Chords of strength: a memoir of soul, song, and the power of perseverance.
by David Archuleta.
To anyone who believes in the power of a dream and all the possibilities . . .
"I have no idea why I"m doing this, but I know I need to be doing it for some reason."
INTRODUCTION.
That was the last entry in my old journal, which I wrote during American Idol American Idol auditions. I was finally home for the holidays in 2008, hanging out with a friend and going through a bunch of my old stuff when I came across my old journal. I had written on and off over the previous several years about school and friends, and questions about the future and what I was going to do with my life. There was a gap of several months between my last two entries, and the very last one was right before I went to Hollywood the week of auditions. I was finally home for the holidays in 2008, hanging out with a friend and going through a bunch of my old stuff when I came across my old journal. I had written on and off over the previous several years about school and friends, and questions about the future and what I was going to do with my life. There was a gap of several months between my last two entries, and the very last one was right before I went to Hollywood the week of American Idol"s American Idol"s seventh season. seventh season.
It was November of 2007 when I was still sixteen and in my junior year at Murray High. I had written about how nervous I was to be auditioning for the show and quite sure it wouldn"t be too long until I would be booted off and back home and I really had no expectation about what might happen next.
No one can see your life the way you see it.
As I read and thought about the events since that last time I had written in my journal, I was a little disappointed with myself. I thought about how I was the only person who really knew my side of the story, of how I really felt when all of this was going on. I saw that back then I was writing about music quite a bit and saying that I really wanted to do something with music but I wasn"t sure how I was supposed to do it. It really amazed me when I thought back and tried to put myself back into the state of mind I was in when I had written each entry, and kept thinking, "Wow, you had no idea what was going to happen in the next few years, couple of years, or next year," depending on when the entry was made. I felt bad that I hadn"t written down more of what I went through, especially because I hadn"t written anything at all during the entire 2008 year while I was on American Idol American Idol, or the following Top 10 tour and the events surrounding the recording of my first single and making of my first alb.u.m, all life changing events.
So I made the decision right there in my room that I would make a New Year"s resolution to write in my journal at least once a week from then on, even though I thought there was no way I"d be able to keep it going because I hated writing, which is why I couldn"t keep it up with that old journal in the first place. Then I thought, I get interviewed all the time and several of my incredibly amazing fans have made very detailed sc.r.a.pbooks about my life. Did I want to rely on everyone else to tell my story of how I started, where I came from and who I am? People were keeping track of me, but no one really had my own story. No one knew what was going on in my mind before people knew my name. I was thinking, man, when I have my kids in the future, I don"t want them to rely on what everyone else thought about me. While I hope that people think good things about me and that I left a good name for my family and myself, I want them to hear my story from me in my own words. No one can see your life the way you see it. Not only did I realize at that point the importance of writing in my journal, but also, like I did with singing, how important it is to share it with the most important people in my life: my family, friends and my fans.
So that is the long explanation of why I said yes when I was asked to write a book. Writing in my journal has helped me more than almost anything else I"ve been doing because it has helped me organize my thoughts and understand what is most important to me, and to think about how I can make sure I keep on track with my personal priorities.
I would have never imagined just over two years ago that I would be recording alb.u.ms, touring all over the world, writing a book, speaking in front of youth groups and other large audiences, raising awareness for several worthy causes; things that I never believed I would be able to do, let alone have the courage to do them. I remember thinking about when I was too shy, and I hated the sound of my voice, and when doctors told me I might not ever be able to sing again. Back then I was ready to make music a hobby and think about becoming a dentist or a doctor. There I was a few years later, and a world away, reading that journal and first thinking, Wow! I can"t believe I"m actually doing what I dreamed about, and then some. Wow! I can"t believe I"m actually doing what I dreamed about, and then some.
I had to overcome many fears to do almost anything I do in public today including singing, speaking in public and, now, having to write a book. When I started singing, as much as I loved it, I had serious issues with my own voice. Even when people would tell me I had a nice voice, I thought they were just being nice because I was a little kid. If someone were to record it and play it back, I would freak out and run out of the room because I couldn"t stand my voice. I hated it! I thought I sounded so strange. But I knew one thing: I still loved singing so much that I loved the way it made me feel more than I hated listening to myself, if that makes sense.
I remember the first talent show I did was the Utah Talent Compet.i.tion when I was ten. I was so afraid to go onstage. I couldn"t believe I was doing it. I kept asking, "Why am I doing this?" While I was backstage, I had a panic attack. I was hyperventilating. I remember everyone backstage saying, "You don"t have to go on if you don"t want to." It was embarra.s.sing! Five minutes before I had to go on, I said to myself I could do it, and I just got up there and sang. I ended up winning the kid"s division. I just couldn"t believe it. The audience was so supportive. I think they realized how scared and nervous I was because I was shaking so much. That was the first time I had overcome my fear of singing in such a big way that I started to realize how many great things could happen by confronting the things that scare you most.
Sometimes you have to face your fears. Even though I used to fear singing, I went ahead and put myself out there until I started to gain confidence and gradually my fear went away. Same with speaking. I used to dread doing interviews and having to answer questions, and definitely would have never thought I could speak in front of a large crowd of people. I know it was something I needed to face head-on.
This book is supposed to be about persevering and following your dreams, so I ask myself, "What does it mean to follow your dreams?" Well, it"s your desire to accomplish something that you really want to do even if it seems difficult. It"s, "Well, that something will probably only ever exist in my dreams. That can never happen in reality." But then it"s like "Well, why not! I mean, if it"s something you really have a desire to do and you feel like it"s a good thing, it may seem difficult to do, but you just have to take those first little steps."
