Listen to the Copper Robot interview with Tamra Hayden, singer and star of Second Life and Broadway. Tamra headlined on Broadway in Les Miserables and Cabaret, and has toured the US in plays including Phantom of the Opera, and Fiddler On The Roof. We talked about her life and career, and making music in Second Life and on the Internet.
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Tamra grew up in Littleton, Colorado. Music runs in her family. “My great-grandmother was a one-woman band. She literally had the harmonica on a little harness hooked to a guitar, and a foot on a drum,” Tamra said.
Tamra’s grandmother could “play the stride piano like nobody’s business” with her left hand, while also playing marimba with three mallets in her right hand, and singing along.
Tamra started making music herself early on, learning to play the accordion at age five.
She dreamed of Broadway from an early age. “As I started telling people that I wanted to play Cosette on Broadway, they laughed and said, ‘Yeah, right, you’re from Denver, Colorado, how are you gong to do that?’ So I stopped telling people the dream because they’d squash it. And lo and behold I got to audition for Cosette and I got to play it. It was an amazing dream come true.”
She came to New York in the 90s, got roles on Broadway, and has supported herself as an actor and singer that whole time, except for a brief stint making and selling her own jewelry.
She started singing in Second Life more than two years ago, and found it very different from her other experiences. “It’s a huge difference and it took me a while to adapt to it,” she said. It’s physically more demanding. In a real-life performance with an orchestra, she takes breaks between songs, but in Second Life, she sings the same material straight through. “It’s very vocally challenging. I’ve learned to pace myself,” she said. She mixes genres to stay fresh–Broadway singing is intense but folk music gives her throat a break.
I asked her how she gets energy back from an audience she can’t see or hear, and that’s giving feedback in text chat alone.
She said, “If people are talking in text, I know that they’re involved and they’re engaged,” adding, “But I find I’m not needy that way. I could sing to an empty room. I just sing the songs I like and I’d be happy. But it’s more fun when other people are there who are actually enjoying it, so I do actually rely on people talking at me and commenting [in text chat].”
She said, “What I like about singing in Second Life is it’s a very intimate situation. There could be five people there, there could be 89 people, but it’s still a very intimate reality. I’m in the comfort of my home, which is really nice for me, I don’t have to be dressed up, and I can just talk to people who are in the room.
“I can see their avatars. I like that I can see something that represents who they are. Even though it’s not them, and even though it might not look anything like them, I get a sense of something about them. But I get more of a sense of them by what they say to me and how they react to me.
“I’ve thought about broadcasting out beyond and I know other people do, but what keeps me from doing that is I feel that I’m going to lose a sense of who I’m singing to. If I’m standing in front of a crowd of 30,000 people, I can only see the first couple of rows. I can’t see who’s beyond in a sea of black, but I know that they’re there and I can see that they’re there. But if I’m singing out to an Internet of strange people that I don’t know and who aren’t talking back to me I feel it could be a little strange.”
Tamra is making another big career transition, into independent music. Her new album, I Believe In The Fire, is now available on her Web site.
Singing as an indie musician is different from musical theater. In musical theater, she’d get a part and be told what to sing, and the producers would handle fans and marketing. But as an indie musician, that’s all her responsibility. “I have to gather the fans, I have to put it together and I’m finding it a little tricky and difficult, because it’s a different muscle that feels difficult to use.”
She finds Second Life helpful, learning from marketing and fan clubs in Second Life how to do same thing in real life.
Another thing she’s learned from Second Life: How to handle technology. She handles her own Internet streams while she’s singing. Her great-grandmother the one-woman band, simultaneously playing harmonica, guitar, drum, and singing, would be proud.
Tamra said she finds music to be its own reward.
“If someone asks me nicely I’ll sit down and sing for them. I love to sing. I had a voice teacher who said, ‘Never sing for free,’ but it’s already too late. As a matter of fact, I’m singing to honor her–for free. I love her and they asked if I would sing at this dinner for her and I was, like, ‘Yes–but I can’t wait to tell her.’”
Tamra also talked about how to stay fresh performing the same role over and over again, playing Hodel in Fiddler On The Roof opposite acting and music legend Theodore Bikel as Tevye, resources for Internet musicians, and how to get a start singing in Second Life.
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Hey Mitch, I think you helped me learn things about myself I didn’t realize or acknowledge until I had to put it into context and say aloud… very interesting … thanks for the thoughtful interview. I wish you all the best!
Tamra Hayden
Thanks, Tamra! I enjoyed it too.