On ‘how sometimes making a fool of yourself
can earn you money in the long run’…

Sometime in the last century, I was talked into auditioning for a TV commercial. Labbatt’s Blue was looking for someone with big hair to ‘play fiddle’ on a hay wagon.

I can still hear Michael Wrycraft on the phone cajoling me as I protest… “I have only been playing an instrument for 2 years and I can only play a few Cajun songs …and besides they are looking for a sexy Blonde in cut-offs!’
“No! no! really Soozi…you can do this…this is totally for you!’, he insists. ‘They say you don’t even need to actually ‘know how to play at all’…you just have to have big hair and ‘look like you know how to play!”

I buckle under Michael’s inimitable persuasiveness and so with party dress, cowboy boots, fiddle and hair, I go to my first ever and last ever audition.

I am brought before a grim panel of men in flowered shirts and women in tailored suits. Everything from this moment on moves in super high speed and excruciating slow motion all at the same time.

One of the panel members tells me…“ We want to listen to how you play along with this music!” …and it is insanely fast bluegrass music in an impossible key!!

I figure if my parents made it through Siberia during WWII, surely, I can adapt…so I just start sawing randomly –and I mean really randomly… what else can I do?… and it is ugly….not in the correct key – not in ‘any’ key… arrhythmic – not even remotely sounding like music!
And then for my psychotic dénouement I find myself swinging my hair around, wildly! After all isn’t this supposed to be all about the hair?

When the torture is finally over somebody asks, ‘…ahem…do you actually play the fiddle?’ I say, ..‘yes, but only Cajun music.’…‘Oh really? (sarcastic)….and what does ‘that’ sound like?”

So, I let them have it with the full force of my Swamperella personality! I play and sing Valse de Balfa – a killer Cajun lament.
They look like a tornado just hit….and I guess it kind of did.

‘ Nice hair they say…um …and we really like the way you spell your name.’

Before I can escape, my Polaroid is taken and added to some kind of directory. Years later I get some calls for some wacky, lucrative gigs…. a nationwide subway poster for The Second Cup, an ad in the Star for the Beer Store , and a gig as a fortune teller reading a racehorse’s future for a racing magazine!

Incidentally, that Labatts TV commercial?…. they choose a sexy, straight haired Blonde in cut-offs to ride that hay wagon!

…sans fiddle of course.

https://soundcloud.com/soozimusic/09-valse-de-balfa