Does the author of this story teach any tour players, caddy for any tour players, etc.?? They hit a LOT of balls. Mucho.
College players at top universities? A bunch.
Anyhoo, I have been a musician as far back as I can remember, and played the drums on TV at age 7. Like every other musician I know, I always wanted to be a "front man." My brother David was a great front man in his day, a total fluke that he isn't famous. Me, I stopped growing 4 inches short of the NFL, and quit drumming for money by age 25.
I went into this golf teaching thing.....
But, in 2000, in Louisville, with nothing better to do at night, I started hanging out at "the" premier karaoke spot in town. Sang a few a night, went to a couple of places a week the MC was playing, and eventually was given the opportunity to be a little bitty front man.
Brian Manzella, Karaoke MC.
Utilizing what I knew from my days of running actual bands, and choosing what we played and when we played it, I made up a format that changed the fortunes of the local hangout for a couple of years. We packed 'em in two nights a week, and I got so popular, that it was starting to compete with my golf teaching. "You're taking lessons from the karaoke guy???" is not brand building, and after appearing on TV singing and even asked to sing in one of my golf segments on the 50,000 watt WHAS radio #1 rated Terry Meiners show, it was a good thing I started this website. There was some overlap (
see post) and it was a lot of fun, but hey, the golf hall of fame doesn't have a Italian Ya't Country singer's wing (neither does any place else).
One of the songs that I did just about every night I played—which was a couple hundred times—came in mighty handy in November of 2003. Which is the point of this story....
You see, when you teach golf, you talk all day, and when you teach right next to a busy Interstate, like I did in Louisville, you talk loud. And well, on Thursdays and Saturdays....the show must go on.
I sang that song in front of hundreds and in front of dozens. At the beginning and end of nights. With sore throats, and bad colds. With girls dancing with me while I sang, and with so many couples crowding the stage/dance floor, that I basically sung in the kitchen.
I sang it as well as I could a bunch of times, and just barely good enough not to suck a few times as well.
And then.....there was this wedding.
No, not my wedding. That
was the one in November of 2003. No this one was in late 2002 at a high school gym with 300 guests.
You see, this couple met one night while I was playing at Joe's Older than Dirt, and they came in a lot while they were "courting." I DJ'ed a few dances and weddings for the guy I worked for a Joe's and a couple of other joints, in the cold winters of Louisville. A couple of easy bucks for spinning records and keeping the dance floor full.
But for this wedding, the couple wanted me to sing that song, because it was the first one they danced slow to the night they met.
Now, I'm pretty sure hitting the first tee shot at the Masters or the Ryder Cup would make a brother more nervous than I was that afternoon in that big ole echo chamber of a gym, but that didn't stop me from almost dying of fear.
The damn song ain't that easy, and here I am, the friggin' DJ, and nobody expects the DJ to sing, right?....especially the "This dance is for the Bride and the Groom" song. In a small town in Kentucky, mind you. Gym floor of cheap tile, and 596 eyes looking at me thinking, "This guy is going to
sing????"
I did pretty darn good. Not my best, but I had my moments and no shotgun was pulled on me.
So what?
So, the next year, at my wedding, 250 folks at the Monteleone Hotel in the French Quarter, with a serious sore throat, I sang that damn song again, right after surviving another tune that was basically, with a little help from the band's lead singer, a layup.
I don't remember anything about it, other than telling everyone to dance before the song started, and watching the band's singer and sound man looking approvingly at me.
I aced it.
Why?
Well, see above.
Practice, all kinds, in all sorts of environments, under no, some, and a lot of pressure, with umpteen reps, that UNIQUELY prepared me to not make an ass out of myself in a way that would have had everyone at my wedding talk about it for 99 years.
Reads better than the other article, huh?
