My whole family could sing. My family harmonized without any instruments to accompany them.
I grew up teaching parts to choirs, and I love a whole group of voices singing as one.
I remember hanging out at Starbucks. There were these older guys who would sit around and play Crosby, Stills & Nash songs. I was just so in love with music. I would just go hang out with them, and I would try to sing and harmonize with them. I didn't even know the songs.
I started singing when I was a little kid. I was about nine when we had a group with my four brothers. We sang spirituals. The old regular thing.
We did an a cappella version, which I have always wanted to do, of the "Coventry Carol." It's beautiful, and we did it in three part harmony with no accompaniment. We have two a cappella songs that, in my opinion, are just gorgeous.
I was born into a household where my aunt, grandmother and mother lived their music. They all sang harmony, and by the time I was 2, I could sing 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat' in three-part harmony.
I always sang harmony with my family growing up.
Growing up, it was just me and my mom, so we would play games where we'd listen to the radio and sing harmonies to each other.
What we look for when we need to find someone who can fit in with our music, the vocals and the harmonies and the way they blend are very important to us because if you listen to Beach Boys music, the harmonies, not only are the notes being sung, but there's a blend to it. The voices have to blend.
When it came time to do 'One Hundred Years' I had been encouraged to really make a Styx album without the guys. I gave myself permission to do that. I set out to get people who sang with me who could make those harmonies.
Coming from bluegrass background, I totally understand family harmonies.
Don and I are infamous for our split, but we're closer than most brothers. Harmony singing requires that you enlarge yourself, not use any kind of suppression. Harmony is the ultimate love.
It's a particular skill, I think, doing backing vocals. You're blending the vocals between the gaps, between the music.
I sang do-wop on the street corner before it was called do-wop.
It was endlessly amusing to me to try to imitate John Lennon and Paul McCartney's harmonies using the guitar.
How much can you do with two voices? You can sing thirds or you can sing fifths or you can do a background harmony.
I think it was definitely a love for the four- or five-part vocal male harmony groups that really took me away. I'd always try and be, like, the fifth Drifter; I'd always try and find another harmony that wasn't there.
We'd just go to church and sing. My dad would get me and my sister Doris, and we would sing together. I sung the harmony, and my sister Doris took the lead.
Being a backup singer means being able to sing on a dime. Music is oozing out of their every pore.
I did recording sessions as a musician as well as a background vocalist and enjoyed every minute of it. I remember singing harmony with Waylon Jennings on a few songs that were hits. Chet Atkins always put me up so high that I strained to hit every note. It was a lot of fun.
I've always thought it was easier for girls to sing harmonies because their voices can go to that higher plane so much more easy than a male voice.
When I was in grade school, I remember singing in a chorus where they actually had two parts going. It was very easy for me to pick out the harmonies, and I kind of just went with it.
Singing harmony is not the same as singing a part in a choral group, where you know you're going to have to hit this note and then that note. There are nuances that change every day. Maybe today you have a slight cold or voice fatigue, or you've done something and there's a slight difference in your breathing.
I'm a chameleon. I can change my voice a lot. I always was able to, because in my family's music, I was a harmony singer, and harmony singing is really hard.
I can't read notes well, but I can hear something and sing a harmony to it automatically.