I ran cross country for my high school track team when I was in ninth and tenth grades, but during and after Idol Idol and touring, I got out of my running routine. So one thing I told myself was that when I got home from tour, I needed to start running again. It was always those moments when my alarm was blaring at me at seven a.m., and I was still dead tired and just didn"t feel like getting up that I would notice a little light coming into my room and even though I felt so warm and cozy in my bed, I"d tell myself, "David, if you don"t get up, you"ll be disappointing yourself. You"ll be lying to yourself. You need to get up." and touring, I got out of my running routine. So one thing I told myself was that when I got home from tour, I needed to start running again. It was always those moments when my alarm was blaring at me at seven a.m., and I was still dead tired and just didn"t feel like getting up that I would notice a little light coming into my room and even though I felt so warm and cozy in my bed, I"d tell myself, "David, if you don"t get up, you"ll be disappointing yourself. You"ll be lying to yourself. You need to get up."
And after a few minutes of internal struggle, I"d get up. And I"d force myself to stretch and go outside and run and once I was running, I wondered why it was so hard to get going in the first place, when the air felt so fresh and my mind was free to think and wonder and figure out what was going on in that s.p.a.cey head of mine.
That"s one of the things I"ve learned so far in my just over nineteen years. If you want to get better at something, you need to start in the first place even when you don"t feel like it and sometimes you need to trust those around you because they may see something in you that you can"t see. You need to have a little bit of trust, and a little bit of faith. You also have to decide what the first step is and then stick to it. It"s like "Oh well, there"s no guarantee I"ll ever be good at that" or "I"m just not very good. Why would I think I can actually get better?" and so it"s easier to just avoid doing it and try to rationalize it away-kind of like how I have felt about trying to write a book when I have never imagined doing something like this before.
So here I am struggling away trying to write out these pages and you"re all my witnesses that I am trying to overcome something here that is terrifying to me, and I hope I"m able to share something that will be of value to you in some way as you are reading this. It really can be difficult to take that first step sometimes because we"re fighting this current of fear that"s pushing us back. If you really have the desire, if you feel like "Yes, I want to do that," even if it is a hard path to take, even if it has a lot of resistance with big hills and rocks and trees and you can get scratches, and you can trip and fall, and you can get hurt. I think that"s what makes us grow the most. It"s like when you exercise: The more you do it, the stronger you feel and the easier it gets. And even the soreness the next day really feels great! It"s working through the resistance that makes us learn in our lives. So when you get to the end of the path, you have all those bruises and cuts and you can see that you had a difficult time getting to where you are now; but at the same time, you can say, "You know what? I was willing to take that path even if it wasn"t the easiest path to take and look where I am now compared to where I was before I started!"
You just have to trust yourself. You have to trust in G.o.d. You have to decide, "Yes, I want to do this," and then you have to have the faith and courage to do it. And that"s what I want to say here.
My road has definitely come with many b.u.mps and bruises. I had been on Star Search Star Search when I was twelve and was invited back a year later for what would be the show"s final season. After a series of health issues, I was diagnosed with vocal paralysis. Surgery was one option, but it could ruin my voice forever and therapy was the only other option, but with no guarantees. I thought this might be the end of singing for me. Therapy would take one to two years. I couldn"t even get through a couple of songs. How was I supposed to be a singer? I went back to my regular life as a teenager and put singing on the back burner. I later got a job and started moving past my dream until when I was twelve and was invited back a year later for what would be the show"s final season. After a series of health issues, I was diagnosed with vocal paralysis. Surgery was one option, but it could ruin my voice forever and therapy was the only other option, but with no guarantees. I thought this might be the end of singing for me. Therapy would take one to two years. I couldn"t even get through a couple of songs. How was I supposed to be a singer? I went back to my regular life as a teenager and put singing on the back burner. I later got a job and started moving past my dream until American Idol American Idol auditions came back around. All of my friends and family encouraged me to do it and I thought they were all crazy. Then I thought, "Maybe I should?" As soon as the possibility crept into my head I couldn"t get it out. Maybe it was a good idea, but maybe not. I just wasn"t sure. I knew only one thing to do, pray. I believed in prayer, but wasn"t sure it was appropriate to pray about whether G.o.d would care about me wanting to try out for a TV show, but I figured, why not? I knew I had to ask, so I did. And I got an answer. It was: Yes, I should do it. auditions came back around. All of my friends and family encouraged me to do it and I thought they were all crazy. Then I thought, "Maybe I should?" As soon as the possibility crept into my head I couldn"t get it out. Maybe it was a good idea, but maybe not. I just wasn"t sure. I knew only one thing to do, pray. I believed in prayer, but wasn"t sure it was appropriate to pray about whether G.o.d would care about me wanting to try out for a TV show, but I figured, why not? I knew I had to ask, so I did. And I got an answer. It was: Yes, I should do it.
So I knew that it was something that was right for me to do and I figured, "Even if I don"t get past the first round, it couldn"t hurt. I"m sure it would be fun and maybe I would learn something from it." I realized that even though I wasn"t very confident that I could do it, I knew my family, my friends, and G.o.d were behind me. For me, that was enough to keep myself moving forward. My family and friends have always inspired me and supported me to become more than I believed I was capable of.
Right now, I feel so fortunate and blessed to be doing what I am doing with my life. You could say I am living my dream in many ways, but I still look forward to all the new experiences and challenges that lie ahead. In just the last few months I have had some incredible opportunities, which I could have never imagined just a few short years ago. It is hard to believe I am in the middle of working on my third alb.u.m, and was able to visit Asia, the UK and tour most of the United States throughout last year. I was able to record a Christmas alb.u.m, which meant so much to me, and then go on a Christmas tour, and even had the privilege of performing with a full orchestra playing new arrangements of both my pop and Christmas songs. I have been able to help with the Haiti Disaster Relief telethon in Hollywood as well as the Spanish language version of "We Are the World" project in Miami-so many other events that I can"t begin to list them all. And best of all, I"ve been able to meet some incredible people along the way from so many different states and countries, and all of this doing something that I love so much, getting to share the gift of music!
