they're not connecting with a song, just read the lyrics out loud, like it's poetry, like with as much emotion as you can possibly put into it.
And sometimes I think a song comes alive that way, because we're not trying to sing, you know. It's just, it's, there's the lyric and there's the story. And then when you put the music to it, it really comes alive.
Karen: In a totally different way.
Valerie: Yeah. In a totally different way. Have you ever seen that clip of Judy Garland singing Somewhere Over The Rainbow? Not as the young hopeful Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, but as the lonely beaten down by life...
Karen: Oh, I don't think I have, but I bet it's fabulous.
Valerie: Oh, my gosh. It is so incredible because of course we all have Judy embedded in our mind's eye as this young hopeful person singing Somewhere Over The Rainbow. And then when she's doing her one woman show towards the end of her life, and she's the tramp and she's singing the song like she missed out on it somehow. Somewhere over the rainbow, Bluebirds fly, birds fly over the rainbow. Why can't I? Not, why can't I right now, because I'm gonna, because I'm young and you know. But why can't I, why am I earthbound?
Anyway, it just, the story you just told reminded me of, that. And I'll, I'll send you the clip. It's so incredibly powerful.
Karen: I'd love to see it, you know, certainly I, I have stolen a lot from her and from Frank Sinatra. You know, those were the two that I listened to and watched and Barbara Streisand when I was growing up. But I think certainly Garland she was the master at letting whatever emotion she was feeling at the time, kind of part of her storytelling- without you knowing anything about what's going on, but somehow you feel like you do. Isn't that magical?
Valerie: It is magical. Her vulnerability, I think is what makes anyone who listens to her and especially watches her really connect with the song that she's singing. And she's not faking it. She's all out there. It's really extraordinary.
Karen: It's an interesting thing about what you said about your students. You know, you sometimes say read the lyric. It's funny how people, when they hear a song and they're mimicking someone's performance of it, which we all do by the way I,
Yeah. That's how you learn. But how they don't know what the song is really about until they read the lyric and go, oh, never knew that.
Valerie: Yeah.
Karen: Yeah. I'm so I'm so glad you do that. Cause I think it's really, it's so powerful. And then to actually to have them do the lyric as a monologue is also a good thing to do. And it's hard to do because the cadence of a lyric is very different from a monologue, but to have It make sense, uh, the way a monologue would, it's really an interesting lesson.
Valerie: It helps. And another thing that I found also helps is to write it out as a movie treatment so that you're actually creating scenes in your mind. Like you were talking about your husband, Paul and how sometimes, you know, you're picturing him and the love you have for him. And other times you're pissed off.
That's the pic, that's the movie that's playing in your mind, you There's a theme to it. There's a beginning, there's a middle. And then there's an end. There's a resolution. There's a transformation that happens from the beginning of the song to the end of the song. And that's what people I think are drawn to, right?
Karen: Yeah, I think so too. Yeah. I, you know, the more specific you are always say this, the more specific you are as a performer, as an actor, the more universal.
Valerie: Um,
Karen: It sounds like, uh, it shouldn't make sense, but it's the truth. If I can be very specific about what I'm thinking about and feeling, and you know, the story, the movie that's going through my head, you may not know exactly what the story is I'm thinking about, but it will communicate something that will allow you to feel something also.
Valerie: Yes, it's a journey and you're taking someone on it.
Karen: Yeah.
[00:30:14] Stage Patter
Valerie: Another huge part of cabaret performance is the talking bits. Because you are metaphorically setting the stage, right? Usually in cabaret, there's no stage setup - much of one anyway. So you're creating a context for the song you're singing by how you present it um, verbally. And I don't know, I had a huge aha moment when I started singing jazz in clubs, because I realized I needed to practice the talking as much as I practiced singing.
I'd been singing my whole life, but I'm not a natural when it comes to talking. So how do you prepare for the talking in your shows? What's your process?
Karen: Well, I used to not talk, Um, you know, I didn't realize I had to, and really all I wanted to sing was depressing songs. So, you know, I kind of had to talk because otherwise people would have been really suicidal after, after all of my depressing 11 o'clock numbers. And I'm a natural talker, but what I had to learn was not to talk about absolutely everything, you know. Because when I first started, I was having such a great time talking that, I would talk about the most random things that were going on in my day as if I were the most fascinating human being in the world.
