Saturday, May 18, 2013

You can't be brave until you're scared

We have been crazy blessed in where we were able to raise our kids.  We live in a small town where you almost always run into people you know at the grocery store.  Steve's preschool teacher and high school physics teacher both live within a couple blocks of our house.

My kids left our wonderful little town and they are never coming back.  They went to college out of state and they got jobs out of state and now they both live far away from us. It was scary but it was the right thing to do.  It's not the right choice for everybody, but it was the right choice for them.

When our kids were young, and they were scared, Jim would tell them "You can't be brave until you're scared".  Then he would push them down the hill upside down on the zipline.


He wanted them to see fear as a launching pad, not a roadblock. 

Aspiring performers have to be independent and brave.  They need to learn to work with creative people who don't live by schedules and may or may not get critical work done on time.  They have to recruit co-writers and band members, and pitch themselves to coffee houses and bars and hopefully someday, publishing houses and labels.  They need to stand up on stage and sing for a long time, whether they have a big engaged audience or 3 indifferent coffee drinkers.

+Mackenzie Elliott


I have learned that some successful performers never get over their stage fright.  They have learned to use fear for adrenaline instead of letting it take them down.

Fear can be paralyzing, even when you believe deeply that God is in charge.  So my prayer for our aspiring pop star is that she knows you can't avoid fear.  But you can't be brave until you're scared.

Saturday, May 11, 2013

There are Music Parents
and there are Music Business Parents

When we were in LA waiting for Mackenzie's blind audition, we met a lot of other parents of artists.  I decided they fell into 4 categories:
  1. Clueless Parents - the ones who were thrilled and starstruck that their kids were auditioning for The Voice but had absolutely no idea how any of this works. Tremendous cheerleaders for their kids. They walked around about 10 feet off the ground on audition day 1 and were fighting the demons of fear and anxiety by the last day of auditions.
  2. Clued in Parents - these parents understand at least some aspects of the long, unpredictable road their kids are on.  They were very supportive but were also quietly keeping "Plan B" options open.  Less starstruck by The Voice than the Clueless Parents.  They've made sacrifices for their kids, but are also taking care of their marriages, their other kids, their communities and churches.
  3. Music Parents - these parents are 10% manager and 90% parent.  They are involved with their kid's career and are paying for at least part of the associated expense.  Most have continued to remind their son/daughter about keeping a Plan B. Most of them were careful about boundaries but some of them were moving toward becoming . . . 
  4. Music Business Parents - 90% manager, 10% parent.  These are the parents who sacrifice their jobs, marriages, financial futures for the sake of their son or daughter's career.  We met moms who are living with the kid(s) in LA or NYC or Nashville, driving their kids to and from auditions/music lessons/dance class/acting studio while Dad is living somewhere else in the country to make enough money to support it all.
Waiting for +Mackenzie Elliott's Blind Audition

I moved from strongly in Category 1 to somewhere early in Category 2 during the audition timeframe.  And I learned a TON from some of the well balanced Category 2  and 3 parents.  I have called or texted a couple of them when I needed some perspective or wisdom.

But if you are the parent of an aspiring professional performer or athlete or any other kind of career that might involve celebrity status, I want to warn you to beware of moving out of Category 2.  If you're going to move into Category 3, I'd say that you need to set a time limit and identify a Plan B.  And in the meantime, take care of your other kids, take care of your marriage, stay involved in your hometown, save for retirement and put boundaries in place so that you are not in the Manager role at the same time you're being Mom and Dad.

Because Category 4 was really scary to watch. The dangers seem obvious, but at some point their son or daughter had a success that swept all of them into a paradigm shift. Their child got the part, got the development deal, got the big PR firm and Mom and Dad decided that any sacrifice was worth it.  But from my view on the outside looking in. . . it's like playing the lottery except your kid is the lottery ticket.  NO PRESSURE. 

Right now, Jim and I are on the outer edge of Category 2.  We are starting to move into Category 3 but we we want to be really careful.  Because the lines seem well defined from here, but apparently they are harder to see the deeper in you go.  A Manager has a role based on financial investment and return.  A Parent has a role based on love and wisdom.  But mostly love.  We never want to venture too close to the edge of Category 4.  That's a deep, deep pit that looks hard to climb out of.

