Darlene Koldenhoven Interview #2 - The Final on Vinyl Podcast

I had a wonderful conversation with Grammy Award Winner Darlene Koldenhoven regarding her upcoming recording, A Grand Memoir, and her book that coincides with the album Put Down Your Dress and Sing.

Keith "MuzikMan" Hannaleck

Transcript

Speaker 0:14

Hello everybody. This is Keith "MuzikMan" Hannaleck with The Final On Vinyl podcast. And today I Darlene Koldenhoven who I first spoke to five years ago, and she has a lot going on. I listened to the new album and there will be a review forthcoming. A grand memoir, it's called. And she also has a book uh called P ut Your Dress Down and Sing, which is a memoir. And i really looked forward to this call. Welcome back, Darlene.

Speaker 4 0:50

I am so excited to be here. I couldn't wait to get up this morning and talk to you.

Speaker 0:56

Well, the feelings mutual, believe me. Uh absolutely love the music and the and the book. I could not put down. And you know, I was just thinking about this this morning when we first talked five years ago. I said something to you and you said, Well boy, I have some stories, and I said, You should write a book. Do you remember that? Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4 1:18

Mm-hmm. And voila! So now I have put your dress down and sing. I started it in January of 2024. And with all my research and the writing, in four months' time, I wrote 800 pages. Way too much.

Speaker 1 1:41

Wow.

Speaker 4 1:42

So then my my yeah, exactly. It was just pouring out, you know. So then I spent the rest of the time, the the next the following year, editing it down, you know, picking the right story, saying it the right way, because there was so much to put in. So I had to make sure I wrote it in a way that was easy to understand, quick to read, keeps people, you know, what's coming next, because in my life there's always something coming next.

Speaker 2:14

Yeah, I I I I could see that. I mean, everything it was like one thing after another. Uh I don't know how you've survived it all. I really don't.

Speaker 4 2:26

Me neither, but I have, using the motto, put your dress down and sing. You know? So honestly, that was the theme of the book. Um it comes from a great story, but the theme is like if you want to change your feelings, you have to take an action. You can think about things all you want, but unless you get up off the couch or wherever you are, unless you take an action, the feelings won't change. And once you start taking that action, the ball starts rolling. And the universe seems to go, okay, let me help you move along here. But uh I learned that story when I was three years old, whether I knew what it meant or not, um my mother had me uh sing in church on Easter Sunday morning, dressed all in the Easter dresses and frilly petticoats and all that kind of stuff, right? And I could sing in tune and hold a harmony part by the time I was three, thanks to my mother and her father. So singing this song, Low in the Gravy Lay, such a song for a three-year-old, right? So of course a three-year-old hears that Low in the Gravy lay, and that sounded like fun, so okay. So I get up on the platform, I'm ready to let it rip, and all of a sudden I see 200 people staring at me, and my shyness kicked in, and I took my dress and I hoisted it high over my head so nobody could see me. And there I stood in all my glory, and uh yeah, I couldn't see them, but they sh they could sure see me. So I I mom rushes to the platform and she goes, Darlene, put your dress down and sing. Okay, I peel the dress off of my face. Look at the organist who played the introduction one whole time already and said, Okay, I'm ready now. And away we go and start singing the whole song. And since then I was hooked. And since then, uh I've learned to keep my dress down when I sing in public.

Speaker 2 4:34

Good for you. That was the first lesson. Yes.

Speaker 4 4:39

And the second lesson was to I overcame my shyness by taking the action of taking my dress down and just singing. And once I got past that and I realized the experience of singing, it was like, gee, this is so much fun, you know. And so I was hooked ever since.

Speaker 5:00

That was the first step in the right direction.

Speaker 4 5:03

It was.

unknown 5:04

Yeah.

Speaker 5:08

That's right.

Speaker 4 5:09

That was my first important act of action.

Speaker 5:15

So you have a very busy year ahead of you uh promoting a book and recording. Uh there's a lot to manage there. Hopefully you're getting some help along the way.

Speaker 4 5:26

Uh no, you know me. I just do it by myself. So I'm a kind of do-it-by-myself kind of gal. Once in a while I'll get help, but mostly I'm a do-it-kind of you know, kind of gal. Um but interestingly enough, with the album, as I was writing the memoir, you know, so much stuff starts to come up, you know, all the emotional stuff and uh and everything that goes along with that. And I think my subconscious was trying to process that overwhelming amount of information in a short period of time. And so I'd wake up with these songs in my head, with these melodies in my head, you know, and it was like often. And so I would get up, I'd sing it into the voice mow in the phone, or I'd get up and run to the piano and quick record something, you know, and that that was the genesis of a grand memoir. So it relates to you know, memories and stuff in the book. And so for the audiobook version of Put Your Dress Down and Sing, I'm incorporating some of excerpts of the songs of the ten songs in the grand memoir, into the audiobook too. So yeah, I've been busy, very busy. I'm doing my own narrating in the audiobook and my own recording and editing and adding the sound effects, adding the music, you know. It's uh that's kept me busy. That's a big project too, as well as as the album and the book itself, you know.