And I could make a joke, you know, I could make people laugh and think that it was enjoyable, but it had nothing to do with the show. And I started getting, you know, I was moving up the food chain in Chicago and got kind of slammed for it in a review. It was done very, very lovingly. This was somebody who really liked what I did, but said, you don't have to tell us about your new washer, dryer combination. You know, no one really cares about that.
Valerie: Wow.
Karen: Yeah. So, I mean, I would go off on these tangents. And I've had to learn how to I have an arc in the show. There are certain places you lay out. Hi, good to see you. People are checking me out, you know, and I'm just going to do a little talking, you know, and kind of set up what we're going to do here tonight, and then start singing.
I don't feel like every song has to be introduced. I love having maybe three songs that have a little arc to them, that one song takes you to the next song and then takes you to that last song.
But I work with a gentleman whose name is Barry Kleinberg. He's my director. And he and I work on the patter. And you know, he's always saying, no, you can't do that, Karen. No, you can't do that. And he'll help me with being more directed, making sure that it's going in the right direction and that I have all the right facts. He's so clever at it. He's so clever at how do we get from the first patter into that next song? And I've learned a lot from working with him.
I'm not somebody who memorizes patter. I don't do well with that, but I kind of know where I have to be from A, to B to C to D. And you know, if I go slightly off on tangent, then you know, I know how to get back. But it's, it's a learning process, you know, and again, when you're able to do it four or five times, a week, you learn a lot about it and you know, I'm still learning about patter. You know, it's still the part that makes me break out in flop sweat. But I now have my little places along the way that help me get to where I need to go.
Valerie: Yeah, it's like developing a muscle. And it is helpful to have audiences a few nights in a row at least to try things out on and just see what happens, um.
Karen: Cause you know, that second night is not going to be like your first.
Valerie: And the third, not the same as the second, I mean, it's just always different, but maybe there's a universal thread in some of the things that you want to bring to the story.
For instance, I was doing a Joni Mitchell song, um, Both Sides Now. And it really didn't have a whole lot to do with it, but I'm from Portland, Oregon, and we have a lot of clouds. And so I went into a whole thing about the different kinds of clouds that we have different times of the year and how it can make you think about life.
And I mean, I had this beginning and middle and end, which is one of the things my husband taught me cause he's also kind of an editor at heart and, um, yeah. Right. Good to have in your household. Yeah. He just said, You know, it doesn't matter what you do, you can wander around a little bit in the middle, but make sure you have a good, strong ending to get into the song.
And that really was fun. I don't memorize necessarily what I'm going to say, but I can have at least, you know, the outline. I write it out and then I just put a few words on my music stand so that I can see, oh yeah, yeah. I'm going to clouds, you know, or whatever.
Karen: Yeah, once it works, you kind of go, okay, you know, I know the, the jokes. I know the things that land and I can work around all of that, you know, I can enhance it or not at will. And I think it's really fascinating how people write patter. A lot of it is not really great. They think they have to introduce with the songwriter and the... Don't tell me what the song's about. Do the song.
Valerie: Yeah. And if it has really special meaning to you, perhaps lead with that, but otherwise it's just, and now we have, you know,
Karen: for my next song...
Valerie: For my next number...
Karen: You can maybe get away with that once, but for a whole show of that, nah, that's, it's gotta be a little bit more thought out than that.
[00:36:23] From Cabaret to Broadway
Valerie: So let's switch from cabaret to Broadway. Singing in a Broadway production it seems like it would require a lot of physical and vocal stamina. How do you prepare for that?
Karen: Oh, well you rehearse for six weeks and then, you know, so you're kind of building up as you go along.
Valerie: And before rehearsal, you're learning the music, right? So you're singing every day for weeks before that.
Karen: No, no, no. Usually during rehearsal that's when you learn it for a Broadway show. Yeah. You don't.. Unless it's a role that requires that or you, you want to do that, but for the most part, people learn it all in those six weeks. Um, yeah, I know. And that's including the tech, so you're really learning it maybe for four and a half weeks.
