Working the stage
By Casey Gillis on Jul. 21, 2010
(434) 385-5525
Even Lauren Smyk can admit she wasn’t very comfortable on stage when she auditioned for the Lynch’s Landing Lynchburg Star competition last summer.
Sure, she’d sung at local karaoke nights for years and had performed in classical music concerts while a student at Liberty University, but she’d never had to work the stage before.
“It was my first time in front of a crowd singing contemporary songs,” says Smyk, a Pennsylvania native who graduated from Liberty with a music degree in 2006. “There were a lot of people there that day. I thought, ‘This is scary.’”
The 26-year-old lost to friend Alma Hesson in the final round. But a video of her audition, an a cappella version of Carrie Underwood’s “Wasted,” wound up on YouTube and on the computer screen of The Almost Brothers Band guitarist Mike Davis, who was wowed by her voice.
“I kept coming back to Lauren,” says Davis, who had considered disbanding the group after their previous lead singer moved away. “All I knew was, she was it.”
“To get up at that thing and sing a cappella … there is nothing harder to do,” he adds. “I Googled the song and I realized, from a music standpoint, that she was in exactly the same key as the original. I wondered, ‘How did she do that?’”
When Davis first began contacting Smyk about fronting the band last fall, she wasn’t sure what to think.
“I got an e-mail from our school secretary (saying), ‘Some man is calling about a YouTube video and wants you to be in a band,” says Smyk, who was teaching elementary music for Campbell County schools at the time and didn’t even know the performances had been posted online.
She finally called him back after a mutual friend explained who he was and what he wanted. After an audition, she joined the band (they’ll be performing at Shakers Restaurant on Thursday; see box for more information).
“A week and a half later, we had a gig,” Smyk says. “There were all these songs I didn’t know. I winged it, and it went really well, and they said, ‘OK, we’re keeping you.’”
Says Davis: “Darn it if she didn’t go through the entire evening like she’d been with us for years. We all looked at each other, like ‘Wow.’”
With Smyk as front woman, the band — which got its name because “we play almost everything,” Davis says — has added more contemporary and country songs to its lineup to play to her strengths.
Think Underwood, Alicia Keys, Sugarland and Joss Stone, performed in the same set as something from the ’60s, maybe, or the ’70s.
“I don’t think there’s anything I have thrown at her yet that she can’t do,” says Davis.
Smyk’s stage presence has grown right along with the band’s repertoire; she tried out for Lynchburg Star again last week and advanced to the final round, scheduled for Aug. 6 during Friday Cheers. She also plans to audition for “American Idol” in August.
“It’s (been) a great experience,” she says, still a little incredulous that it all grew out of that YouTube video.
“I don’t even know who put me on there. I need to thank them.”
If You’re Going
WHAT: The Almost Brothers Band at Shakers
WHERE: Shakers Restaurant, 3401 Candlers Mountain Road
WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursday
INFO: (434) 847-7425
FOR MORE ON THE BAND: http://www.almostbrosband.com.
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