My Voice: The Lost Years

As published on the Skyrocket blog

People who've been following my career for a while, or even as Trish and Darin back in the day, might already know that singing (to say nothing of songwriting) has never come easily for me. Somebody somewhere out there has sat through a performance when I was so hoarse I could hardly get through the show, or even showed up only to find that I couldn't sing at all and had to cancel (this only happened once, in 1999 at the Mucky Duck in Houston, and I was still there to sign CDs and have a CD-release "party.") Those days are pretty much over, except for November and April bouts with allergy-driven pharyngitis, and if you were in Houston last weekend you heard it for yourself.

I have my time with Skyrocket! to thank, though, for a lot of my rehab. From the time I was a tiny kid I've had kind of a rasp to my voice, and by the eighth grade things got pretty dire. I'd go to a slumber party and be mute the next day. Singing was limited to about one hour's worth, and after that forget it. Finally I was diagnosed with vocal nodules, which are basically hard callouses that form on your vocal chords and cut off some of the air that needs to pass through them to make a clear sound. Surgery followed in 10th grade, and months of speech therapy to correct some of the habits I'd developed in the attempt to make my voice audible -- to push sound out through those two tense, worn-out little reeds of muscle.

I didn't know then that it would take a lifetime, really, for my voice to heal. Nobody knows what causes the musculature to tense up in your throat, tongue, jaw, neck and head, but that's what happens when you're using an impaired voice. "Raising my pitch" to eliminate "tongue tension" became a daily practice in therapy, and it seemed so stupid and annoying to hear the fake, babyish pitch I had to use instead of my 'real' one, which was low and throaty and pressed down on my pipes in a way I could feel. The new voice was surprisingly free of effort, heady and relaxed, but I thought I sounded like a dork. I never got the hang of it.

My range was limited to maybe an octave by that time. I limped through high school, in choir and theater, faking it as a second soprano and praying I wouldn't poop out when I got cast as Babe in "The Pajama Game." I can't even count how many speech tournaments I bombed when my voice would buckle under the pressure in final rounds. Sometimes we'd win anyway, but I never felt good about it. It seemed like whenever the stakes were high, my voice would always give me away.

Fast forward to the Trish Murphy years, when major-label showcases, South by Southwest, and the relentless grind of sleep deprivation and industry scrutiny caught up with me from time to time. By then I'd regained some of my footing and earned some confidence, but the high-stakes climate of career decisions and competition would still take its toll. I'd have nightmares where I would need to scream but no sound would come out. Or someone in the dream would make me fly into a hoarse, impotent rage.

By the time I joined Skyrocket, in 2004, I was ready for things to get easier. I'd just put out a new record that I'd financed and then promoted independently, including radio and European tours, and the stress of it was getting to me. I had also begun to realize, the hard way, that not speaking up for yourself to command what you need, want and deserve in life (or in a career) isn't a good thing. Eventually as I started to reverse that habit, the weirdest thing happened. The stakes somehow didn't seem so high any more. I started to relax. And my voice came back.

A few weeks ago my mom was in the audience and saw Skyrocket rip out a full-tilt version of "Crazy on You," complete with the little acoustic-guitar intro. She couldn't believe I actually sang it. I don't have one of those golden throats, but what I do have is hard-won, and I hope the sound that comes out is honest. The material doesn't matter to me. My own songs are written as a confession, and the singing is an afterthought although the melody is usually scrupulous. Singing other people's songs is strangely liberating. The stakes are lower. And I probably need the relief.

The picture, by the way, is of me and my eighth grade best pals Kay and Ellie, who knew me when. We're still figuring out our voices, and how to use them.