A day with 'The Voice'

Going to "The Voice" open call audition was definitely worth doing, even though I didn't get a callback.

I printed out my pass the Sunday before. It was supposed to arrive in email as a PDF attachment on Saturday. It did -- at nearly midnight. So I was sweating that something had gone wrong, but it hadn't.

During the week, I wondered about the possibility of a callback and what it would take to be prepared for that possibility. I wrote an email to "The Voice" staff, and they answered it thoroughly and reassuringly.


We left for LA on Saturday morning. As we sat at the gate waiting for the jetway to open up as the sun rose, a beam of light shone on me like a spotlight. No one else in the entire room had that beam on them, my wife said.

We arrived in LA, got our rental car, got situated in our room and we drove to the LA Convention Center, so that I could be sure of my route later when my "appointment" was to take place. Actually, the time printed on the pass was a method of managing the line. If people are given specific times, a good chunk of them won't show up first thing in the morning and cause a line that snarls traffic all day.


We were told that there'd be no place for my wife to wait while I auditioned so it was best not to bring her down to the Convention Center. So after we returned from checking out the route, we had a very nice lunch in the hotel's main restaurant. At about 1 p.m., I left for the audition that was "scheduled" for 2 p.m. I hit a huge traffic snarl and thought I'd never make it to the Convention Center in time. I called my wife to see if she could find some way to call "The Voice" and let them know I'd be late. Ha! These are the silly things you think when you don't know better.

The traffic broke up and I got to the Convention Center area a good 20 minutes before 2. Since the pass didn't tell us which building the auditions would be in, I decided I'd circle round and see if I could spot a sign of where they might be happening. I went all the way around a mighty big block and then saw the line of people, which had the kind of mass you might expect if tickets for a Led Zeppelin reunion were to go on sale. I said to myself, "That's gotta be it." I found a spot to park and walked over.

As I got to the intersection where I would cross to "The Voice" side of the Convention Center, a girl with pink hair walked up to the curb as well. I told myself that I would follow her because certainly she was here for the audition too. She was businesslike and walked swiftly not wanting to make eye contact.

She got in line and kept her head looking straight forward. A young couple came up behind me but from the direction of where the line started, so I asked them, "Is this the line for the Voice auditions?" They said it sure was. The girl, let's call her Rose, was there for the audition, the guy, whom we'll call Al, said he was there just to give her some support while she was in line. She told me she hadn't even told her parents she was doing this, just a very few friends. Her skirt was short and she had a kind of band around her head that reminded me of a flapper's hat from the 1920s, but it was just a band not a hat.

She mentioned that she was wearing it to try to show she's an artist. Her friend said two very pithy things in the first minute or two of our acquaintance. First, he said, it's looks like we'll be in line together for quite a while, so we'll become friends. The second thing he said about the length of the line was to keep in mind that probably about half of the people on the line were not auditioning but just there to support a friend or family member. Both turned out to be true statements.

I gave my son Chris a call, but got his voice mail and so I left him a message saying, "You're going to be sorry you didn't pick up the phone, because this is without a doubt the coolest call I've ever made to you. I'm on line waiting to audition for 'The Voice.'"

Then I called my other son, David, and he did pick up and we talked for a while. I called my wife too to let her know I'd made it down to the audition safe and sound.

Al, Rose and I talked a lot as we moved along the line. I found out they were seniors in their last semester at college. Rose was a classical performance major. Actually, she had a dual major with the second major being psychology, and we discussed the possibility of her doing musical therapy when she graduated and she said what she would be able to do after school was the research behind that kind of therapy. Clearly, she was interested in research rather than clinical practice. Eventually, I asked her what she planned to sing. She mentioned a couple of things, saying she planned to do something jazzy rather than classical. When she said that she might do "Someone to Watch Over Me," I told her, "Ooh, you've got to do that. You'll tear their hearts out with that song."

At one point as we stood online, a pair of girls, one holding a camera, came by. The one holding the camera asked Rose if she would pose for a photo. She was an art student who was making a huge photo collage. She wanted to put together all these photos of faces that she'd been taking into a kind of mosaic to form a giant face. After she had taken Rose's photo and she explained all this to us, she asked if she could take my picture, and I obliged. She showed me the photo on her camera and said, "Look at that. That look says you know you've got it."

At some point, Al, Rose and I were discussing how the people who were doing the auditions could keep their ears fresh all day, and the pink-haired girl turned around and told us that she had done the audition before, two years earlier. She said that they were looking for types and that out of a whole day's auditions when she went, they had passed just one person through for a callback.

Later, I asked her why she was doing it again, given what she told us about the chances. She said first of all that she does improv work, and that this was a great place to watch people and get ideas about behavior, movement and expressions that she could use in improv. Secondly, she said, that she figured she couldn't complain about it if she didn't try out, essentially that means, your chances may be low, but you can't win if you don't play at all.

When we finally got into the building, Al had to leave us, and Rose and I met a young girl, accompanied by her mother, on the escalator up to the level where they would "wand" us with metal detectors. I thanked the mom for supporting her daughter. This is because, I think, I envied the support that some parents give their children even when the things they're going for seem impractical. You can enter "The Voice" at age 16, but you have to be accompanied by a parent.

At the top of the escalator, Rose and I had to separate. She had to go to the table where they search your handbags and I was able to quickly pass through. And this was where I got the first real taste of just how positive the people working on this project would be, everybody in security or on "The Voice" staff wished each individual good luck as they passed their station.