You know, so you're building up that way because you're rehearsing eight hours a day or six hours a day. So you're kind of building up your chops by doing that. Uh, I have to say that then you get into doing eight shows a week. And depending upon the role, you know, you live for that production. You know, you, your life becomes about making sure you can do those eight shows a week.
There are certain shows that are more demanding, you know, certainly doing Rose in, um, gypsy demands that you live like a nun, uh, a cloistered nun for the however long you're doing the show, you know. Because you have to just make sure you have your voice for the show.
Valerie: Right. No talking after the show. talking during, you know, during the day
Karen: Right. That talking after the show is actually the hardest for me. I don't, I, it kills me, you know, and if I find it so destructive, I, and I, you know, I become, so anti-social when I'm doing a show, no matter what it is that I, uh, you know, it's like doing a cabaret, you're singing for an hour and talking for an hour. And it's you. Um, whereas if you're doing a theatrical thing, most roles come in and out, you're not on stage all the time.
Valerie: Right. You get a break.
Karen: Right, unless you're doing like a Mama Rose. But when I'm performing, I eat differently. I go to the gym all the time, that helps me. And I study, I still study. I find that my voice is always changing. My, my mechanism is always changing as I'm getting older and I'm needing to find new ways to take care of my instrument.
Valerie: Mmm, in what ways is it changing for you?
Karen: I have found that it takes me a lot longer to vocalize. I can get out of shape really fast. And certainly the pandemic, showed me that, uh, not singing for two years, uh, you know, or singing, not singing for a year. I was, I did start singing again pretty quickly cause I was doing these little half-hour shows on Thursdays on, on zoom, but it was not the same as singing every day. Now I really do make an effort to sing every day so that I can build up my stamina so that I'm never caught off guard.
I found as I get older, you know, certainly things don't operate as fast as they used to. And, uh, my breathing, I have to really be conscious of that. It's easy to get very high breathing and that just destroys, you know, it it's so bad for singing that I try to make sure that I'm breathing deeper.
I've had such weird things happen with my vocal chords over the years. I mean, strange. In 84, I had a paralyzed vocal cord and Yeah. Uh, cause I had never heard of anyone who had one and they said, we can't tell you when, or if it's coming back, it's like Bell's Palsy. Um, and so, okay. Well, six months later it finally started to vibrate a little bit, my left cord. But to this day, my left cord does not vibrate at the same speed as my right.
Valerie: Wow. I would never have known, known that listening to your voice.
Karen: Isn't that crazy? It is wild. Yeah. I have a friend who said that her vocal chords vibrate at different tempos too. I mean, it's so it's, the human voice is truly remarkable. I found out two years ago that I have a partially paralyzed diaphragm and I've had it for the past 10 years.
Valerie: How did you find that out?
Karen: Well, I was having some heart issues and I started passing out and the passing out, uh, they, they sent me in for a cat scan and that's when they saw that my left diaphragm does not go down, it stays pretty high.
Valerie: So that makes it really hard to get air because your diaphragm has to actually go down in order to suck air into your lungs. And it does that automatically when we breathe. But when you're singing, you have to expand and lift really quickly in order to get that air in and have enough to sing a whole phrase.
Karen: And I mean, I said, this cannot be, I'm not only a singer, I'm a belter, so I'm loud. And uh, they said, Oh, you know, look at the cat scan. And I had had an x-ray done like 10 years earlier and nobody noticed it then, but it was the same exact thing. The left does not descend the same way as the right.
Valerie: Do they know why?
Karen: Well, uh, the hypothesis is that perhaps when I had the paralyzed vocal cord, that it also, because the phrenic nerve it's on the same side. So, uh, perhaps it partially paralyzed my diaphragm, or I was born with it. You know, who knows? Because we had only look at it when something's wrong.
Valerie: Right. Nobody took you out as a baby and said, oh, she's going to be a singer. Let's give her a cat scan now.
Karen: That's right. out that diaphragm.
Valerie: Make sure everything's working. Yeah.
