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!