I met Tony Bennett. I shook his hand, introduced myself, and told him how much I’ve loved him all these years, how he’s inspired me, how I’m one of his biggest fans. He held my gaze the whole time, smiling, and said, “Thank you. Thank you, sweetheart.”

He called me SWEETHEART!!!  (Swooning, she falls to the floor.)

I met him at a book release party for Will Friedwald, jazz writer for the Wall Street Journal, music scholar, and prolific author. Will’s new book is A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers, a book so big that it won’t fit in a bread box. Or, as Will pointed out, “This book is so big that we had to get the book jacket at Lane Bryant.”

I was invited to this intimate party, which was held in the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City, by my dear friends, Shaynee Rainbolt and Terese Genecco, who had been invited by yet another talented singer, Pamela Luss. I had met Pamela, who is married to Will Friedwald, when I interviewed her for Cabaret Exchange (now NiteLife Exchange) oh so many years ago.

When we got to the standing room only party, Pamela greeted us and said, “Tony Bennett is going to be here tonight. He’s supposed to show up around 7:00.” My heart stopped beating for about 15 seconds. Then my mind, in an attempt to get my heart started again, said to me, “Oh, he probably won’t come after all.”

But he did.

This party featured performances by an illustrious line-up of  cabaret and jazz singers, like K.T. Sullivan, Barbara Carroll, Pamela Luss, Barbara Fasano and Eric Comstock, just to name a few. Will, who was acting as MC, said at one point, “People keep asking me, ‘Is that Tony Bennett sitting over there?’ and I keep telling them, ‘Yes, it is.’”  Then Tony stood up and crowd applauded.

For the rest of the night, all I could think about was how I was going to dart across the room and meet him after the show.

Honest to God, Tony Bennett has been my idol for almost 12 years now. I’ve listened to almost every album, read his autobiography (which was co-authored by Will Friedwald. That’s how they met and became friends), watched every music video and TV special, and celebrated him on his birthday. I’ve only seen him perform live once, at the Sonoma Jazz Festival. He was captivating, hip and spot on.

I’ve been so inspired by the evolution of his career, his voice and his style. Starting out as an Italian crooner with a clear, legato voice in the bel canto tradition, he used to sing popular love songs of the day, like “Because of You” and “Blue Velvet.” But he got hooked into  jazz, loosened up and started swinging, backphrasing and developing  his own distinctive voice and style. As he’s gotten older, he’s only gotten better. His voice has more grit, guts, soul… and power!

But he is always in service to the song, not the sound of his voice. He honors the intregrity of the original melody when he improvises and always lets the lyric guide his phrasing, dynamics and mood. He’s hip. He’s hot. He’s a jazz cat!

He’s also a good, kind, generous person. And that shines through everything he does.

On a more personal note, I suspect my deep love for Tony Bennett comes from what he’s taught me; that it’s possible for a singer who started in a more classical, sing-it-as-it’s-written style, then successfully move into the freedom of jazz and personal interpretation. He’s shown me that, yes, your voice can get even better as it gets older! It can become more distinct, honest and revealing while keeping its power and stamina. And you can still perform with grace, energy and style at age 84!

He is one of my musical heros, and I feel so blessed to have shaken his hand, looked into his eyes, and told him how much he’s meant to me. November 8, 2010. A day I’ll never forget.

In all honesty, I didn’t want to go. I had so much work to do, deadlines to meet, clients to please, and the idea of going to the city for a night of singing and fun sounded more like a chore, another pressure in a week of tremendous demands.

While I was stuffing my bag with work to do on the train, Patti Digh’s colorfully alluring book, Four-Word Self-Help: Simple Wisdom for Complex Lives caught my eye. I picked it up, opened it randomly, and ended up on page 129. Open Doors For Others.

Right.

Here I was, a whirl of stress and hurry, resenting having to follow-through on a commitment I’d made, a commitment that involved all the things I love (singing, being with musicians, being in New York City, eating good food and drinking good wine), and this four-word head-turner stopped my internal whining and reminded me that perhaps, by going to the Iguana tonight, I could open a door for someone.

Because when I read Open Doors For Others, my initial hit was to open doors of opportunity and possibility for others. And what I truly love about my work is opening up possibilities for musicians. And here I was, headed down to be in a cabaret room filled to the brim with singers, performers and other musicians! How perfect! Maybe, tonight, I could open the door for others rather than being focused on myself. All of a sudden, the trip to the city became full of possibility.

It didn’t register with me until later that Patti could have been referring to physical doors, like holding open those heavy doors at Grand Central that lead to E. 42nd St. so the people behind me could breeze on through. Several of Patti’s four-word self-help phrases seem to carry multiple meanings, at least to me. Like, Take Just Enough Baggage, or Use Your Own Voice. Do What You Can. If you sit with these a bit, you can feel how, depending on what word you emphasize, their meaning can morph and mold to whatever your heart needs to hear.

My trip to the city was fun, inspiring and delightful. I got to open some physical doors for others. I don’t know if I opened any metaphysical doors for others, but I held that intention in my heart, and that alone changed everything.

I also became exquisitely aware of people who open doors for others. Like my friend Linda Kosut. I wouldn’t have been invited to sing at the Iguana that night if she hadn’t asked Richard Skipper to include me. Linda did the same thing for Marilyn Cooney, a smart and witty singer-songwriter who has her New York debut show this Saturday, September 25, and Steve Herbst, the International Whistling Champion (who was amazing, by the way).

Linda is a door-opener. Even when doors are slammed in her face, she continues to open doors for others. (By the way, Linda is performing at Don’t Tell Mama’s THIS SUNDAY, September 26. BE THERE if you can).