Speaker 7:02

Well, you're very capable of doing all those things too. So why hire why hire somebody, right?

Speaker 4 7:11

Yeah, yes, yes, because it's it's it feels good to me to do it. It would be it would might be easier to take some of the load off to hire people, but on one hand, for me, it's like this is what I would I enjoy doing this. I might complain, but I enjoy doing it, you know. So that's why.

Speaker 7:38

I uh wanted to mention I I listened to your poem the other day on Facebook about the trees, really appreciate that.

Speaker 4 7:46

Oh wow. Thank you. I don't consider myself a poet, but I wrote that I wrote that a long time ago, like early twenties, because I I loved trees, and the first time I climbed a tree, I think I was ten, and there was this giant oak tree in the park, and it had nails in it, so to help you climb. So I decided, okay, I'm gonna climb this tree. I went way up in the tree past the nail part, way up, and I got a perspective that I've never seen had before, right? Even though I lived in a in a second floor house, the house had two floors, that tree was a lot taller, and I went way up in the tree. And so that gave me a perspective, and it was something to reflect on, in a way, you know. And then my mother came, and my mother, the kids, my friends I was playing with go, you gotta come down. I said, Yeah, I'll come down. Don't worry about it, you know. So they run home and tell my mother, because they're freaking out, because I am way up in this tree, so my mother comes running, and uh and I was already starting to descend. And it was tricky to make sure your foot hit the nails, you know, and it's at I hadn't gotten to the part where it really hit the nails yet, but I was getting there. My mother comes in, she goes, yelling at me, Charlie and get down from there. Well, that's a distraction. Please don't recommend doing that to your kids. We're in the middle of something dangerous. Don't both don't shock them because I missed because I missed my nail and I slid all the way down that tree, and I just ripped up my chest and my belly, shredded full of bark, sap, everything. And it hurt like so awful. It would hurt so bad. You know, yeah, exactly. It would have been fine if she wouldn't have like jolted me, you know, because I was I was handling it. All right, so that was that the horror story. On the good side, in my twenties, I would love I'd love to go to like the parks and the tree areas, and I would sit under the tree. Or if it was a low branch, I'd get up on a low branch, and I would sit there and I would reflect on my life and plan what do I want to do, how am I feeling on it. So that's why that's why I considered, as I said in the poem, those trees were my my friends. To me, they were my deep friend and my confidant. So that's why I wrote Ashes to Aspens.

Speaker 10:35

We need the trees and we need the bees, right?

Speaker 4 10:39

Mm-hmm. And in the poem I encouraged people to to you know, love the trees, and now it's very important we love the trees. They were kind of our survival mechanism, you know, producing the oxygen we need.

Speaker 10:53

That's right. And they gobble up all the garbage we don't.

Speaker 4 10:57

Exactly. More trees, please. Yeah, right.

Speaker 11:04

So what are your plans going forward with all this going on? Uh you just going to do it piece by piece? I mean, I know the target day is May for uh early May for a release for the uh my review. But however the uh the book has has a date and the recording has a date. Recording is in August. I have August 7th, is that still correct? Yeah.

Speaker 4 11:34

Yeah. The book the book, ebook, audio book, and a grand memoir, the albums are all coming out on the same day. Ah, okay which is a lot of fun and a lot of work to have them all come out on the same day, but I'm determined, and so it's happening. And so now I'm in the process of uh checking out um bookstores, you know, that have me come for appearances, and I just booked a concert. We don't have a date yet, but I booked a concert appearance in Sedona, and so I'm starting to book places. So if anybody wants me to come and do an appearance, I'm doing um in the appearance, should the venue allow, well, there'll be dramatic readings of the book, you know, some funny stuff from the book, some storytelling related to the book, um, some piano playing. If there's a piano, there'll be piano playing. Otherwise, I'll be playing some of the music from the album as it goes with the stories in the book. And uh sometimes in some places we'll have like um I'll have someone there and be in conversation with where they'll ask me questions and you know I'll answer questions. And also questions and answers from the audience. So there's a lot of fun things we're working on right now.

Speaker 12:54

Well, you certainly have the material to to do that, that's for sure, between the book and the music, or or just sitting there playing the piano and and talking in between about the stories of each each track and how it relates. I mean, there's so much there for you, you know.

