Counterfeit Digits, Vol. 4

Probably the biggest bummer that happened to me while we were all playing together happened during one of our later shows at the Velour. We were scheduled to play as the headliner, and we had it planned to be one of our biggest. We wanted to also record the whole concert so we could enjoy it, share it, and maybe use it to promote us. The night came, the opening acts played, we did a sound check. We went back to regroup and pray as was our routine and came out to roaring cheers. It was all set up perfectly. But it didn’t go perfectly. As I started to sing, I could tell that something was off just by the strange looks some people were giving us and me. Turns out, I couldn’t hear myself in the monitor in front of me, really at all. We tried to tell the sound guy, but he was gone from the booth for a good portion of the show, and honestly kind of blew us off. So we just kept playing and everyone seemed to be having a great time. People came up and congratulated us afterwards and said they had a blast. We didn’t think anything else of it.

We got the copy of our video of the performance a day or so later and Matt was the first to watch it. I remember him saying something like “We can’t use it. Any of it”, and I remember thinking “What do you mean?? Why?? It should be really good!” But he was right. I sat down with him and watched it. Between me not being able to hear myself, the crowd, the cheering, and the music, I was off pitch. Like, the entire. concert. I remember it hitting me in the stomach and feeling just awful. What was supposed to be an amazingly bright bombshell turned out to be a dud floating in the water.

It sucked. I felt bad because I knew something was wrong at the time but didn’t do everything I could to fix it. Felt frustrated with the sound tech who blew us off. And I felt sorrowful that I’d let the band down. They all played great, but I just sounded straight terrible. It felt like a big waste of a show and I wished someone would have said something. But they didn’t. And that’s okay. I knew then and now that we have to live with our mistakes, no matter how disappointing they can be. There were factors that were out of my control, but that’s another life lesson; the fact that other people’s choices affect you and there’s not much of anything that you can do about it but keep on keeping on. Keep being you and make the best of it. I didn’t let it get me down too much. We kept practicing, kept playing, kept on kept…ing on, haha.

This experience actually led to something great. Though we’d had a good deal of success, admittedly I had struggled to really find my voice and let it all out. Admittedly at times I had struggled with singing like I wanted to, and I couldn’t figure out what to do about it. Singing classically came really naturally for me, but I did struggle at times to sing in this kind of avenue. As you all know by now, I do enjoy The Killers, and we would play their songs during practice sometimes. The bandmates had heard me try to sing like Brandon Flowers many times before, and one day they all kind of had an intervention of sorts, haha. I particularly remember Matt and Jeremy telling me how when I tried to emulate Brandon Flowers, I had a great sound and tone that I didn’t have even when we played our own songs. They wanted me to do that and have that same sound and tone for our own songs. At first I blew it off saying that I didn’t want to copy someone else’s style. I felt embarrassed that I sounded like Brandon Flowers, and not because I didn’t like the guy or the way he sang. I was really worried about what other people outside the band would think and/or say. But my friends insisted.

We played a song of ours with me singing “like Brandon Flowers”, and the difference was immediate and definite. The tone and the musicality of myself and the song as a whole, took on new life. They all looked at me and said “that’s how you’ve got to do it”. So I did. Now, I am not saying that I alone changed our music for the better. Everyone was doing extraordinarily well musically at this point. But it did bring something to the table that we didn’t have before. We recorded our entire second EP with me singing like that. Between my new voice and everyone’s refined playing styles, this EP was a night and day difference to our previously recorded EP. Our fans loved it and really thought that we had brought it to another level. It was awesome, and we were very proud of the results.

With our new EP in hand, and a solid sound to sell, we decided to shoot for the moon and try for the big time. Matt had a friend who had great connections in the music business that wanted to do a favor for him and see if he could help promote us. While we waited on that, Matt also somehow got in touch with The Killers band manager at that time. Matt sent him our songs and asked if he might be willing to take a listen. And he totally did! Their manager had really good things to say about our music, but unfortunately he had so much on his own plate at the time with The Killers, Imagine Dragons, and other groups that he couldn’t help us. We also found out that Matt’s friend’s connections had all fallen through. So, yeah, that was a disappointment. But we were grateful for what we had. Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be.

Honestly I don’t really know how to end this, kind of like how I think we didn’t really know how to end it. We had a final show at the Velour which was fitting. We had a huge turnout and a great party. I think a lot of people were surprised to see us go for good, including Corey Fox. But Matt and Jeremy were graduating and moving to the west coast. Miranda was soon to follow. It was sad and I do miss it a lot. I miss my friends a lot. We put a lot of hard work into Counterfeit Digits and had some wonderful times with it. I still listen to the songs. No joke one day I had it playing in my car and I legitimately said to myself after listening for a minute, “Wow, who is this again? This is good!!”. Only then did I realize that it was me. It was us. It was good. It was Counterfeit Digits.