I have been so fortunate to have been encouraged and inspired throughout my life by people who cared enough about me to be there when I doubted my own abilities, and I"ve learned that when I exercise some faith and take the first steps, that usually, somehow, things seem to work out. I hope that through this book as I share some of my experiences and challenges that I"ve faced, that you can perhaps feel the desire and belief that you can also overcome your fears and go after your dreams.
CHAPTER 1.
PURE BEGINNINGS.
"It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."
-J. K. ROWLING.
I spent the first six years of my life in Florida. Maybe that"s why I like warm weather better. It was a sticky heat, filling my childhood with scurrying lizards and duck-egg hunts. My sis-scurrying lizards and duck-egg hunts. My sister Claudia and I used to poke around the yard of our first townhome, looking for duck eggs to raise as our own; they never hatched for some reason. But before I go into details about my own story, I would like to tell you about my roots and some of the influences that have helped make me who I am today. Before there was music or singing, before there was faith, before there was anything that ever mattered to me deeply, there was always my family. They were and are my anchor, my roots, the base of everything that I am and everything that I aspire to be. Without them, my story would be meaningless, because at the end of it all (or at the beginning of it all, I should say), it is family that matters most. spent the first six years of my life in Florida. Maybe that"s why I like warm weather better. It was a sticky heat, filling my childhood with scurrying lizards and duck-egg hunts. My sis-scurrying lizards and duck-egg hunts. My sister Claudia and I used to poke around the yard of our first townhome, looking for duck eggs to raise as our own; they never hatched for some reason. But before I go into details about my own story, I would like to tell you about my roots and some of the influences that have helped make me who I am today. Before there was music or singing, before there was faith, before there was anything that ever mattered to me deeply, there was always my family. They were and are my anchor, my roots, the base of everything that I am and everything that I aspire to be. Without them, my story would be meaningless, because at the end of it all (or at the beginning of it all, I should say), it is family that matters most.
I was born in North Miami, Florida, the second of five kids. We lived in a small one-bedroom apartment in Hialeah, Florida, a city mostly made up of Cubans, which made for a very Latin environment, with lots of salsa and Spanish-language music floating all around our home. Music was always playing in our house: nineties pop music, salsa, jazz, church music, Christmas music, Kansas and seventies rock, and all kinds of different wonderful music that brought a sense of joy and celebration to our everyday lives. Songs and melodies were always a part of our routine, whether it was for fun, for a special occasion or for anything else that might come up. We would always find opportunities to sing together, whether just for family and relatives, caroling to all the neighbors during the holidays or visiting the elderly. It was a way that we felt we could share our love for family, G.o.d and others. To us, music and spirituality always went hand in hand in our home, and our family was largely shaped by the way we would combine the two.
The first time I ever met my mom My parents say that I started walking when I was seven months old. I also supposedly started speaking more in Spanish than English at first. I know I spent a lot of time with my grandma, my abuelita abuelita, and I remember the comforting smell of homemade chicken soup simmering in the kitchen, or fresh homemade flour tortillas being grilled for one of our many family get-togethers-the scents mingling with sounds and rhythms of all kinds of pop, dance, salsa or cla.s.sic jazz. It"s fun to think about this stuff again now, because for the last few years all I"ve ever been asked about was my "music past." It"s nice to try to remember what it was like before everything changed.
Like I said, I believe family is so important, especially in Latin culture. When we lived in Florida, my cousins were the center of my universe. My sister Claudia and our cousins were essentially my social life. Without family, we feel empty. They"re the ones who carry you, support you, raise you and love you unconditionally. To me, family is the center of everything. The people on both sides of my family have been really important in my life. They"ve taught me so much about what matters in life and they"ve been my strength throughout mine. I wouldn"t have been able to accomplish anything without them. So let me tell you about my family.
My mom, Lupe, was born in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, the youngest of four close-knit sisters, who, like us, loved singing and dancing and would put on all kinds of local shows and performances when they were little kids. She"s really beautiful, my mom. She"s looked the same my whole life. She doesn"t age. Maybe it was all the salsa and merengue, basketball and singing. She"s had six kids (one, a little brother, was stillborn), and she still looks like she"s twenty-five. My mother wasn"t known only for her great personality, but also for her beautiful singing voice, which everyone always says has a beautiful, full sound and tone and a natural sense of expression. She was usually the lead vocal in all the shows she would do with her sisters, and her own mother, my grandma, always had the dream of her youngest daughter becoming a famous singer like Selena or Gloria Estefan. My mother and aunts got plenty of local exposure because in addition to being wonderful performers, they were also skilled basketball players in a town where high school athletics were part of the community"s culture, morale and everyday life. My mom played on the national basketball team and was regularly written about in the local press. My grandfather, her father, was a well-respected journalist in his own right who was known for writing editorials for the town paper. The whole family was well known and liked by the La Ceiba community. But they were extremely poor. My grandparents had always wanted more opportunities for their daughters than what they had growing up in La Ceiba.