So are Richard Skipper and Dana Lorge who organize, host and manage Wednesday Night at the Iguana. EVERY WEEK, they line-up a long parade of singers, songwriters and other talented folks to perform at the VIP Lounge at the Iguana, mostly to create a place where all of us soon-to-be-famous artists can strut our stuff in front of an appreciative audience, meet others in our community and enjoy.

Richard Skipper and Dana Lorge are door-openers.

Patti Digh is a door-opener, too. With her one little four-word phrase of self-help, my entire attitude, perspective, and experience changed… for the better. And isn’t that the litmus test for self-help?

And how cool is it that even in the midst of my whirling dervish day, I could open Four-Word Self-Help and get a quick slap upside the head. You don’t have to commit a huge junk of time to get your little nugget of wisdom. Like me, you can even pick this book up in a frazzled moment, read four words, and change everything.

I had so much fun making this video (once I wrestled iMovie to the ground and made it scream “Uncle!”) about my recent excursion to New York City to be at the MAC Awards (Manhattan Association of Cabaret and Clubs). My friends Shaynee Rainbolt and Terese Genecco were both nominated for awards, so I HAD to be there. Mario Cantone and Leslie Uggams and The Bobs also make an appearance in this video.

So… watch it! I made it just for you!

New gigs on the horizon, including a monthly gig at Savona’s Trattoria in Kingston, AND… I’ll be at the Rrazz Room in San Francisco on Monday, June 14! Yep, I’m flying on back to California to share the stage with Linda Kosut in “When the Natives Get Restless” – our name for this jazz cabaret about …. well, you’ll have to come and find out!

It’s the simple things that feel so empowering to me now.

Like knowing that if there’s a subway entrance for the 1 train going downtown on one side of the street, chances are the train going uptown is just across the street. To a New Yorker, this is a no-brainer. To me, it’s a celebration. Here I am in this foreign land where the means of movement and expression are strange and mysterious, and yet I’m starting to crack the code.

On evenings like this, when I take the 1 train to Greenwich Village and the subway conductor (is that what you call them?) comes over the loud speaker to say that if you need to connect to the A or B train you need to get off at the 72nd Street station because the 96 station is closed and I actually understand what that means, and I listen to the music of the subway as my train screeches around curves then coasts almost soundlessly into the 14th street station, and I marvel that I’m here, witnessing this wild and wonderful, unexplainably beautiful display of sound and sight, and spent 2.5 hours in a little dive bar in Greenwich Village listening to a jazz singer I’d never heard of before because I needed to hear some vocal jazz BAD and found her style smooth and easy, so relaxed in her phasing, and I talked to the bartender, a big, sweet man named Kirby, who’s a drummer and a writer whose aunt sings in France, and he pours me the last swig of an almost empty bottle of Yellow Tail Shiraz/Grenache and I tip him another dollar before I leave.

Yeah, it’s on evenings like these when I take the subway back to my friend’s Manhattan apartment and there’s a man singing and playing guitar in the Christopher/Sheridan subway station, singing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, and I slip him a dollar just as my train comes, wishing it would come later.

And as the train bumps from 14th Street to 18th, I look about me and everyone on this subway train looks beautiful. The woman with long strawberry blond hair. The 20-something man holding a plastic bag full of take-out food, the teenage boys who sit on either side of me playing video games on their mobile phones. And I listen to the screech, bump and hiss of the train, until it glides, almost soundlessly, into a station and I think, why isn’t everyone living in this City?

Why doesn’t everyone scramble here where there is such incredible beauty, color and music everywhere — in the subway, in the street, in the sky, in the people? Why would anyone live someplace else? Why would anyone choose not to live in this cacophony of sound and sight that is so achingly human?

Don’t ever let me become immune to this. Don’t ever let me fall numb to the spectacle, the miracle that is New York City. To the beauty of the people, the buildings, the flow, bump and hiss of this organism I find so exquisitely beautiful and overwhelming to me now. Please, let me always find the joy and exhilaration I feel now, being here in this City that is one of the most spectacular, dramatic, incredible creations I have ever witnessed.

Photo by Mark Marshall

This is a Big Deal for me because I’m not a big fan of travel. Especially travel that involves airplanes. Only desire and crazy love could make me book such a trip. A love larger than my dread of being packed in tin and propelled through the air for 5 to 6 hours.

But I’m beginning to realize my real reasons for this trip are still unknown to me. This has become my Magical Mystery trip, and I am so damned excited! I wish I was leaving today!

You can bet I’ll be visiting my my talented friend, Shaynee Rainbolt. Then, I’m taking a bus, renting a car and checking out territories north where I’m hoping to take in some gorgeous, deep Fall foliage. (Oh, yes, PLEASE!) Plus, a trip to the new Woodstock Museum at Bethel Woods, which is supposed to be as mind-blowingly fabulous and experiential as the original event.

Then, as of today, it looks like I’ll be heading back to New York City during the week of the Cabaret Convention because I’ve been offered the chance to apartment-sit a truly fab apartment for a friend of a friend. I can’t believe my good luck! This means I’ll get to see my friend Terese Genecco’s show as well as Russ Lorenson’s show at the Metropolitan Room on Tuesday, Oct. 28. And go crazy with a whole slew of singer friends who are coming to town for the Convention. Like the adorable Shawn Ryan.

Then, who knows? Well, YOU will, because I’m taking you with me. I’m bringing my laptop, camera, and Flip video camera so I can let you in on the Mystery. Well, maybe not the WHOLE mystery. Just the stuff you might find mildly interesting.

I’m leaving on Oct. 21 and will return home sometime before the election. See you on the road!