Speaker 4 13:11

Yeah, thank you. I I think so too. It's gonna be a lot of fun. Very entertaining, something different, immersive, immersive for the audience, you know.

Speaker 13:21

Immersive media experience, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4 13:24

Yeah. So yeah, and I find that if I have time and can wrangle it, there might be some video to it too. But anyway, go ahead.

Speaker 13:31

That would be a good backdrop, true, yeah. Um I'm wondering if you sent your book out to anybody in the industry that you've known over the years and you've gotten any reaction from them.

Speaker 4 13:44

Um yeah. Yeah, I got some great reviews that we put in the front of the book, different people that I've worked with in the industry. A variety of different people, actually, in and not only in the industry, but um my dear friend Gloria Loring, who happens to be Robin Fick's mother. Um, she I was in her band in the late 80s, and she and I have been galpals, you know, ever since. And Gloria, I call her my machete mama, because Gloria helped me with the editing. I got it down to instead of 195,506 words, I got it down to 148,000, and then Gloria, and then 142,000, and then Gloria came in and helped me, you know, machete through it and get down to the size, you know, the size of the size that it is today, you know, something it's under 400 pages.

Speaker 14:43

Wow, that's a lot of work. So much work. Wow.

Speaker 4 14:48

Yeah.

Speaker 14:50

I just can't believe you wrote that much in a couple of months.

Speaker 4 14:54

Yeah, I know, me neither. Yeah, that's what the publisher said. That's crazy. We've never heard anybody do that before, you know.

Speaker 15:03

I think in a lot of ways for you it was a cleansing experience to be able to do that.

Speaker 4 15:09

Ah, ah, yes. Yes, it was you know, I recommend it in a way. I recommend it as or it doesn't have to turn into a book, but it could turn into a journal, you know. And I recommend it as a way to kind of take stock of your life and just you know, look at it on paper, because it's a whole different perspective, you know. Even now, as I'm still working on the audiobook, you know, and which is going to be fun and interesting too, to hear me tell the story in the audiobook. And as I as I go through the audiobook, reading it and editing it, you know, I still, even though I've processed the emotions and processed certain scenes, to have to go through it again and again and again. Like I've gone through the book over 25 times to clean it and edit it. The audiobook I've read twice all the way through. And now I'm, you know, editing it to get it just so and just right. But it's gonna be fun because you hear my regular speaking voice. Uh in some places you're gonna hear my childlike voice as a child. You'll hear where my child's singing voice, which is kind of interesting in there too. So I put all kinds of fun stuff in there.

unknown 16:35

Yeah.

Speaker 16:36

So you had actual recordings of these things to be able to use them.

Speaker 4 16:42

Uh no. Uh I do it while so if I'm narrating a part and I'm saying, oh, my parents loved, you know, we love to sing along with this song or that song, instead of reading the title, I would sing the title. So I'm singing a cappella in the audiobook.

Speaker 17:02

Right. Well, I was just referring referring to the the child voices and so forth. Or do you just change the show?

Speaker 4 17:08

Oh no, I that no, I did that live.

Speaker 17:13

Oh, okay, gotcha. Okay.

Speaker 4 17:15

Yeah. One of the things in the many things I've done in my career was um I I was a vocal producer and sang along with um my kids' choir, and we did all these recordings for the McGraw Hill publication music textbook series. It was like K through twelve, and we did all the music for that. And so part of yeah, so part of what I did as my career is to make my voice sound like a child's voice. Which you you technically you have to raise up the larynx and then you place it a little more forward behind the nose in the production. If you want to get technical about how I did it.

Speaker 17:58

Interesting.

Speaker 4 17:59

Otherwise, I just recalled what I sounded like as a kid and just, you know, out it came.

Speaker 18:05

So um another thought about uh the book I think what blew me away was uh the men and the way they treated you and um some of the things that they thought they could get away with and just like you know, oh yeah, I can I can do that, nobody's gonna say anything. I was like, you kidding me? I was like, What a bunch of jerks, you know?

Speaker 4 18:34

Oh yeah. Yeah, there's there's been some jerks. I mean, one of the one of the one of the and l and like some of them, you know, you just back in my day, back in the day when I first started in the business, you know, we didn't that was way pre-hashtag me too movement, you know. And they they thought they could get away with all kinds of stuff. I mean the comedian in the book, there's a funny story we're singing in the session, the comedian Danny Kay, who my family used to love, and me too, love Danny Kay.

Speaker 19:08

Yeah, but he was in the center of the side. Oh yeah.

