Marie' Digby - For the Record

Seattle, WA -- Last year the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) ran a front page story about Marié Digby (Say: Ma-ree-AY), suggesting that her popularity was due to a "secret" album deal she had signed with Disney's Hollywood Records.

In order of importance:

1) Digby's "secret" album deal was not secret. EVERYONE who had paid attention to her rise to stardom already knew she was going to do a professionally produced album. That was part of the prize for the Pantene Pro Voice competition she had won.

2) How does anything "secret" makes an entertainer more popular? The WSJ does not explain this magical phenomena. Apparently the idea is that Marié Digby's YouTube and MySpace fans would have liked her home-made recordings and videos less, if she had not been secretly signed with Disney. This may launch a whole new mode of stardom. Secret stardom. Hey, maybe I can be one of them.

I discovered Marié Digby while doing a vanity search on the net for my own name, "Horace J. Digby." It was 2005. I had to join MySpace to listen to her songs. It was love at first sound. After a few e-mails we stayed in touch. One of the reasons is people contact me asking about Marié. A talent booker for a major NYC hotel and chain. He discovered Marié while listening to a podcast of an interview I'd done with actress, singer Donna Coney Island. finding Marié mentioned on my website, he assumed I was her father.

"Why not her husband?" I wanted to know.

"I can see why the Robert Benchley Society gave you that humor aware," he said.

I hadn't mean it to be funny. Marié and I would make a cute couple.

Her MySpace and Youtube hits kept growing by leaps and bounds from a few thousand in 2005 to millions the last time I looked. Meanwhile I have 72 friends (including Tom, and, as my pal Twylla points out, a bunch of my friends (like Mark Twain) are dead people). Marié's search engine popularity is growing too. "Digby" used to give mostly hits for me. Now almost all of them are for "Marié Digby." Even the hits linking to my websites seem to be for Marié.

Everytime I visit MySpace there are more Marié Digby songs. She writes faster and better than Lennon and McCartney (and there were two of them).

The weird thing is, I still love her music, even after the "secret" Disney album was released, in April, debuting at #29 on Billboard's top 200 (the same week that Leona Lewis, who edged out Ray Quinn for number one on Great Britain's equivalent of Star Search, hit #1).

When Digby's tour dates came out (her tour, not mine) I started working on my boss to send me to Neumos in Seattle, WA. And he did.

The Seattle crowd went wild for Marié and also for her co-headliner, singer songwriter Eric Hutchinson, who wonderfully rounded out the bill. Each of Marié's songs clearly touches her fans.

One of the bouncers at Neumos told me, "This isn't our usual crowd. We usually get indie rockers. This group looks it's from the East side."

"You mean they have stocks and bonds?" I asked, seeking clarification about his "East side" comment. [Microsoft's Bill Gates and Paul Allen live on the "East side." In fact, there was a Microsoft gathering at another club just across the street.]

"No. I have stocks and bonds," the bouncer said. "I mean they look and dress like people from the East side."

Another fan, I'll guess in her early 20s, told me she had pre-ordered Marié's album as soon as it was available, and purchased tickets to the show at Neumos the day they went on sale. I asked if it bothered her that the album was secret. She just stared at me like I had said something really stupid in public.

Marié Digby's fan mix in Seattle also included at least one banker, a structural engineer, and a few of their friends, all thirty-something. One of them was asked by the bouncer to quit taking photos, because, "the promoter doesn't want people taking pictures with high-end cameras."

Singer songwriter Eric Hutchinson, Marié's co-headliner on their twenty-five-city tour, is a fantastic entertainer. He even does an impersonation of Cher (no kidding). Hutchinson really knows how to work a crowd to fever pitch. Well at least as feverish as people from the "East side" get, apparently.

After chiding the crowd, "You know, it's alright to have fun," Hutchinson added, "It's even alright to pretend." But by the conclusion of his portion of the evening, Hutchinson was proclaiming, "This is perhaps the best crowd response I've ever had . . . Maybe even the best crowd ever at any concert in Seattle history."

