We decided to grab some dinner and headed over to Baby Acapulco’s which is just across the street from the theater.  We were pleasantly surprised with the band who was playing that night – The Brew.   They play Latin Jazz music and they were really good.  She had heard of them before and I wasn’t sure if I had.  We both enjoyed a margarita and the show!  They even had a free group salsa lesson that I participated in despite the fact I was wearing flip flops.  I’d love to take salsa or almost any kind of dance lessons some day so it was a fun experience.  A bunch of us lined up in front of the stage and my practice partner ended up being another woman who was there supporting the band so she already knew how to dance salsa.  She was older than me and really sweet.  She just got back from Hawaii and was wearing a pretty flower in her hair.  We took turns being the man in the practice sessions as did others because it was mostly women who came up to participate in the free lesson.

The Brew has a sound similar to the Gipsy Kings so beautiful and romantic.  Musicians are entrepreneurs and I’m always impressed when I see a band who is able to seemingly make a living sharing their talent.  To me, hearing them after watching Salt was a nice way to calm the nerves after watching an intense movie!  I look forward to hearing them again sometime soon.

She got divorced a couple of years ago and says her music reflects much of her emotional life.   I think most singers/writers works reflect their emotional lives.  I know my writing does.  She has two daughters named India and Taja, whose father is Indian.  It’s nice to see that she has been able to use her emotional experiences to write songs.  She admits it’s harder now with two small kids because “being able to have long periods of time to focus on nothing but myself and writing is long over.  I live in a pretty ADD world right now.”

She is also reviving the female musician focused Lilith Fair tour that she helped start many years ago.  Successful musicians to me are the ultimate entrepreneurs.  They are betting against the odds of making it big that are probably 100 times greater than a technology company making it big.  There are so many more people trying to be successful singers (e.g., just look at American Idol) than there are business entrepreneurs.  I was reading the article and wondering how it would be to go to a studio every day of the week to work with someone as talented as her musical partner, Pierre Marchand, who helps her complete her songs.  I have to say I was day dreaming a bit while I was reading the article.  She has the benefit of great successes behind her before she had kids and she can play the piano as well as the guitar.  I can’t play either…but there’s hope!  They also featured Ozzy Osbourne in the magazine and he says he can’t play any instruments either.

I sing one of her older songs called Ice Cream (you tube link) to my kids sometimes.  I drop them on the couch during the part where she sings “It’s a long way down” and they laugh hysterically.  It makes me laugh while I’m singing it to them.  “Your love is better than ice cream…your love is better than chocolate.”

I wonder if it’s possible to find someone out there who could be my music partner who is looking for a lyricist/singer like me and if we could both take a month or so off and create music.  A nice little dream…

Sandi was/is a benefits manager for Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. in Austin.  Previously she was Director of Wellness and work/life programs for Motorola and health and fitness coordinator for Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corp.  She was also health and fitness program coordinator, director of nursing, critical care instructor, and director of the cardiac rehab and pulmonary education center for St. David’s Community Hospital.  She was awarded Texas Nurse of the Year and held a Chair position for the Seton Cove board of directors.  She received her MS from UT Austin in Nursing.

She shares:

Success has a lot to do with being true to your life’s purpose, vision, and goals. Often, that means running counter to what our culture’s definition of success is, because so often in our society, success is defined by your material worth or the initials behind your name. Making money is  important on a certain level, but what’s really important is to know your heart, to find your passion. Shakespeare wrote, “To thine own self be true.” Like so many things in life, it seems so simple, but there’s probably nothing harder to do.

She goes on to say:

Finding that alignment between your head and your heart, while at the same time not getting caught up in external pressures, is critical.

Oh, if everyone could be true to themselves, what a world this would be.  But as Sandi noted it is so hard to do because being true to ourselves doesn’t always go over well with other people in our lives.  Aligning head and heart is something I struggle with as do many others because what your heart/passion wants you to do in your career and life doesn’t always mesh up with what is practical given life’s responsibilities and other people’s expectations.

I’m working on trying to mesh some of my passion/heart’s desires with life’s practicalities.  Today I scheduled a make-up voice lesson with my voice instructor, Gene Raymond, who I really enjoy working with, and brought the kids with me.  I’ve brought them to a lesson once before.  I bring them coloring books and they color without fussing at all.  I think they think it is funny to hear mommy sing scales and do vocal exercises.  Some of the vocal exercises are quite funny. 

A few of the songs I’m working on right now are Killing Me Softly With His Song (Roberta Flack), Play Me (Neil Diamond – changing the ‘she’s’ to ‘he’s'), and The Rose (Bette Midler).  I have the opportunity to take a lesson with a teacher at a level higher than Gene in this particular style of coaching called Speech Level Singing in a couple of weeks.  This teacher has sung with Bette Midler and trained several American Idol singers.  I’m looking forward to it and hoping I don’t choke!

Last week I got an email about her visit to Austin, so I went to the site and signed up for a chance to win.  I didn’t really think I’d win so when I got the call I was pretty surprised.

I even got a picture with her and an autographed little poster, that I’m not really sure what I’ll do with.  I’m wondering if I should take these unusual wins as a sign that I’m on the right path in my life journey right now or just chalk it up to mere coincidence?

I have been really interested in learning more about music, getting into the music scene and my kids could certainly use some more brain exercising games so they are both nice coincidences.

Many great things in life and business can only be attributable to luck.  But you have to be open to the opportunity.  There’s a difference between the person who walks by a $5 bill and sees it because she’s looking around and open to opportunities and the one who walks right on by because she’s looking straight ahead absorbed in the incessant thoughts in her head.  I often wonder how many opportunities I’ve missed because I’m too caught up in thinking and worrying too much about things I probably shouldn’t.

Are we ever content?  I’m not sure if it’s an entrepreneurial trait, a mid-life characteristic, an MBA grad fate, or something else.  But as I continue to tweet about and reach out to my contacts about finding a good home for Babble Soft, I find myself turning to music as I have often done in the past during times of transition.  There’s something about music that pulls out the emotions in me and lets me process them in a way that can’t be processed in silence or even with close friends.

Since I started taking yoga last year, I’ve seen the benefits of certain meditation and quiet times but music – the combination of words and instruments – pushes buttons in me that make it OK to to feel things that intellectually my mind tells me not to feel.  The mind just says focus on this task, get it done, and move on.  The mind doesn’t want to be bothered with stuff that affects the heart and soul.  Music reminds me that to be human is to feel because other humans are singing about their life transitions and it reminds me how kind of normal some of these feelings are.  And sometimes we need to give ourselves the space to feel and really listen to what our body is telling us instead of just our minds to make the best decisions.  Instead of feeling isolated in silence or the sometimes deafening noise of two kids incessant chatter, music brings me softly into the river of humanity.

So some of the music I’ve been listening to lately is by Billy Joel (hence the title of this post), Indigo Girls, Simon & Garfunkel, Neil Diamond, Michael Jackson (mostly because of his recent death), Sarah McLachlan, and oddly enough Book of Love.

May the music be with you…