Speaker 4 19:14

And so I'm going to sing the high note in this part, and he he comes up behind me and he pokes me in the back, you know. And then I go for the next high note. This time he pokes me in the butt. I turned around and said, Danny, I do not need any help hitting those high notes. And then the producer called the producer called him in the booth. Danny, get in here and leave the girls alone. Okay, so we got rid of Oh yeah, there's stories. There is one one musician wanted to want to, you know, sh can, you know, wanted to shower with me, baby, you know, and I was like, oh, no amount of soap is gonna get that scum off. You know.

Speaker 19:59

Well, the Danny Cape's one of the mild stories compared to one of the people you married. Oh, good Lord. Oh, I just was like beside myself. Like, she should have left that guy. So long ago. It was a great book. It really was. Yeah, it really was. It it just um if anybody's looking for inspiration, I would highly recommend it. Uh for w for women, it's a must-read. Uh you just come out of it stronger every time, and brings you to this point in your life where uh you're shining like a North Star, Darlene, and it's just amazing everything you've accomplished and all your work. And it's been an honor for me to work with you over the years and cover your music and now to be able to know so much about your whole life, you know, it means a lot.

Speaker 4 20:57

Ah, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yeah, the music is a lot of this comes through the music that I've done over the years. You know, when I growing up in a strict, repressive Dutch Calvinist household, which you know I talk a lot about in the book, um, I wasn't allowed to be creative. As a matter of fact, as you know from reading the horrible story about being punished, beat up, beat to the point unconscious by my mother for being creative, because it was a sin. It took many years in the therapist chair to get over that. And then to start writing and putting my own albums and everything out over the years was a big mid-career. Take a shift, you know, mid-career from singing on being a first call studio singer in Los Angeles, having sung on over a thousand recordings in movies and records and films and albums, to suddenly, you know, leaving that behind and then taking my taking the chance of writing my own material and getting out on stage and doing that myself. That was a major, major leap in my career. So I really appreciate it when people like you. recognize the work and the talent. So thank you.

Speaker 22:16

Well, I hope that going forward as you record that we should uh be able to do this and talk about every album instead of waiting five years. What do you think?

Speaker 4 22:30

Yeah. I hope so. Yeah, I probably I don't think I'm gonna be doing another album probably till maybe twenty twenty eight because this year and next year is all in support of the book and the album at hand. But oh I don't think yeah I don't think it's gonna be my last album. That I enjoy doing that too much. So but this album is solo piano album to relax, reflect, and renew, you know, which was the process that I went through both working on the album and the book. This this piano album I recorded live in my living room on a century old Steinway golden era Steinway grand piano that I'm babysitting for for a family whose mother was the original owner and she was a concert pianist that toured you know the country. So I thought you know it's a 1926 golden era Steinway it's 2026 I'm going to record it on that has the original strings original ivory keys and I'm gonna record it on that in my living room. So that was a different process you know for me to record it in my living room uh live you know and typical of my life two days before the original recording was scheduled I broke my wrist typical of my whole life right so I had to wait but I did my my hand therapy from day one and I was determined you know so it's the doctor said oh before you can record again I go no it's not so I I recorded less a little bit less than three months after I had the injury and um that's you know the beauty of what came out with the grand memoir it has you know very special music a very special place for my heart you know the recovery that's why it's music to relax reflect on your life and renew you know because music music is therapy music is the prescription is music you know and that's what I love about doing music honestly I've just been very blessed and surprised to have the career that I had when growing up I was only allowed to listen to religious or classical music or can only play religious and classical music.

Speaker 25:02

So to turn around and have a lot of emotional jail is what you did, right?

Speaker 4 25:07

Yeah.

Speaker 25:08

Oh yeah Oh seriously Well it sounds like the process was very organic at home and with some vintage equipment and came out beautiful so thank you I'm so glad so glad you like it.

Speaker 4 25:24

I hope the audience loves it and picks up a couple copies and gets the book listens to the album while they're reading the book I mean it's a companion sold separately we have to say though but yeah so my website darlenecoldenovan.com you can that's where you go you can also go darlene coldenovan.com slash book if you want to go right there but if you go to the main website there's links immediately right there to see over three hundred career pictures um because I could only put so many in the book so the rest of them are all up on the website.

Speaker 26:04

Okay.

Speaker 4 26:05

And um yeah there's there's a lot of fun a lot of fun things there.

Speaker 26:10

Keep you entertained all right darling thank you so much for all your time and all your work and everything that you give us all to listen to and enjoy and hopefully we can do this again real soon.

Speaker 4 26:25

Well thank you very much Keith I always love talking with you and working with you. You're so professional and such a pleasure it really means a lot so thanks a lot. Well thank you you take care you too bye bye bye bye