Mom Plug:  Mackenzie is in a contest to open for Kelly Clarkson and Carly Rae Jepsen.  If you'd like to vote, go to the link below and open up an account with your email.  They haven't sent me one piece of spam.  You can vote every day, but no matter how often you vote, THANK YOU!
Here is the link to make a gigg.com account and vote for Mackenzie: http://www.gigg.com/contest/bracket/242/6342

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Musical milestones and sharing what we love - Mackenzie's first single is on itunes!

I've always believed that one of the greatest things a parent can do is share what they love with their kids.  Unless you love Nickleback. Or selling crack. Then you should find something else to share.

My husband Jim and I shared what we loved with our kids as they grew up:
  • Christian faith
  • Music
  • Generosity
  • Golf (okay, that one's Jim's, not mine)
  • Family time
  • Intellectual pursuits
  • Fitness (once again, mostly Jim's.  There's a theme here)
Some of those stuck and some of them didn't.  Music stuck on both of our kids, and I love that.  From the time they were born, Jim and I surrounded them with music.  Jim played them classic jazz recordings and I sang them lullabyes.  When they were pre-schoolers, we taught them our address, phone number and even how to spell their names to music.  We forced both of them to take piano lessons for a limited time, which only stuck with Mackenzie.  But they both grew up loving to sing and that is the best instrument of all because it is always with you.  And much easier to carry around than a piano.

+Mackenzie Elliott singing the National Anthem in Middle School

Both of our kids sang in church choirs, sports events, high school musicals and college a cappella groups.  One of my favorite musical memories is watching my son race up the bleacher steps to the announcer's booth to sing the National Anthem and then race back down to the field to play lacrosse. 

Today, Mackenzie releases her first single and it so exciting.  We LOVE it but we are biased; we pretty much love everything our kids do. We are celebrating her big accomplishment and our joy in the fact that music is an enduring heritage.  We tried to give our kids values that would last a lifetime.  I'm glad that music is one of those that made the cut.

You can buy her single for 99 cents on itunes here http://bit.ly/17Jnnki, if you want, it's called "You Got Me Good" and you can also see the lyric video on her youtube channel here http://www.youtube.com/user/kenzielynne91

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Waiting for Air Time on The Voice

If you have a son or daughter who wants a career in the public eye, and they have an opportunity to be in the public eye, it is very hard to wait for that one big break that might make all the difference. 

The Voice is built on talent, suspense and surprise.  Mackenzie had a blind audition, and we knew they would show some auditions where no chairs turned, but we didn't know if hers would be chosen to air.  And air time is a big deal.  Artists who don't turn chairs but still get air time can get attention from PR agencies, managers, even labels.  But if you don't get air time, it's almost as if it never happened.

So we waited . . .

 
I'm not going to tell you how much time elapsed between her audition and the first episode of The Voice Season 4.  But it felt like decades.  DECADES.  And we couldn't talk to anyone about it except each other, and of course that gets old.  So a lot of anxiety built up.  I spent a lot of time praying and a lot of time referencing scriptures about waiting, like this one:

Isaiah 40:31:   They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

Waiting on the Lord should renew my strength.  But I am awful at waiting.  For anything.  Ever.  And my strength didn't renew like it should have, because as I mentioned, I HATE WAITING.  That can be a major spiritual shortcoming.

But eventually, the first blind audition episode was aired, and the second, and the third . . . and the last.  No Mackenzie.  So here's the real challenge.  When I pin my hope for my child onto that one thing and the one thing doesn't happen, does my faith allow me to trust that God has something better?  It has to.  Because although they never stop being my "kids", they were God's kids first.

And so far, so good.  No labels have called, but she was allowed to post on social media that she auditioned.  There are a few seconds of us in a crowd shot, so we have proof that it actually happened! She is writing songs again, recording again, performing again, interning in the music business, and back to college.  She has a plan and it doesn't involve overnight success.

The main thing is, as a parent, I have to remember two things when my child's dream doesn't unfold exactly as planned.  First, it is their dream.  Not mine.  Even when my heart breaks for them, it can't break more than theirs does.  Second, God's got this.  In every stage of my life, when my major disappointments have come and gone, I've been able to look back and see how God used them for good for me.  As a Mom I have to remember that my kids need to learn that for themselves. I should not try to shield them from the heartbreaks that make them stronger.

As Mackenzie's roommate's dad said, "Nicole, sometimes life is just hard."  Truth.

One more thing: There's a contest now where +Mackenzie Elliott  can win the chance to open for some big time artists.  If you're interested, you can go to this site, create a login, and vote for her by clicking on the 5 stars.  Thanks!  http://www.gigg.com/w/18053