So, I really can't say anything but "I know - it's been AGES since I last blogged!". You don't need to tell me, and aside from simply saying I've just been 'too busy', I really don't have an excuse... and using the 'too busy' excuse is kind of lame. So I'm not going to blame anyone but myself. You can easily find my first blog from last year (argh!) and see where I wrote that sometimes I'll write a book and other times I'll have nothing to say, but that isn't even the case here. I just simply haven't written a blog in months... like 10 months! That's bad LOL! I will say that this year has just FLOOOWWWWNNNNN by - like really - wow - where & when did the months grow wings? I can't keep up with the days & weeks, and to think Christmas is less than 3 months away is just plain scary.
The good news, or 'excuse' is at least that AndrewVictoria has been really busy performing, recording, songwriting & gaining credibility. It's true the saying 'hard work pays off'... the harder we work & play this year, the more we gain. And the ball seems to be steadily rolling now - knock on wood. Given it's been 10 months since my last blog, if you haven't kept up with our 'News', you've probably missed hearing that we've been to NYC with our music, have won or placed really well in several songwriting and/or performance competitions, opened for Melissa McClelland and Luke Doucet, and now have been named one as of the Top 5 Nominees for the Toronto Independent Music Awards - Home & Native Sound Series: Live Acoustic category.
You can read up on the majority of these News announcements here: http://www.andrewvictoria.com/news.
While all these events have been going on, partially out of curiosity, the rest out of desire & passion, Andrew & I have auditioned for a couple of Canada's new talent shows, those being CoverMeCanada (on CBC now) and Canada's Got Talent (set to air March 2012). While I personally auditioned for Rockstar: INXS way back in 2005 before leaving for Hong Kong, neither of us, as ourselves or as 'AndrewVictoria' have ever tried out for the Idol-type shows, so we figured 'Why Not?'. The worst that can come from it is not being selected, and that wouldn't set us back or deter us. So, we sent in our video audition for CoverMeCanada, which you can watch here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF7wXcix_AQ. Obviously, as the show went to air 2 weeks ago, and we're not on it, we didn't make it... but no skin off our backs & congrats to those who did! While you're watching our video (recorded live at Stoney Creek United Church with no edits, over-dubs or lip-synching), please subscribe to our new YouTube channel & become a friend! That way you can keep up with new videos we post!!
As for Canada's Got Talent, well, the waiting game now begins. We had our audition on the 2nd of 4 days of Toronto auditions at the Roger's Center. No one will know ANYTHING until at least October 31st (ooohhhh... should be interesting to see who gets a treat!), so all we can do is cross our fingers. Being realistic, and seeing how so many of the talent shows work PLUS knowing how many thousands of incredibly talented acts have likely entered, it's anyone's game, and if we don't advance, we'll just keep moving on... but wouldn't that be nice if we did make it through to the next round? I think so!
I'm not going to lie - the audition process was tough: up at 4am (after only 4 hours of sleep), on the road by 5:15am to get into the line up by 6:15am, wait outside for 2 hours (raining buckets for a while, but we were at least under an awning), before being let inside at 8:15am - AND - to top it off, I was/am sick with a gross head cold (really didn't help hitting the high notes of the song we auditioned with - bah!). Though we were scheduled for an '8am' audition, so were about 500 other contestants, and the first round of Day 2 pre-registered competitors (which we were thankfully part of) didn't get to go upstairs to audition until 10:20am. By the time we had our audition, we'd been there nearly 6 hours... and that was being pre-registered! I can only imagine the wait for the walk-ups!
You know, there was a time in my life that I said "I don't want to go the Idol-route...I want to earn my stripes". And that was true, and I have. We have. I wish I'd kept track of all the hundreds of shows we've played over the years...the thousands of people we've performed for... and the bottles of water we've consumed doing so LOL! We've absolutely earned our stripes...and we continue to do so & want to. But this time around, something was different... Canada's Got Talent (and CoverMeCanada) tempted us. We simply wanted to give it a try... to see if the public, the producers - people outside of our 'circle' of friends & fans really think we have "something special" as we've been told a lot this year. Is our success so far in 2011 all maybe leading towards something? We certainly feel we're gaining momentum... and maybe CGT will part of the equation? Maybe it won't? But I can say it was actually a really good experience - crazy early start & all. It was organized, professionally run and I "think" that maybe, just maybe FINALLY Canada will have a super fantastic talent show to be proud of in 2012! And even if we don't make it to the end, we can officially say "We were part of it!!".
Thanks for stopping by,
Victoria