Karen: So, you know, I do think that the passing out kind of screwed up my breathing for a little bit, but I'm getting it back and feeling, you know, more and more in control of things, which is a great feeling, Valerie. You know, as a singer, I would say that my personality is for the most part dictated by my voice.
Valerie: Yeah. And whether it's working correctly and at your will.
Karen: Right. I, you know, Paul always says, I wake up in the morning and if I do this and it's, you know, there, I'm fine. If there's a problem, you know, he closes the door to the office and doesn't come out for awhile.
Valerie: Because our body is our instrument we are at the mercy of all of these things. And it sounds like though you have a pretty good grasp of technique and how to work your voice so that even if you are having difficulty, eventually you can get back to where you were. Is that right?
Karen: Well, yes. And I also have great people around me who, uh, you know, I think, um, a director, a teacher, uh, those are all great people. You know, you always need that outside eye, I think.
Yes, absolutely. And, you know, I've studied with a lot of great people And I continue to have that extra help. It makes you not feel so alone and desperate.
Valerie: And crazy.
Karen: And crazy. That's the worst, it's the worst. And, uh, you know, nobody likes feeling like that. And so to be able to have somebody who you respect and trust say, no, no, you're going to be okay. There's nothing wrong. Here's what we need to do. You know, your breathing's a little off, you're doing blah, blah. It's like, okay, I can see that. I can see an end to that. I can...
Valerie: Yeah.
Karen: ...work with you on that.
Valerie: Oh, what a gift.
Karen: Well, Yeah. I mean, you know, I'm, and, and I'm smart enough to pursue those people and stay in touch and, and not be afraid to get help.
Valerie: That's an important thing to know when it's time to get help and who to get help from.
I had a terrible experience, um, that I won't go too deeply into here, but it was basically nodules. And I was studying with a voice teacher who didn't really know about the physical part of singing. She was a classical teacher and I was singing over a 12-piece Wind, and Fire horn band.
So the doctor said, you know, you have to get those removed or you have to stop singing for three months. And I knew if I stopped singing for three months, that the band would break up. I mean, there, or find singer. But a bartender of all people told me about this guy who could fix nodules in singers.
And so I went to see him, and he changed my life, and made it possible for me, not only to, continue to sing - I'd tear my voice up a little bit during the week and he'd put it back together at every lesson. But, after a year and a half, the vocal fold tissue regenerates underneath the callus, which is what a vocal nodule is.
And then you know, it gets clear again. So I, then we got a record deal and thank God I knew how to sing by that time, because there were a lot of demands made on my voice and touring and all that. And then I got to learn how to be able to be strong enough to sing other styles too. Strong and flexible enough, actually, because sometimes R and B singing is all about strength. But that...
Karen: That must've been fascinating though.
Valerie: It was. And I felt this when you were talking just now about being able to trust someone and know there's a prescription for what ails you, that's the feeling I had the first lesson I had with him because he explained to me what was going on. And I was like, thank god!
Karen: Yeah. Right. I'm not losing my mind.
Valerie: Yes. And you know, I couldn't talk during the day. My voice sounded like this. Seriously. It was bad. So I get what you're saying about like, it work? Yeah, it does. I'm a happy person.
[00:47:53] Recent Work: Let The Music Play
Valerie: So anyway, let's talk about some of your more recent work.
You were in lockdown in New York at the beginning of the pandemic, listening to sirens go down the street to the hospital in your neighborhood.
And by the end of the first year, I think of that experience you had a new album called, Let The Music Play. And so I'm wondering just, how the pandemic and lock down affected you, how the album came about, and how is it different than anything you've released before.
Karen: Well, I certainly, I think the pandemic affected everyone. The lockdown affected everyone. We live about five blocks from the hospital that was really ground zero. We live right on the street that leads to it. So we had sirens all of the time, night and day.
And then in being in lockdown, Paul's life never changed by the way, because he's a record producer and, you know, he was working on all kinds of things during lockdown. I was bouncing off walls because I had to cancel all, like everyone did, canceled a lot of work. And believe it or not I did not hate being in lockdown. Even though I was bouncing off the walls I did enjoy certain things about it. It gave me a lot of time to think.
