Page 11 - BiTS_05_MAY_2024_Neat

BiTS: What attracted you to the music?

GC: The rhythm. Yes, there's just this wonderful percussive nature that really drew me, drew
me in. At the age of five I played piano until I went off to high school. I was in a Latin drum corps.

BiTS: Wow!

GC: And then I played a whole host of instruments through my middle school and high school
years until I went to college. Then I really stopped doing music when I was in college until I

graduated and that's when I found my voice on a dare.

BiTS: I gather you did it on a dare or something. How did that happen?

GC: [Laughs] Yes, I had started a new job and some of my coworkers wanted to show me the
local flavour. I was living in Pittsfield,
Massachusetts, and they brought me to
this little pub called La Cocina. It was a
Wednesday night. They were having an

open mic night, so musicians performing
live, not like karaoke, and someone dared
me to sign up and sing a song during this
evening. I said, well, I don't really sing,
but I don't often pass up dares [chuckles].

BiTS: Do you remember what you sang?

GC: I do, I do. I sang Mercedes Benz. You
know the Kris Kristofferson tune, made
popular by Janis.

BiTS: When did you start to consider
yourself as a professional singer? I mean,

it was clearly sometime after the
nightclub incident that we're talking
about. How did that come about?

GC: Well, I mean that night at the open
mic night, I won. It was a competition. So I won $75 for singing a two/three-minute song. It's
been downhill financially for me ever since [laughs].

BiTS: Did you have a background in singing music in church or anything?

GC: No, no. I grew up a Catholic. We didn't sing like that in church.

BiTS: So tell me how Misty Blues came about, anyway.

GC: So after that night taking the dare, the next week someone else approached me and said,
hey, can I accompany you? And that's how I started in the business. I started as a duet and then
I grew tired of that shortly, and I wanted to start my own band. So I started a band by the name

Cole Connection. After a few years we were wildly popular in the area, but then some of my
bandmates started to move out of the area. So it was about the summer of 99, it was the summer
of 99, and I was approached by some producers at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. They were
doing a production of A Raisin in the Sun, and the director wanted to have a gospel singer traverse