Since the bulk of contemporary comment on the national anthem serves only to flip the Donald Trump/Colin Kaepernick see-saw one way or the other according to the pundit’s rusted viewpoint, I think we’re overdue an anthem essay based largely on, um, anything but that.
All right, but look, I’m doing it anyway.
The idea came from watching Steven Brault, an actual Pirates relief pitcher, singing the always-treacherous Star Spangled Banner before an actual Pirates game, thus becoming the first player in club history to do so.
Brault essentially nailed it. The two lowest notes were muddy maybe, but all the rest were fastballs smack in the middle of the tonal plate, his voice ringing with enough sweetness and heart to draw a warm response from the small weeknight crowd, you’ll excuse the redundancy. None of it was any surprise to Brault, as he was a vocal performance major in college, had secured an internship with an opera in Colorado before things got serious baseballwise, and would eventually do the vocals on Led Zeppelin covers for his San Diego band Street Gypsies, besides which, his grandma knew he could do it.
“That was a big part of it, she always thought it would be neat,” Brault said. “A big part of it too is that I’ve always thought it was really important to do other things, especially growing up. I played a lot of different sports and I did plays (Damn Yankees!) and I was in a band and all that stuff. I think it’s important and I wanted to send that message that you can do things that you enjoy doing.”
And should you be wondering if a player on the major league roster still has to audition for this gig, well ...
“Of course!” said Christine Serkoch, who has booked literally hundreds of anthem singers as the Pirates long-time director of special events. “He approached me in spring training and told me that he sings and he’s in a band. Not knowing his background, I wanted to hear him, but when he opened his mouth it sounded like he could have come off the Tony Awards stage.”
Serkoch doesn’t audition every act, partly because there isn’t enough time — she’s got to fill 81 dates — and partly because most of the Pirates’ anthem performances are by bands or choirs or singers who’ve been vetted elsewhere, the same with instrumentalists. The cello quartet from the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, for example, did not have to audition.
It takes substantial musical range to navigate the anthem, but it’s no more vast than Serkoch’s range when it comes to booking this gig. You can see a choir of suburban second graders get the song basically surrounded one night, then listen to internationally acclaimed mezzo-soprano Marianne Cornetti launch it the next, then maybe Styx, or Steve Miller, or Andrew McCutchen’s mother. It’s delightful.
“It’s really an opportunity for our fans to experience it in a way that they might not otherwise have,” Serkoch said. “So we try to go out and find something a little different.”
The Penguins and Steelers, by contrast, lack this kind of latitude with the anthem. Jeff Jimerson does about 75 percent of the home games for the hockey club, and has taken his place among the iconic figures the NHL seems to generate within this niche — Roger Doucet in Montreal, Rene Rancourt in Boston, Lauren Hart in Philadelphia, Jim Cornelison in Chicago, Lyndon Slewidge in Otta, John Amirante at Madison Square Garden, to name a few. The Steelers just don’t have the inventory – eight home games (10 if you can’t preseason), but they do have the most difficult stage.
“You’re in the center of the field, and it’s just unbelievable as you face the open end the way the wind gusts – no wonder the kickers have problems,” said Rick Witkowski, who’s immense production chops and musicianship have served some of the top names in rock going back 40 years. “So you’re lined up and they put your image on the big screen and you’re looking at it, but you’re out of time with yourself. As we say in West Virginia, it’s very cornfusing. They give you an in-ear monitor, but it’s so different from the sound check. I was doing the Jacksonville playoff game years ago and I almost got blown away. The snow was blowing. My fingers were so frigid I could barely hold down the strings on my guitar.’”
So yeah, go ahead, and don’t screw it up.
Even in cushy conditions, the anthem remains hard. Generally attempted in Bflat, it pogo-sticks across an octave and a half at no established tempo. The U.S. Army band does it in one minute, 11 seconds. The U.S. Marine band stretches in a hair, to 1:13. Brault did it in 1:21. Jennifer Hudson in front of Mike Tomlin at Super Bowl XLIII — 2:10. Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock — 3:41. That one makes my Airedale cry in pain, but Murphy doesn’t like anything, really.
Pittsburgh legend Joe Grushecky didn’t say he wanted to cry after attempting it once at Three Rivers Stadium, but I could hear it in his voice.
“It was my son’s birthday, a beautiful Sunday day game; we had invited a gazillion people,” Grushecky recalled this week. “I’ve been out on the road. I was driving back from Washington and we’d gotten delayed so I had to go straight to the stadium because I was supposed to do a sound check at 11 a.m. For whatever reason the person wasn’t there, but the Pirates were very cordial.
“It came time to sing the anthem. I’d thought about how I’d been hanging out with Bruce [Springsteen] and I told him I was doing the anthem, and he said, ‘Oh man that’s tough, that’s tough, don’t forget the words.’ They hand me the microphone and I sing, ‘Oh say can you see,’ . . . and I hear nothing. One, two, three, four, five seconds, and then the sound comes back. And I think, ‘what am I gonna do?’ I look over at my wife in the stands and she looks like she’s dying. ‘By the dawn’s early light.’ Nothing. So I just started singing as fast as I could. This was before in-ear monitors and that stuff. I got done, walked off. My wife said, ‘what is wrong with you? What were you doing?’
“I haven’t been invited back.”
At this point I’ll formally suggest a reconciliation, as the relevant acoustics have improved.
“The delay at Three Rivers Stadium was incredibly long,” Serkoch said. “At PNC Park it’s less than a second. Still, there are many, many, many famous people who don’t even want to attempt it.”
Worse, there are many who do.
Go to your little Google machine and find the version offered before an NBA game by Olympic medalist Carl Lewis. I won’t spoil it, except to say that right in the middle of it, Lewis offers a quasi-apology.
“I’ll make it up to you now!”
Naw, I’m good.
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If all anthem attempts fall inevitably into place along the Houston-Barr Scale, Whitney Houston’s pre-Super Bowl offering being the best and Roseanne Barr’s pre-Padres game imitation of a cat in a microwave being the worst (don’t leave before the crotch-grab), Lewis’s fell very close to the Barr. Even the great Cab Calloway’s vocally uneven version somehow noted that old glory’s broad stripes and bright stars, “were so allenly fleeing.”
Happily, Brault said he’d be eager to do the anthem for the Steelers and/or the Penguins. And look, you can trust him. He brings the heart, and that’s indispensible.
“The most memorable anthems for me are not from the best singers,” Serkoch said. “It’s the ones that you just know they’re from the heart and for their country or by people in the military. We have a gentleman scheduled for Aug. 21. Mike Daley, he’s with the Westmoreland County Blind Association, and the anthem is on his bucket list. His audition was one of the most memorable for me. It was just lovely, the passion he has for it.”
Most experts, musical and otherwise, agree that the anthem is hard enough to perform as written without offering much interpretation or embellishment. As a non-expert, clearly, I still say let freedom ring. If you have it within you to make this old poem set to even older English drinking song better, have at it, but be warned, there aren’t many Whitney Houstons or Jennifer Hudsons among you.
So for God and country’s sake, be careful out there.
Gene Collier: gcollier@post-gazette.com
First Published: July 2, 2018, 11:00 a.m.