And during lockdown, I had a very big birthday. And big birthdays and thinking can be dangerous. I told Paul, I said, whatever we want to do, we need to direct ourselves to get it done because we've got a limited timeframe now.
So , you know, we have to get stuff done. if I want to learn how to do this self taping thing then I'm going to do it. If we're gonna move, let's move. Whatever we want to do, we need to have our eye on it right now and move toward it. And one of those was, a CD.
When you go into the studio, a lot of times you will record, extra stuff, you know, or you'll say, oh, let's record it now, we're here we have the, other musicians, let's just do it. And see what happens. And so we have, over the years, all these songs that have never been put on a CD. And so Paul handed me the list and I went through and you know, yes, no, yes, no, yes, no. And it was quite, um, a pot pourri of songs, you know, little, all over the place. it had everything from, you know, Don't Rain On My Parade to an original song Paul wrote called Jerusalem, and a song from Wicked, and an original song by my friend, David Friedman. It was just kind of very disparate. You know, there was no theme.
Paul played for me, this new song that he had just written with our friend David Friedman. The title of this song was Let The Music Play. Paul had that hook in his head that he felt, you know what we're just waiting for through this COVID is for that moment when things are going to open back up, and please let us be musicians, let us be musical again.
And he played the song for me. And suddenly the entire CD was like, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, everything fell into place. And I thought that song says for me exactly how I'm feeling. You know, we've been living life apart. We've felt hopeless and depressed with a song deep in our heart that had no place to be expressed.
It just encapsulated what I was feeling.
And so we made that the title track of the CD. And I mean, it is crazy and, and wonderful that we had the time during the pandemic, the lockdown to work together and get this done. I I'm so proud of it. It's just somebody said to me that when they heard it, that it felt, like, every song was an emotion that they had during the lockdown. That you could pinpoint that emotion that they were feeling through, all these feelings in COVID and that, uh, I thought that was really interesting. And I wish I had thought of being able to say that, but I knew somehow that it, you know, it spoke to me in a, in a, in a very specific way.
Valerie: It sounds like you intuitively knew, uh, what your heart wanted to hear.
Karen: Hmm. Well, I like that even better.
Valerie: You can use that in your next marketing campaign.
Karen: Oh, I think I will.
Valerie: Oh, this has been such an up and down ride, I guess it, it sort of brings to the fore everything in life that is always fragile. You know, we can just go along and think it's not, but it actually is. And this just, really brings it all home.
Karen: And maybe that's not a bad thing, you know, maybe it was good for us to... I know, personally, it was very good for me to understand that because I, you get going so fast and moving toward a goal, you know, whatever that is, especially, in New York, it's a very, ambitious town. And you're always driven, you know, it's, it's all about achieving. And to have that two years or a year and a half where you couldn't, where you just had to stop.
And it, it allowed me to get in touch with my friends more. You know, as a singer, I'm not, I don't like being on the phone that much because it, you know, I'm a loud person. So I talk even louder on the phone and, and I laugh and, and, you know, and then beat myself up about that.
Valerie: Right.
Karen: So, this allowed me that luxury , of talking to my family and my friends and reconnecting with people and in a very powerful way,
Valerie: I heard you say that you felt changed by the pandemic. In what ways do you think it will affect your choices as an artist moving forward?
Karen: I think it has affected me. I can see it in my choices of what I want to do and what I'm willing to put up with. I used to, you know, say yes to everything. And many times, not all the time, but, uh, you know, sometimes regret, not really enjoy it. You know, work with the wrong people, work with people who are contentious. I don't want to do that anymore. I want to enjoy what I have, what we do takes a lot of time and energy and devotion and passion and love and concentration. And you give up an awful lot for it, for the ability to share that gift.
And if that's going to be the case, then I want to make sure it's something I'm going to truly enjoy. And you know, which is why it's been fun to be doing more auditioning for television and voiceovers. And I feel a little bit more fearless. Isn't that crazy?
Valerie: That's great. Are you kidding? That's fantastic!
Karen: Now, I'm not sure whether it's turning 70 or whether it's the pandemic, but I'll take it. Doesn't matter why. I feel a little bit more fearless. And when somebody says you want to try this, I was like, yeah, sure, fine. I'll give it a shot.
