It’s been a little quiet from the House at Moo Corner, to be sure, but that doesn’t mean that your favourite Kow boys aren’t up to something. We’ve actually been up to a whole lot, so I suppose now’s as good a time as any to start spilling the beans.
At our last strategy meeting, where we lay out our goals for the year and plan for new music and shows, we decided that we really wanted to branch out to new audiences to perform for and new events and venues to perform at. As we had so much fun singing the national anthem for a couple of collegiate sporting events last year, we wanted to try for the big time: singing O Canada at a professional sports event. We’re already acquainted with the Edmonton Oilers’ anthem singer, our friend and former choir mate Robert Clark, and the Edmonton Rush’s anthem singer, 12-year-old Tea Gonzalez (who has better mic technique than we do, by the way), has beaten us in arm wrestling three out of five times, so those sports are out of contention. And Edmonton doesn’t yet have a professional cricket team, moto-jousting squad, or dancefight troupe…
An opportunity came up with the Edmonton Eskimos, who were holding open auditions for new anthem singers. We sent in our application with an old video of us singing O Canada, and wouldn’t you know it? We made the cut! The top 30 applicants got to participate in a live sing-off in front of a panel of judges at West Edmonton Mall. We were very excited and very nervous! In addition, the sing-off was on a day where we wouldn’t have Joel R., as he’d be on vacation with his family. But it was a tremendous opportunity so we soldiered on with a four-part arrangement.
The audience was small but enthusiastic. We checked in and got our number. We’d be the 10th singer in the first group of 10. The event was being recorded and streamed online as well. We watched as the first singers took the stage. They were introduced one by one, asked a couple of questions by the judges, and then went right into their performance. There were young singers, older singers, men, women, adults, teens, professional musicians, talented amateurs–many different demographics were represented, and all were at least competent singers. A couple were mildly pitchy, some were in my opinion a little free with the melody (I don’t like too many liberties taken with my anthems’ melodies), and some sang in more than just English! How were we going to compete with that, we wondered. One singer momentarily forgot the lyrics when she switched from French back to English and had to restart the line a couple of times. Thankfully, the audience was very supportive and helped her out.
Finally, it was our turn. We were the first group on stage, and it was good that we only had four members performing because they only had four microphones for us. We were introduced but we didn’t get any interview questions, so we went right into it. Our arrangement has each member coming in on successive lines. First line, one singer. Second line, two singers harmonizing. And so on. The bass comes in on the fourth line, and when Jago came in with his strong bass voice to complete the chord, it was like hitting the audience with a hammer of national pride. The crowd erupted in cheers for us, which couldn’t hurt our chances, right? For the rest of the performance, we held the audience in the palms of our hands. We ended the anthem on a really strong chord, holding it probably a second or two longer than usual in order to milk the applause, because why wouldn’t we?
We stepped off the stage to congratulations and compliments from many spectators. We could not have been prouder of our performance. Still on a tremendous high, we got pictures with the Eskimos’ mascots and I was even interviewed on video for CBC News. They ended up not using any of my interview, I think, because my brain was still numb and I didn’t have any especially enlightening or newsworthy to say. We were visible and audible, though, as that evening’s news coverage of the event showed us singing on stage and with our performance playing as the reporter talked about the event. We left the event shortly thereafter, as we couldn’t stay til the end, and talked about the performance the entire way home. We thought we had a really good chance of getting the gig, as our arrangement was different, we sang in a different style than most everyone else, and we were one of the only groups who auditioned that day.
The following week, the winners were announced, and sure enough, Apocalypse Kow was one of them. We will be singing O Canada for the Edmonton Eskimos vs. B.C. Lions game on Saturday, October 17 at Commonwealth Stadium. Come cheer us on, then stay to watch the football game. CFL football is pretty exciting, and Commonwealth is a great venue.
You can see us in this CBC News video at around 27:25: http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/Canada/Calgary/ID/2665393499/
Coming soon: news on our Spring Fling and Supercali-FRINGE-ilistic!