When my mom was twelve, her sisters and mom all met some missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which changed their lives forever. It soon became the center of their lives and they devoted their time to helping the missionaries share their message. When my mother was fourteen, the family decided to move to the United States, where they could partic.i.p.ate more actively in their new church and hopefully have more opportunities than they could find in their beloved Honduras. My grandparents also hoped the girls would have more prospects in the United States to meet the right kinds of guys. The family arrived in Florida with big hopes to continue working on their musical goals, especially for my mom, whom they all believed showed real promise as a performer. My grandma would take her youngest daughter to various small venues in Miami, where she would sing and dance in front of crowds that seemed to love her. The small local audiences would respond really well, and some also expressed interest in producing and possibly managing her. My mom and grandma even moved to New York for a while to see if they could figure out what to do with my mother"s talents, but nothing really materialized and they soon returned to Miami. A short time later, my mom would meet my dad, and after a four-month courtship, they were married. Over the next ten years, four of my siblings and I would later be born.
The Archuleta kids: Claudia, Daniel, Jazzy, Amber and myself I was always especially close with my older sister, Claudia, probably because we were only about fifteen months apart and always looked like we were about the same age. We were so imaginative back then, and sometimes I wish I could still access those parts of my creativity today. My younger brother, Daniel, and I were quite opposites. When he was really young, we would have him play different parts in the games or whatever we were playing. He had a LOT of energy and loved to play team sports like baseball and football. I tried T-ball but was more interested in the feeling of just being in the outfield in a sunny day than in who was actually winning. Being so outgoing, Daniel had a lot of friends and spent most of his time with them, and he loved playing team sports like baseball and football, which were never really my thing. I"ve always loved my brother, and although he was Mr. Jock on the outside, he has a very sensitive heart on the inside. He"s also become quite a talented singer/songwriter-all self-taught. As a matter of fact, we didn"t even know that he was learning to play the guitar by downloading tabs off the Internet. But it wasn"t until I was away from home a lot that I really started to realize how much I appreciated him.
If it"s true what they say about the apple not falling far from the tree, well, we had two trees that were equally pa.s.sionate about music, because just like my mom, my dad, Jeff, was also born into a family that was deeply rooted in the magic of sound. On his mother"s side, there was my grandma Claudia who had a strong connection to music.
It began with her dad, "Gramps," my great-grandpa, who I knew and listened to as he played jazz standards whenever we would go visit him and "Gram." He was a teacher and also at night was a professional jazz piano player in the late forties, fifties and sixties during the "Big Band" era. His style was very much like Erroll Garner and Nat King Cole. He loved to play and listen to what they call "the standards," which were songs that jazz musicians liked to play and improvise over the chord progressions of the many wonderful songs of that era. So my grandma Claudia and her sisters were all influenced by these songs as well as many of the cla.s.sic musicals of that period. They would always perform little skits with ch.o.r.eography and singing for special events or during the holidays.
I believe family is so important . . .
Interestingly, my gramps learned to play the trumpet too and during World War II, he was actually a gunner and "Bugler" on his battleship, the USS Pringle Pringle. As they were traveling toward Okinawa, they were attacked by a j.a.panese kamikaze plane, and his adored trumpet sank with the ship! The story goes that he was forced to swim to safety through shark-infested waters and literally had to fight off sharks as he swam. I know he received two Purple Hearts for his courage. When he returned, he never played the trumpet again, but he continued to play piano professionally to support his family and so music became a cornerstone of their lives.
Anyway, my grandma Claudia was the oldest of her siblings and by far the most musical. That meant she was in charge of the performances that she and her sisters would perform and she loved to ch.o.r.eograph, sing and perform from a very young age. She developed a real pa.s.sion for music as well as an amazing performance and acting talent. I"m told she had an amazing, powerful singing voice and that she was an accomplished musical theater actress. She performed regularly in musicals, plays and even did commercials, other television gigs, and acted in a few movies. She had the lead role in several theater productions and was well known throughout Salt Lake City as the "little lady with the big voice." Anytime a film production would come through Utah, she was guaranteed to have some small part. She knew every song by Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra, and Bing Crosby who were a few of her favorites. She also performed songs from the movies and musicals of her time like Singin" in the Rain Singin" in the Rain, Funny Girl Funny Girl, White Christmas White Christmas, The Music Man The Music Man, The Pajama Game The Pajama Game, and A Chorus Line A Chorus Line, to name a few. She carried on her tradition with my dad and his sisters, and every year during the holidays they would develop musical numbers that the family would all perform, a tradition we continue to this day.
My dad"s father, James Archuleta, also loved music and sang and performed in a barbershop quartet, which is a really difficult skill because you have to be able to harmonize and your pitch has to be just about perfect. In a barbershop quartet, it"s not only about being up there and singing on your own, but also about knowing how to make beautiful music as part of a group.
Because of my grandma"s involvement in the theater, it was no surprise that my dad got into musical theater as a child. My grandma and my dad were actually both in a professional production of The Music Man The Music Man. My grandma was one of the "pick a little, talk a little ladies" and my dad played one of the main roles, the little boy Winthrop, when he was only eleven years old. My dad grew up appearing in other plays too, and as hard as it is for me and my siblings to believe, he tells us that he really enjoyed singing when he was young. He sang and played piano but then, like his grandpa, he discovered the trumpet! I still have a hard time believing that my dad enjoyed singing because all I had really grown up knowing him to be is a jazz trumpet player. We always had a hard time getting him to sing with us, but he would sometimes, reluctantly.