Introducing his final songs, he told the crowd, with practiced mock sincerity, "I feel a little nervous . . . like a pitcher with a shutout going. I just need to keep throwing strikes." He assured us that if we could keep our intensity going for just two more songs, this would definitely be the "all-time best concert in Seattle, EVER!"

The crowd loved it, even those who suspected Hutchinson had probably told these same sweet lies the night before in Spokane, and might tell them again to the crowd waiting in Portland the night after.

Digby took the stage to squeals of delight, and not just from the pre-teens. It was fun watching her fans sing along with the tunes. I even found myself joining in more than a time or two. Marié Digby had written every song on her play list in Seattle, except "Umbrella."

After Digby's Youtube home recording cover of "Umbrella" began getting radio air play in several major markets Disney released a studio single a few months before the album would come out. In fact, the single came out before the WSJ article. Hollywood Records probably wanted to be sure that their rising star actually had copyrights to the song radio stations were already calling her first hit, Disney did what it could to fix the problem.

Digby's audience enthusiastically sang along with Marié Digby version of "Umbrella," joining to help with the important, "Under my umbrella, ella, ella, ella, aye, aye, aye," part.

Marié Digby left stage after performing her hit "Say it Again," but the crowd wouldn't quit applauding. After what seemed like a long time (much longer than musicians usually wait) her drummer and guitar player came back, and Marié joined them.

Encores always seem awkward to me. The audience, almost on que, keeps clapping, and then, usually way too quickly, one of the musicians shows his head from behind a curtains. Then, almost as if in a hurry to get back out on stage before the applause die down, the artists rush back to play, surprise, surprise, their number-one hit single that everyone actually came to hear in the first place (but which they, as if by accident, had "forgotten" to include it in the show).

Marié Digby didn't do that. She had already played her big songs, "Umbrella," "Say it Again," "Girlfriend" and the rest.

Instead, she finally came back out on stage seeming truly flattered and perhaps just a bit embarrassed as she admitted, "I never do encores. I think they are stupid. But you guys are really genuine."

After her encore, as Marié was thanking the crowd again, a young girl near the stage quietly asked Marié to play what happens to be the first Digby song I had heard, Mariés hauntingly beautiful, "Miss Invisible."

"I don't actually play that on tour," Marié said, "Well maybe once or twice . . . but . . . The band doesn't know it, but if you really want I can give it a try on the keyboard." The cheering crowd sealed the deal. But Marié didn't start singing right away. She told us the song was autobiographical, about her habit in junior high of hiding alone under the bleachers at lunch time. "There's a gril who sits under the bleachers . . ." she sang and the audience reaction gave me goose bumps.

The next night the tour pushed on to Portland, OR. Digby fans poured out in force at the Hawthorn Theater. The age spectrum was the same as in Seattle, with perhaps a few younger and one or two older fans this time. As a professional musician of 25 years, I find it unusual for an artist to have such a wide sweep of age appeal. Portland responded famoiusly to her hits, "Say It Again," "The Voice On the Radio," "Umbrella," "Girlfriend" and the rest. True to her word, Digby didn't play "Miss Invisible." And, although there was sustained applause following her show, Portland saw no encore.

I also found a pocket of fans who had come out to see Eric Hutchinson. "I saw him fill at a Jazz show a year or so ago," a thirty-something music enthusiast and computer programmer from Camus, WA. told me. "Hutchinson wasn't on the line-up. He was just filling in for another performer who couldn't make it. He was fantastic. When I heard he was coming to Portland, I had to see him again."

Digby and Hutchinson make a wonderfully complimentary mix. The Camus computer programmer summed it up for me, "This is great. I came out to hear one performer and I get to discover another I enjoy just as much. It's a real bonus."

Digby's fans expressed the same sentiment about Hutchinson. They are a great melding of styles and talents. I'd definitely go see either or both of them again, even in back-to-back shows (which I guess I just did).

-- Horace J. Digby (no relation to Marié)
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http://www.horacedigby.com/