Why not?
[00:56:04] Halston and Ewan McGregor
Valerie: Well, speaking of television and film, my dear, um, I saw you in the Netflix series Halston. It was so magnificent. Um, your scene is fantastic.
Karen: Thank you. I loved doing that.
Valerie: And I'm envious because I'm a huge Ewan McGregor fan. He's so fantastic in everything he does. He can sing, act, and from what I've read, he's also a very generous actor on set. What was it like to work with him?
Karen: Well, , I would sum up Ewan McGregor in one word; he's dreamy. He, he was so lovely and I, I was the newbie, you know, I was the one... they had all worked together for a while already, and then I come in on it. He couldn't have been more generous and gracious and he's just, he was fun and always changing something a little bit. He's a very conscientious actor without being creepy about it.
Valerie: Is there an example you can give me of something that you remember that he did? Or was this just a feeling that you had throughout whole filming?
Karen: Well, if you remember at the end of, at the end of the fashion show, when he exits and I was, you know,, sitting there as his investor and I thought, Hmm, I don't know what's going to happen here. There's nothing really in the script. It just says he leaves. And they did it maybe four or five times.
And on one of them, he grabbed my hand. It was just, you know, including me in it, including his investor. I mean, it's a wise acting choice. But was great. It was just so generous.
And I have to say, I was like a 16 year old girl with my, you know, my hands under my chin just kind of staring dreamily at him. He was so cute. He's such a doll, such a sweet guy.
Valerie: I just just I love him. Moulin Rouge.
Karen: I know I had to go back and watch it. He's sexy as can be.
Valerie: He is, and he sings really well, too. It's amazing. It's amazing.
Karen: I snuck him one of my CDs. I don't know if he actually got it or listened to it or tossed it.
Valerie: But why not?
Karen: Well, why not? Exactly. I had nothing to lose.
Valerie: The only regrets that I have are when I didn't do the thing that I thought of, because I was shy. I was standing next to Bonnie Raitt in a parking lot after some music industry event.
And I didn't want to bug her, you know? I didn't want to go up and be like the fan that says, Oh my God, you changed my life. And I listened to every record, you know? Why not?
Why not? So, you know, that's my new motto too.
Karen: Well, and ergo the fearlessness, you know. Cause that kind of stuff has kept me also from talking to certain people or doing what I would consider aggressive, but everybody else would say, oh no, you know, that's a very lovely thing to do. Or it's of course, just a business thing to do.
Valerie: Maybe that's that Catholic Midwest upbringing again.
Karen: Perhaps. It rears, she rears her ugly head every once in awhile.
Bonnie Raitt, while I love it. I can see why you love Bonnie Raitt. I love Bonnie Raitt.
Valerie: She's amazing.
[00:59:24] Longevity In The Entertainment Business
Valerie: Let's talk about longevity in the entertainment business, because that's a, that's a tricky one. I just read an interview with the actress, Gina Davis, where she spoke about her groundbreaking roles in films like Thelma and Louise. And she said how the press would make statements about how now there were more substantial roles for women in film and television, but in the article, she basically said that unfortunately, things haven't changed much all these years later.
Do you think conditions in the industry have changed at all for women since your career began?
Karen: Well, I don't think they've gotten better. certainly the fact that we see a female director as an anomaly speaks volumes.
Valerie: It does.
Karen: Women producers are still anomalies, and are not given the same, attention, you know, uh, press attention that male producers are. I don't know if it, it's not that it hasn't changed, you know, it's always changing, but I think it's certainly a slower progression than I think most people would like. And that's a shame.
Valerie: It is a shame. In your life, is it more challenging to land a role now than it was when you were younger?
Karen: Nah, I think it's about the same. I just think my competition changes constantly.
Valerie: Oh, that's interesting. Say more.
Karen: I think when I was younger, you know, it wasn't quite so, star driven. That shows would be filled with a lot of people who may be had street cred, but not necessarily the name above the title, the Tony, the.. But everything now seems to be a little bit more.. You have to have that Tony to even get through the door.
Valerie: Wow.