So my grandma Claudia was twenty when my dad was born and my great-grandma Violet Diehl was only twenty when his mom was born. Since they were both so young, and my dad was the first grandson, he was able to spend a lot of time around his mom"s siblings and grandparents who exposed him to a wide range of music from both generations. This is probably why he had an unusually broad understanding of music for someone his age. My dad grew up in the sixties and seventies, but he had influence from the fifties when jazz music was "pop" music. As he became older, he listened to his dad"s records of the Kingston Trio, Peter, Paul and Mary, the Everly Brothers, and most important, a few alb.u.ms from various groups that changed his whole concept of music, Meet the Beatles Meet the Beatles, Dave Brubeck"s Time Out Time Out, and Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Bra.s.s. He never looked back and ended up minoring in music in college and playing trumpet with some great bands after graduating. His broad music influences and love and appreciation of music are a big part of who he is today. It"s fun to see how it has literally been pa.s.sed from generation to generation, and to understand and see how much it has come to influence me. If he had not loved musicals, he would never have recorded that PBS special one night of the tenth anniversary of Les Miserables, Les Miserables, and I may not have ever realized how much music would mean to me. I grew up singing songs from musicals, great R & B cla.s.sics, and many cla.s.sic pop songs, and my dad often arranged the music just enough to make it different or more special. His influence on me, and the lessons I"ve learned from him about music, are definitely reflected through my own approach to singing. and I may not have ever realized how much music would mean to me. I grew up singing songs from musicals, great R & B cla.s.sics, and many cla.s.sic pop songs, and my dad often arranged the music just enough to make it different or more special. His influence on me, and the lessons I"ve learned from him about music, are definitely reflected through my own approach to singing.
After college, he began hosting clinics to teach kids the concepts of improvisation in music, helping them understand how to take a melody and make it their own. He has taught me to think about those same things ever since I was young: the concept of building little surprises and moments into a song, and how important it is to change it up a bit so that it doesn"t always sound the way people are used to hearing it.
During the time we were in Miami he was able to perform with some of the giants of Latin jazz and had the privilege of playing among many world-cla.s.s, legendary musicians, such as Arturo Sandoval.
My mom, my dad, Claudia, and me.
When my parents starting dating seriously, they used to go dancing almost every night at a different club or hotel mostly around Miami Beach. Once they were married and a few years later when Claudia and I were very young, we lived for a time with my grandma and her husband "Angel" for a while at her finca finca, which is the Spanish word for "farm" or "ranch." They raised chickens, and my sister and I used to love to go there and play with them. I spent time out back watching the chickens and the new baby chicks for hours on end. When I was about three, we moved from Hialeah to Hollywood-yes, there is a Hollywood, Florida-between Miami and Fort Lauderdale. We moved into a three-bedroom townhome, the first home that our family actually owned. There were ten townhomes in our development, and my sister and I really enjoyed talking to our neighbors and spending time out by the duck pond in the backyard looking for duck eggs. The weather was always humid in the summer months so we spent a lot of time outside playing with the ducks and catching frogs and lizards and tadpoles that we"d find swimming around in the pond. The ducks would always come follow us looking for food, and my mom would give us bread to break into little pieces to feed them. We were happy there and thought it was so wonderful to have such a big house after living in the little one-bedroom apartment we had lived in before. This house had three bedrooms, and to us, it was gigantic! We even had a downstairs and upstairs and a separate room that became our playroom, where we started playing "Dinosaur Land," which was basically the two of us a.s.sembling all our toys (most of which were dinosaur themed) in our own little made-up universe where anything could happen. And, oh boy, everything did happen-flying dinosaurs, and not just pterodactyls, in our Dinosaur Land. Whenever we got a new toy, we would find a way to make it part of Dinosaur Land. That"s about the time my little brother was born. Not Daniel, but the one who was stillborn. My mom went to the hospital to have a baby when I was about two years old and had a full term pregnancy that ended with a stillborn baby boy who looked perfect. It was sad, but our religious beliefs really helped our family to get through it, because we know we"ll get to see him and know him sometime in the future. But sometimes, I can"t help but wonder about him. I wonder if he likes to sing. He would have been in between Daniel and me so maybe he"d have bridged that gap of interests between the both of us. Maybe he"d like sports more than me and like duck safaris better than Daniel.
Later, when we moved to Utah, my dad helped form a salsa band and he thought it would be great to have my mom as the vocalist and front person with him on trumpet. I remember my mom reminding me of a cross between Gloria Estefan and Selena. I don"t know how it can be that I can"t dance!
Given our family"s love of music, my mom always treated our opportunities to perform seriously, working on teaching us harmonies to the songs and original ch.o.r.eography for each occasion. She would organize family talent shows including our cousins with different configurations of kids, and every holiday there would be a fun-filled variety show for all the relatives to enjoy. I remember at every Christmas, we"d dress up in playful Santa caps and learn carols in three-part harmony. Then we would go to all our neighbors and sing a few songs to them. My mom was such a whiz at coordinating these performances, and we happily went along with her because it was completely normal for us-it"s just how we grew up. Our mini-shows entailed more than just casually singing songs around the house; we took them very seriously, and everyone was enthusiastic and eager to partic.i.p.ate. When we lived in Florida, we were able to get a piano in our house when I was about four years old. My mom wasn"t really a trained piano player, but she did know a few songs and the ones she knew, she played really well. My mom taught me how to play a few familiar Christmas songs including "The Little Drummer Boy." When I started, I had a really hard time playing it with my hands so small. But I really liked the jumps in my right hand. I used to practice those chords at the beginning until I felt I had it just right!
my mom always treated our opportunities to perform seriously Sometimes I"d sit there and peck out my own melodies. My dad tells me that one time, he asked me what I was playing and I was like "Oh, this is about my dreams." It was like a chase scene in a movie, and a few days later, my dad said he heard me playing it again. I guess I was composing music without realizing what I was doing at the time.
