I always wondered how artists forgot the lyrics they wrote when performing. I mean, they wrote them. How could they forget? 

Among all the commotion at the Rock Roulette showcase, performance after performance, I was doing quiet vocal warmups and obsessively trying to make sure I remembered the song my band started writing less than three weeks before. I mean, how could I not fully remember them? My own hand wrote them down several times, so I should know them. 

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The theater kid in me was freaked and more than a little panicked that I wasn’t “off book” yet. This, on top of the fact that I had to remember how to play the electric guitar that I had only really picked up maybe two weeks before. To make this worse I had been fighting a sore throat for a week before by chugging copious amounts of vitamin C. And yet I couldn’t be more excited to get onstage. Being the last band, we had to wait a while, though. 

Rock Roulette is a six-week program where women, trans and gender non-conforming individuals gather to create music together and fundraise for Y’all Rock Carbondale’s one-week kids summer camp. In the span of a week, kids come together to learn how to write a song and play instruments. At the end of the week the kids have their own showcase to show the music they have worked on to friends and family. 

When I first heard about Rock Roulette, it was during our weekly story meeting at the Daily Egyptian. Initially, I wanted to photograph the event and follow the story. After a minute of quick research and reading, I decided that I absolutely would not cover the event. I wanted to participate. Within the first 10 minutes of discovering what Rock Roulette was, I was signed up and got my confirmation email.

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Ever since I was little, I have always wanted to be a singer. My first song was a knockoff of “All I Want for Christmas is You” that I wrote on pink construction paper with a Crayola marker when I was about seven or eight. I continued to write whenever the inspiration came. I usually used songwriting to regulate my young and erratic feelings. I had a songwriting notebook I used as a diary, and I used to write songs weekly if not daily. At one point, it felt like my everything. I was an artsy and musical kid. 

Despite this, I always had trouble sharing my art, whether it be visual or literary. I held all of it close to my chest. All the art-related things I did, I did for me. 

So you can imagine the way I felt when I brought my songwriting notebook to our first Rock Roulette practice. I handed off the heart and musings of a roughly healing teen to 20-something-year-old me into the hands of four strangers whom I had met maybe a week before. I don’t think I’ve ever had a stronger compulsion to crawl into my own skin than that day. I am not a wear-my-heart-on-my-sleeve person. I would rather gently lay it down on paper where nobody but I could see. 

Despite all my lyrical writing practice over the years, I had never learned how to do the instrumental process on my own. I had only ever written music with someone else once before and I don’t know how well that process went, but I wasn’t happy with the product. I am a stickler for process when it comes to certain things. Rock Roulette forced me to step out of my comfort zone and approach songwriting at a different angle. I couldn’t have found a better group of people to do that with. 

The band we formed is named The Hiccups! and we based it on one of our band members’ infant having hiccups during the initial kick-off meeting. A very spur-of-the-moment type of pick. The first few practices were as awkward as you could imagine it would be when putting five strangers in a room. I think our first few practices were jam sessions so we could get familiar with each other and what we could do. 

Like every band, we had ups and downs and last-minute changes. We were a little too close for comfort when finalizing the two originals we decided on. However, we came together in the end and really pulled through. By the end of the fifth week, we felt like we were golden aside from a few tweaks. A much different feeling than where we were at the beginning of week four. 

The fundraising was interesting on its own. We did some fundraising at Booby’s and the Lost Cross house, which gave the insight of what it’s like to grind for yourself in the Carbondale music scene. We made our own merch and went into the community to put ourselves out there for a good cause. I’m not sure I would have done it in any other circumstances. 

The next thing I know, I’m on stage with some of the hottest lights I’ve ever been under (and I’ve been under a few) staring out at the biggest crowd I ever thought I would be playing any original music to. Meanwhile, I’m trying to make sure I have the song lyrics of our song so I can uphold my end of the band bargain, vocals. All this, and the sweat was burning my eyes so bad that I couldn’t even see the fret markers on the side of my fretboard. 

But despite that, I looked around me to the people in my band who helped me even touch the dream of that little girl scribbling on a piece of cheap construction paper, and I had a strange sense of peace. I have never felt that calm before a performance in my life. 

Now I could talk about every mistake I made up there. I am a perfectionist and I’m sure one day in the future it will keep me up at night. There are videos. I know where to find them. However, that’s not what Rock Roulette is about. No one expected perfection out of me, just good vibes and some banging songs. I think The Hiccups! delivered along with all the other bands that put their all into their sets for the showcase. 

So, I want to say thank you to Y’all Rock Carbondale. This was a really fun and crazy opportunity in which I got to grow as a person and push myself to do something I have always wanted to do and never had the chance or resources to. 

Thank you to everyone who helped us fundraise the crazy amount that we did. Especially my parents. I had to get my competitive streak from somewhere, and they were the product of music programs themselves. I’m sure when I was younger, I would have been one of those kids at camp had I lived in Carbondale. 

And finally, I want to say thank you to my bandmates and band manager, from me and my inner child. This whole thing has probably made me sound dramatic, but this was honestly one of the coolest things I’ve done, and I’m glad it was with all of you. 

Who knows how long we’ll ride this high, but Carbondale has not seen the last of The Hiccups! if any of us has anything to do with it. 

Student Managing Editor Dominique Martinez-Powell can be reached at dmartinez-powell@dailyegyptian.com. To stay up to date with all your southern Illinois news, follow the Daily Egyptian on Facebook and Twitter.

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