Karen: For certain roles, not all roles, but they're the roles I want to do. You know, it is what it is. It's fine. I'm getting really good at auditioning. And you know, when it's right, I will get it. When that role is right for me, I will get it.
You know, I was talking with a friend of mine who's also a cabaret singer and a theatrical actress. Basically, our careers are very similar. We started at the same time and she's got CDs and you know, a Tony nomination and she said, basically we've been creating our work since the very beginning anyway. And it's true! You know, when you do cabaret, you create your own work. You know, you're out there pushing. You know as a recording artist, even though you had that recording deal, you were the one creating all of that. You were making that happen.
And so we're used to that, that balance of somebody getting the job for me and me creating something. It's always been an interesting little balance, but I think people are now learning that they have to be a little bit more self motivated, at least at my level. For other people, they might have a totally different experience. But it seems to me that everybody at some point is going to slow down and during that time what are you going to do?
Valerie: We kind of, touched on retiring and, uh, it sounds like you're not planning on doing that anytime soon.
Karen: Well, my husband told me I can't and, uh, yeah, so he's going to keep, uh, you know, the old cow out in the meadow. Um, I, I, enjoy what I do, so I, you know, until I stop enjoying it. But there is a part of me that I was ready to move at the beginning of the pandemic. I was like, let's get out of here. What are we doing here? New York is for striving.
New York is for, is, is for ambition. And I don't have that kind of ambition anymore. I wanna sing pretty tunes, and work with people that I love, and have a great time, and wear a pretty dress every now and then. And, you know, beyond that, to me it's more about the process than it is about the end result. And I think New York is very much a town of end-result.
Valerie: Very well said.
Uh, Well, if you could go back in time and have a conversation with a younger version of yourself, how old would you be and what would you say to her about the life she's about to lead?
Karen: Hm. I know what I would say; to which age is more interesting. Probably the 17 year old Karen who hasn't graduated yet from high school, but is trying to see herself in the future. And I think what I'd say is be fearless. Don't be afraid of what you perceive other people see about you.
As a young person and throughout most of my life, it's always, how does the other person see me? How are they going to see me? Are they going to see me as too fat, too thin, too, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I think, I would just say be fearless, believe in yourself and be fearless. Not hurt anyone, but be fearless for yourself.
Valerie: Nice. And if there's one piece of advice you'd give to singers who'd like to make a life out of singing would that be the same piece of advice do you think? Or is there something else you'd like to share?
Karen: Be fearless, but always be willing to learn. Always keep your eyes open and keep learning. There are so many people to learn from. And so many things to learn about yourself as an artist, as an instrument. Um, and, you know, it's not going to be what you expected, so try not to expect too much. Just, just be in the moment.
Valerie: Oh, I love that. It never is what you expect. Right? Never. And so you can plan, then let go. know, and just be. Just do it. Just be fearless.
Karen: Right? Because You can't control any of that!
Valerie: No, you can only be prepared and even then you can over over-prepare um, you can only be prepared to a certain extent and then you just have to ride the wave.
Karen: I love that.
Valerie: If there is one!
Karen: Right!
Valerie: Sometimes you can paddle out there and wait for a long time before that wave comes into shore.
Oh, gee, I have had such a great time talking with you, Karen.
Karen: Oh, this has been fun. Well, thank you so much. I it's, I've had a great time. So thank you for letting me be on the show.
Valerie: Thank you for listening to this episode of living a vocal life. If you enjoy these conversations and want to support the podcast, now you can, whether you're listening on your favorite podcast app or my website, you can buy me a virtual cup of coffee. For the price of a steaming cup of Java, your contribution will help pay for the apps I use to record and edit the podcast and the 40 plus hours it takes to create each episode. Thank you in advance for your support.
For complete show notes and a transcription of this episode, you can head to my website, Valerie day sings.com. In addition, you'll find videos of my guests performing and links to all their socials and website.
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Until next time be well, keep singing, and thanks again for listening.
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If you’d like to support the podcast, please buy me a (virtual) coffee! Your contribution (the price of a steaming cup of java) will fuel the price of this website, the apps I use for creation, and the 40-plus hours it takes to create each episode. Thank you!