In Florida, I started kindergarten at Pasadena Lakes Elementary when I was five. My teacher was Ms. Cruz; the kids called her Ms. Cruel because sometimes she seemed really mean. After living in Hollywood for a few years, my dad had this feeling that we needed to move out of South Florida, so soon after my sister Jazzy was born, we moved up to Deltona, which is in Central Florida about halfway between Orlando and Daytona Beach. I was almost six and was excited about the new adventure, moving to another new house with more s.p.a.ce. My mom"s sister Miriam and her family lived there, and they had kids about the same age as us, so we were excited to go up there and had instant friends to play with.
I started going to a new school, Friendship Elementary, and have some great memories even though I only attended there for few months. Come on, who wouldn"t be happy at a school named "Friendship"? Just puts a smile on your face.
Our family moved around quite a bit in our early years as my dad was trying to figure out what kind of work would allow him to best take care of our family. Soon after we moved to Deltona, he came across a really great opportunity to work in Utah with one of his old friends, where he"d been longing to return to for years. He never really felt at home in Florida, and deep down he knew that we belonged in Utah and that this was the chance he finally had to get us all there. My mom didn"t want to leave her family, but she agreed that it would be a good opportunity for us, so off we went. We had a garage sale and sold practically all of what we had including our second car and all of our furniture and most of our toys and bikes, and packed up the family van with our stereo equipment and speakers. We had it transported to Utah and the remaining items we owned, all packed into fourteen boxes, were sent by truck, and all of the family flew from Orlando to Utah. My dad found a house for us to rent in Murray, and we moved into a wonderful neighborhood, the same one we moved back into several years later and where our family lives today.
As our new Murray neighbors found out our family was musically inclined, we got asked every now and then to perform at a few church activities and weddings and even some funerals. One early memory I have is when my mom had Claudia and me learn a fun dance to a traditional Spanish folk song by Gloria Estefan. She got us some white clothes, and I had a straw hat and bandanna, and we did an authentic dance and learned some ch.o.r.eography that my mom taught us. We performed it at a few places, and at that point, I just danced but didn"t really sing by myself in front of people. For church events, we would sing popular songs and harmonize together, and sometimes we were also invited to perform at hospitals and nursing homes for the elderly and sick.
When we first arrived in Utah, my mom, who still really wanted to develop her own skill as a singer, started taking vocal lessons with a girl in our neighborhood. One Sat.u.r.day, she told us she was going to a seminar being hosted by another vocal teacher in town, Brett Manning. One of Brett"s keynote speakers was going to be the legendary Seth Riggs, famous for working with people like Natalie Cole, Michael Bolton, Ray Charles, and Stevie Wonder, just to name a few. In fact, Riggs was the only vocal coach that Michael Jackson ever worked with. My mom ended up taking cla.s.ses with Brett, and with just a few lessons, she improved dramatically. She would practice by singing mostly pop songs, including Spanish pop songs by Selena and Gloria Estefan and "On My Own" from Les Miserables Les Miserables.
Within about six months of moving into Murray, we outgrew the house and had to move to another house in Murray because my dad"s new business of buying and selling computer equipment kept needing more room to store everything. We stayed there for another six months and then moved to a really nice house, in Centerville. We found a family who was going to be gone on a church mission for two years and who wanted a family to rent their home while they were gone. It was not your typical house. We called it "the mansion" because it was humongous, and we had several acres as our yard to play in! The youngest member of our family, my little sister Amber, was born while we lived there. I also remember that our neighbors had a pot-bellied pig who always seemed to be out laying down in their front yard, or at least that"s what we would always see whenever we pa.s.sed by their house. I was really into video games as a little kid-like Zelda and all the Nintendo 64 games; and I was fanatical about the Pokemon games, too. I could easily spend hours on these types of activities. Up until I was about thirteen, I was also obsessive about science and anything that had to do with the natural world, which probably explains my interest in ducklings and baby chickens.
I loved watching the National Geographic channel. I was fascinated with dinosaurs and wanted to know everything about them. I was definitely a bit of nerd back then-heck, I still am. I loved cryptozoology, like Bigfoot and Chupacabra and the Loch Ness Monster. The less the possibility something could be real, the more I liked it. I"d waste afternoons absorbed in musty books about those legends as well as astronomy, geology and marine biology (aren"t giant squids so freaky?) in the public library. Nature is really amazing. How do some of these things even exist? It gives me goose b.u.mps sometimes, when I really think about it. Haven"t you ever looked out the window on a pretty day and wondered how it"s possible anything could be so beautiful?
I also had two cats-Midnight and Cloudy-and they were pretty awesome, as far as cats go. They kept me company most of the time. I never wanted to separate from them, and hung out with them any chance I could get. They weren"t just regular cats; they would play tag with me and cuddle, so whenever I felt lonely, they were right there to make me feel better. I really enjoyed them. Until they both got pregnant. Twice each. After the first time, whenever it was their time of the month, I used to stay up late to try to chase away this big tomcat who would howl when he would come over to court my cats. I fell asleep frequently trying to discourage him from staying around, and sometimes I would outlast the tomcat, and sometimes I wouldn"t. My dad would find me crashed on the sofa and carry me up to my room. That tomcat ended up fathering over ten kittens. Needless to say, I didn"t have the cats for very long after that. Plus, we were ready to move to a new house where we really couldn"t have any pets so we had to give them away, which was sad, but I knew we had to do it.
And in between my hanging out in libraries and on the couch watching nature shows or tending to my cats, I"d go out and rollerblade, which is just an awesome way to get to know your neighbors. If there was someone I didn"t know, I would just stop and say hi. I loved moving fast, gliding around from place to place and taking in all the local scenery while I was at it. I looked forward to waking up the next morning and feeling my sore muscles from the day before. It always felt gratifying to know that I had worked hard enough to get sore. When I"d go alone, it almost felt like I had the world to myself-because I kept moving and no one could catch me.
