Wendy Sayvetz, Folk Soprano Underground

November 7, 2010 No Comments

With such a hauntingly beautiful voice, you might expect to find an artist like Wendy Sayvetz at high-brow and exclusive clubs. But her transcendental voice is part of what makes NYC a unique and worldy cultural center: you can’t buy tickets. You can only find her undergroud, playing as an official MTA artist.

Visit her website or learn more about her in this incredibly honest interview.

Name: Wendy Sayvetz

Home-base: New York City

Where do you find your writing inspiration:

Particularly vivid compelling life-changing experiences, I haven’t written very much but the few things I’ve done are story songs based on these kinds of things. I supposed my favorite songwriter in many ways – who is always an inspiration for me on the occasions that I do write – is Harry Chapin, the master of the story song lyric (in my opinion anyway). And in a more general sense the great lyricists of the golden age of musical theater – Oscar Hammerstein, Alan Jay Lerner, etc. Musically I’m not so sure and I don’t really consider myself a “writer of music”, I sometimes hear tunes in my head but I don’t know the first thing about harmonizing them.

First gig you ever played:

Music Under New York – Grand Central Terminal, Lower Level Concourse, January 20, 1990

Favorite song/most inspirational song as a kid:

Whew, this is a a tough one cause I had SO many favorites. When I was very very young – like 3, 4, 5, 6 etc. – I listened constantly to Harry Belafonte, Pete Seeger, and Barbra Streisand. When I was 6, 7, 8, etc. I started going to day camp in the summer, it was 1965, 66, 67, 68 and all we ever sang there were Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Peter/Paul/Mary songs etc. My Dad was really folk music, my mom was really into theater music and standards. So I guess when I was really little the songs that stuck in my head/heart were things like Jamaica Farewell (Harry Belafonte) (the first song I ever remember singing around the age of 3 or 4); We Shall Overcome, Where Have all the Flowers Gone?, Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall, Who Killed Norma Jeane?, If You Miss Me at the Back of the Bus, If I Had a Hammer, etc. (Pete Seeger); but then I also was really into show music – totally was into Barbra Streisand’s version of “I Got No Strings”, an early song she did called “Jenny Rebecca”, “I Can See It” (from The Fantastiks”) and also very into all the Rodgers/Hammerstein and Lerner/Loewe musicals and listened to those records constantly too – loved loved loved Julie Andrews. When I was about 10 or 11, the off-Broadway show, “Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris” opened in New York City and a year or so later came to Boston. I saw the show at least 7 times and from that time on, I listened to the entire double LP at least once a day, following along with the lyrics and singing along with it. Ironically, the star of the original cast of that show – Elly Stone, whose husband Eric Blau produced it and wrote most of the English lyrics to the songs, translating from Brel’s French – has been my voice teacher since 2001 and is now also a very dear friend. Funny how life comes around in a big circle.

First song you learned to play:

I’m not sure but I think it might have been Jamaica Farewell or Vincent (Don McLean) – it was definitely one of those old songs from the 60′s/70′s cause that was the stuff I had sung in college with my best friend/roommate and I had all these copies of her handwritten chord sheets that we had used then and it was the stuff I played when I first started performing with Music Under New York. And it’s still the bulk of what I play only of course I’ve added a lot of new things over the past 20 years. I did not pick up a guitar until the age of 30. When I sang folk music in college I just sang and my best friend played the guitar and sang with me. I literally began to learn to play the guitar on my 30th birthday because I had finally, after much agonizing, decided I wanted to be a folk-singer and earn my living at it. And so I needed to learn to play the guitar and learn fast. My husband, who is a classical guitarist, helped me pick out a relatively cheap nylon string Yamaha to get started – he figured it would be easier on my fingers. I was fortunate enough to find a part-time job as a headhunter and it paid so well that I only had to work mornings. Every afternoon, 6 days a week for 6 months I spent 4-5 hours practicing the guitar. My husband taught me to play scales and gave me a lot of classical-type finger strengthening exercises, slurs and things like that. So I spent half of my practice time drilling that stuff and the other half learning chords, finger-picking patterns, strumming patterns, and slowly slowly slowly putting it all together to play songs – and then of course to sing the songs and play at the same time. After 6 months of this intense practicing, I found out – by total chance from a friend – about the Music Under New York auditions. I auditioned, passed and a month later began performing at Grand Central.

Artist you’d most like to be on stage with:

My voice teacher, Elly Stone who unfortunately has no interest in performing anymore – she’s 83 and has some kind of recent vocal chord issue so no matter how hard I try, I can’t convince her to do something with me…:(

Things you are juggling:

My Music Under New York gig and the Buskers musical which is now consuming a huge portion of my life. Don’t really do much recording other than when I make my albums and I just put out a new one about 18 months ago so it’ll be awhile before I can afford to make another one. At the moment touring is very slow cause the kind of small to mid-level arts centers I did have been losing a lot if not all of their funding. Household of course. My husband, my doggies – yes I’ve attached a photo of them! And since February, 2008 I’ve also been juggling/dealing with a major health issue – breast cancer. My active/constant treatment lasted almost an entire year – all of 2008 but post-treatment takes a lot of time/energy/coordinating as well and that continues to this day. My husband also had a very serious near fatal health issue in the summer of 2009 and that also requires a good deal of post-treatment stuff.

Have a photo of the dogs? Yes, it’s attached.

Biggest challenge about being an independent musician: Financial, being totally free-lance, having to pay a huge amount of money each month for health-insurance, having to deal with clients who take forever to pay causing Andrew and I horrific cash-flow problems (which happens to be going on at the moment), having to deal with a client once who didn’t pay at all – it was many thousands of dollars and was supposed to be partially reimbursing a lot of touring expenses we had paid for up front, forced us to have to declare personal bankruptcy.

Best thing about being an independent musician:

Being in control of what I do, the songs I sing, not being – as my mentor/producer/friend (and record industry insider) always told me – an “indentured servant” to a record label.

Gear:

Not much really. I play a custom/hand-built acoustic guitar by an incredible builder who lives in the northwestern most part of Washington state, his name is Darren Hippner and he’s a true genius. Builds mostly classical guitars – he and my husband, Andrew have been working together for many years now and he does do a few steel string guitars every so often. And one of them is mine – Brazilian rosewood back and Adirondack spruce on the top, got it this past April on my 51st birthday, the first new guitar I’ve gotten in 20 years since I got my first steel string guitar (a Martin Shenandoah) in September of 1989 at Mandolin Brothers on Staten Island. As far as electronics go, I use a Maxi-Mouse (which is no longer made, hasn’t been for many years now) by Lectrosonics. I like it much better than the Crate which is now the most commonly used portable amp for street musicians. A Shure 58 mic (or is it 57?) – the mic that everyone uses everywhere, they say you can use it to hammer nails in on the stage and it’ll still sound great. I use a D’Addario headstock tuner and D’Addario phosphor-bronze light guage strings on my guitar.

Dream gear?

Same as above.

Anything else you’d like to add?

Don’t think so! Will send you the link to the Buskers webpage as soon as it’s up, should be tomorrow or Monday at the latest! Doggie photo attached here, it’s a few years old now. Dolly is on the left, she’s 8 1/2 years old now. Paco is on the right, he’s 6 years old now. Paco is Dolly’s “half-nephew” i.e. one of her 300 brothers is his Dad! :)

xoxo, W.

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