It was quite a love bomb. Inside, they scanned my pass and I don't know how many staffers I passed, but it was a large handful. All of them wished me good luck. The only sort of corporate negativity that crept in was a sign that said that picture-taking was not allowed. I think the sign asked us to turn off our cell phones and tablets so we wouldn't take pictures. In the room where they scanned our passes was a little staging area, where they counted and seated us. They explained what would happen and told us that we would know before we left the building whether we would be called back. Then, they counted off groups of 10, and sent us on the long walk up another flight of stairs to a very large staging area, the kind of room where a corporation might have its employees listen to a motivational speaker. There were probably a thousand people in this room, most of them seated. There was a woman up front, who stood up on the first row of chairs and acted like a cheerleader or conductor. Basically, she was there to remind us of what would be going on, to remind us not to have our cellphones or tablets out and to listen to people's suggestions of songs we might sing. Whenever someone suggested one she liked, she would announce it to the room, and would lead the room in singing it. Most of the time the songs fizzled out because so few people know all the words, but when it was a song that was very well known, man, the sound of so many voices that could actually sing was powerful.

I began talking with my seatmates, we were in a row of 10 people, and these would be my partners in the audition. To my left, was a girl we'll call Roe, she had been a music theater major in college, but now she was working in her parents' business as a spicerer (real word). On my right, was a blond-haired bloke with a cowboy bandanna around his neck and a guitar in tow. His name was Robert and he was a gentle young soul who does modeling and a host of other things.

By this point, it had been almost two and a half hours since I parked at the convention center. I went to the bathroom and a sign in there said, "Absolutely no singing or practicing in the bathroom." I have no idea why. Anyway, there was naturally a guy singing in there.

I returned to my seat and it must have been another hour to 90 minutes before our row was called. People cheered as we walked out of this room. I pointed to the lady who led the room, who had given us a big encouraging goodbye statement, and said, "You made this day awesome." She saw me, heard what I said and smiled sincerely and sweetly.

We went up another flight of steps and were ushered into a hallway that I think had eight doors leading off it, and I believe sets of producers were awaiting auditioners behind each door. A woman who was nicknamed "Tennessee" because of her Southern accent, told us that we would know immediately at the end of our audition if we were going to get a callback. Those of us who did not would be having our wristbands (our passes after the original passes were scanned) cut off as we exited the audition room and we'd have to take the escalator downstairs and out of the building. She also told us to cheer and applaud our fellow auditioners when they sang.

While waiting I kept talking about affirmations to get ourselves from our usual state into star state, a state of being focused and ready to perform. I did a lot of jogging in place to get my heart pumped up. All the while, I kept in mind that I could not control what the auditioners would do, but that I could definitely control how well I performed.

Tennessee wished us luck after the door opened and a group of earlier auditioners exited. A bald-headed man who had some kind of lanyard and ID over his chest walked purposefully out of the room and we walked in, nine adults and one minor accompanied by her dad.

At the front of the room as we entered was a long table behind which sat two women. They said that we would be waiting for the other producer, Peter, to return before we'd begin.

We filed in and sat down in two rows of five arrayed along the right and left sides of the room. I was on the right side of the room as we entered. Roe and Robert were in the opposite row. There was an X taped in the middle of the room between the rows of chairs where we sat.

In response to a question about how tired they must be, one of the women producers said, "Oh, we're very excited to be here." But she didn't sound that enthusiastic and we laughed, and the other producer said, "That didn't sound very convincing." And the first woman told us, "We really are excited to be here," more convincingly, I must admit.

Peter, the bald-headed guy, came in and sat down in the middle of the producers' table. He told us what was next, telling us that we should sing a verse and a chorus and that he'd signal us when we were done and that he was giving us all the same amount of time.

One by one, he called us to the X, asked where we were from and what song we were going to sing and then told each one to begin when they were ready. We all applauded and cheered, and I think everyone listened very hard to one another, just because, what else did we have to do at that moment? I think all of us were really in that moment in a way that we aren't normally. It's amazing how focused we were.

The woman sitting next to me on the right side of the room was called up first. When asked, she told them she was from Cave Creek, Arizona. What are the chances that we'd be sitting next to one another just randomly like that? When I was called up, I walked to the X confidently. I answered Peter's questions dutifully and when he told me to sing whenever I was ready. I jumped into my song, and as far as I'm concerned, I NAILED it. I can't imagine singing it better or more nerve-free.

One of the auditioners, a young girl lost her place in her song, and you could see she was crestfallen, and in the most impressive display of the day, Peter told her, "That's OK. You've got it, go ahead." And she completed the tune. That was an amazingly tender moment of kindness on the producer's part. I will NEVER forget that.

When we were all done, he told us that they had quite a few more people to see and that the bar had been raised pretty high this year so he wasn't going to pass anyone from our group to a callback, but he said to come back and try again next year.

I don't think anyone there was crushed. I think we all walked serenely to the door where our wristbands were cut off, feeling we'd done something good for ourselves.

I waited downstairs to see if any of my compadres from the day would show up. When Roe came down, I gave her my business card and asked her to please be in touch with me. I said who knows what kinds of collaborations might come up and I'm very curious to find out what people do after this. We talked about what had just happened and about what a great day that Saturday had been.

On Tuesday, I went back in to work. There, I found an email that Roe had sent me. She asked whether I had any plans to do more performing. "You have a fantastic rock and roll voice," wrote the musical theater major. She didn't need to write that, but with that I knew I had got the full measure of value from this trip. Stay tuned!

Copyright © 2013, Salvatore Caputo