I could stop and be social, which I really enjoyed, especially helping some neighbors who would be out working in their gardens. Sometimes I would stop to help them and they would try to give me money but I wouldn"t ever take it because I just wanted to be nice to them without expecting to be paid.
One time, a neighbor wouldn"t let me say no and I went home and showed the money to my parents and said I didn"t really want it but she insisted. I kind of felt bad about it but I didn"t really know what else I could do. Rollerblading and just walking around the neighborhood was something that allowed me to have a lot of special memories. Riding around on those blades felt like total freedom.
Something else that was important to me was that although my life was changing because of music, some things didn"t change. In my church, the scouting program is part of what we do from the time we are eight until we reach the age of eighteen. We start off as Cub Scouts, at twelve become Boy Scouts, and the crowning achievement of that program is to get your Eagle Scout award. I never really thought that I was cut out for scouts; I wasn"t really into camping and winter overnight trips and boating and doing the things that you usually did for scouts. I imagined that it was meant more for the kids that were into sports and hunting and fishing. I just didn"t think that I was the Eagle Scout type. Maybe I just wasn"t motivated enough. Not outdoorsy enough. Plus, to get your Eagle, you need to show leadership skills. I just never really saw myself as enough of a leader. I was just David, who could maybe lead his dog across the street. On a leash.
But my church leaders believed in me and especially one of our neighbors, Cal Madsen. They all kept asking me if I needed help and even taught me how to tie knots, how to pitch a tent, how to prepare for emergencies, how to be a good citizen, and lots of other neat skills that might come in handy some day. Cal made sure I had all the required merit badges and then helped me with the necessary steps to progress through the various ranks of Star, then Life, and ultimately Eagle. Scouting didn"t come naturally for me, but with some encouragement and persistent prodding, I was actually doing it. I was getting a bunch of merit badges and actually enjoying getting them. Too bad it all got cut short when I started American Idol American Idol.
CHAPTER 2.
HIT WITH INSPIRATION.
"If you can dream it, you can do it."
-WALT DISNEY.
It"s cool how an artist comes up with an idea that influences another artist and it keeps changing and moving from one person to the next; creativity has a way of recycling and rein-venting itself with the pa.s.sage of time. It"s almost as if each artist contributes something unique to a ma.s.sive bank of ideas and expressions that"s accessible to everyone, which future artists later have the privilege of tapping into when it"s time for their own creations to come about. So, if creativity is a force that"s pa.s.sed down from artist to artist and generation to generation, then I like to believe inspiration is the thread that ties it all together. Inspiration is fluid; it can move from one person to another at any given moment, through any given manner. To me, the feeling of being inspired is what happens when something strikes you so intensely that it triggers something deep inside and sparks your creativity to do something you haven"t done before. And then depending on how you choose to respond, it can allow you to be an inspiration to someone else in turn. In any kind of art, inspiration is contagious. The way I see it, without inspiration, we"re all like a box of matches that will never be lit.
Looks like I was deep in thought in this one . . . or just really into that 3D film!
My dad took me to a high school track one evening the summer after we"d moved to Utah. He was scoping it out for exercise, admiring how new and fresh it looked. He brought all of us kids along. I was just six at the time, but I thought it looked pretty cool too, so I started running around it, for fun, my little feet pounding the pavement. I ran a lap and my dad was impressed and yelled out to me, "Great job, David. Ready to go?"
No, I wasn"t. I didn"t tell him that, though. I didn"t answer him at all. I just kept running. And running. You know, like in the movie Forrest Gump Forrest Gump? This is what my family must have felt, wondering when I was going to quit running. I ran three miles that night but I could have kept going. I guess when I decide I like something, I can"t get enough of it. That kind of singular focus sums me up pretty well, actually. And not just when it comes to running.
When we had just moved to Utah, I remember being downstairs with my brother Daniel playing while my mom was upstairs unpacking and my dad was getting ready to go do some computer work. Before he left, he realized that we were probably going to run out of things to do and wanted to make sure we had something to keep us busy. He had recorded the Les Miserables Les Miserables tenth anniversary concert when we were still in Florida and put the VCR on so we could watch it to at least keep us occupied for a little while. So there we were among the zipping open of taped-up cardboard boxes and the popping and snapping of plastic packing material, when I heard something that would change me forever. The first song, "Look Down," was a fun song that Daniel and I both acted out with the other "prisoners" on the TV screen. We quickly learned that song and proceeded to learn all the rest within just a few hours. There was one song, "Castle on a Cloud," sung by the character, Cosette, the young daughter of one of the show"s female protagonists. The melody was sad and beautiful in that haunting sort of way, and for some reason, I decided to think that was the best song for me to learn because I was about the same age as her. I just couldn"t get enough of tenth anniversary concert when we were still in Florida and put the VCR on so we could watch it to at least keep us occupied for a little while. So there we were among the zipping open of taped-up cardboard boxes and the popping and snapping of plastic packing material, when I heard something that would change me forever. The first song, "Look Down," was a fun song that Daniel and I both acted out with the other "prisoners" on the TV screen. We quickly learned that song and proceeded to learn all the rest within just a few hours. There was one song, "Castle on a Cloud," sung by the character, Cosette, the young daughter of one of the show"s female protagonists. The melody was sad and beautiful in that haunting sort of way, and for some reason, I decided to think that was the best song for me to learn because I was about the same age as her. I just couldn"t get enough of Les Miz Les Miz, including all the accents and even the racy song "Lovely Ladies" (which I had no idea what it was about, I promise). Though I couldn"t possibly understand then what all the songs were about, I understood very clearly that it had struck me deep in the heart. My eyes were fixed on these performers, and that music captivated me that afternoon and for many years to come. I had never felt so much pa.s.sion for anything like that before. Until then, all I had known about music was salsa and jazz from my parents, Christmas songs, and a few children"s videos we really enjoyed like Silly Songs, Wee Sing, and I hate to admit it, some Barney songs, as well as some primary songs that we would sing at church. The quality of these Broadway songs had a totally new and different effect on me; it was a subconscious reaction that made me want more.
The first day my dad gave us the video, he was gone all day, I think for about twelve hours. When he came home, guess where we were? Still in front of the video, with about half of the songs memorized already. I"d literally beg my parents to play the video over and over again for us, which they did, despite being somewhat surprised by our sudden interest in what usually is considered a more adult musical. Each time we would press play, Daniel would wait for his part, Gavroche, and I would wait for "my parts"-both the male and female. It didn"t matter, we took turns singing each song, and quickly had them memorized word for word. I definitely didn"t even understand the plot of the show. I mean, really, I didn"t even know what a plot was at that time. It didn"t matter, as I wasn"t driven by the story but instead by the emotion that filled the room each time I"d hear that beautiful music. The melodies were magical to me, mysteriously warming me from the inside every time I would hear them. Something about it just consumed me. I would even try to mimic the accents as closely as I could, which I guess was my way of further connecting to the magic that I was feeling for myself. It was an unconscious pull toward something that I couldn"t possibly understand in any intellectual way-but something that I knew I was totally obsessed with. Singing seemed to fill a void I didn"t know I had, and from this point on, I was completely hooked.
Since we didn"t have a piano when we moved to Utah, my dad got my sister and me one of those Casio electronic keyboards that came with one hundred and one different songs with lighted keys. We would try to learn these simple little songs and would take turns playing them for each other. We never paid attention to what was playing on the radio; we preferred making our own music or listening to our favorite musicals. Besides Les Miserables Les Miserables, we also loved Into the Woods Into the Woods, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and Evita Evita. I even tried out opera for a little while after hearing an opera appreciation computer CD my dad brought home one day. There was one song that played automatically whenever you would put the CD in the drive, and I would sing right along with it. It was a song for high sopranos so I had my work cut out for me, but I remember enjoying it immensely until I moved on to my next phase of musical discovery.
Meanwhile, while my parents were performing with their salsa band, they also were able to perform at a Mexican restaurant, Garcia"s, up in Layton. It was just the two of them and a guitar player friend, Kenji. My dad played the flugelhorn while my mom sang and Kenji would accompany my mom, then play something with my dad. They would do songs with karaoke tracks and trio arrangements, and one day, they told me if I would come and sing, I could have anything free I wanted off the menu, which was a special treat for me and made it an offer I couldn"t refuse. I willingly accepted the invitation to perform and poured my heart out singing my rendition of "Castle on a Cloud" and songs from Evita Evita. At the time, I honestly didn"t think anyone was paying any attention to me, but there was this waitress who put a tip in the little cup that sat at the foot of the stage, and I remember seeing her face while I sang this particular song and thought she was just feeling sorry for me and trying to make me feel good because I was a little kid.
Claudia and me, always two peas in a pod.
The next summer, when I was nine years old, my dad surprised my sister and me with season pa.s.ses to the famous one-hundred-year-old Lagoon Amus.e.m.e.nt Park in Farmington, which was close to our town of Centerville, about ten miles north of Salt Lake City. The pa.s.ses meant that we could visit the park three or four times per week if we wanted to, which of course we did, loving each visit more than the last. Man, that place was awesome. Arcades! Roller coasters! Games! Food! And music!
We were totally ecstatic. After all, the place was overflowing with fun, all kinds of games, and our personal favorite: musical groups that performed all kinds of awesome musical numbers. We really liked the OK Corral Western performers, who would always hang out with us after their performances and make us feel special, and also the group of "zombies" who would sing and perform fun pop songs. One of their signature tunes that summer was Natalie Cole"s "Pink Cadillac," which would stay in my mind forever and make her one of my musical role models to this day.
The next school year, we moved from Centerville to Sandy, and I started fourth grade. For Christmas that year, my aunt Char bought me a Natalie Cole greatest hits CD, which I would listen to over and over again, and for a talent show, a girl who I knew from OnStage, Janey, asked if I wanted to sing a duet with her of "Pink Cadillac." I was a little nervous and thought everyone was going to laugh because it was a song that I didn"t think they would know, or maybe they would think I sounded like a girl. But my mom helped Janey and me and together took that very song and ch.o.r.eographed our own little skit to perform for the cla.s.s complete with a cardboard version of a pink Cadillac. We loved all of the soulful R & B licks and, with the kind of determination only ten-year-olds could have, we were going to get everything right, even if it was just for an audience of kids and teachers.
Even at that age, I didn"t want to just sound soulful, I wanted to be soulful. I would try to listen and learn from other singers, and I seemed to be drawn to the songs with dramatic moments in them and did my best to try to find where the magic in the music lived. What was it that made it real? What was it that made you feel it so deeply?
My mom had learned a lot about vocal technique when she studied with Brett Manning and she started to help me with my technique, while my dad taught me the basic concepts of how to make a song sound your own. He would say, "David, instead of sounding exactly like the person on the record you hear, why don"t you change things up a bit?" I soon began to understand that this could make my singing special. No matter what famous song I would sing, my goal became to give people the impression that they were hearing and experiencing that song for the very first time.
Looking back, I think I learned important concepts about musicianship at a very young age without realizing it. I didn"t learn them consciously, but they were definitely coming through. I guess I started internalizing these things when I didn"t even know any better, and I have my parents and grandparents to thank for that.