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When pushed over the edge, Rene Marie decided she’d fly


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When Rene Marie returned to performing music after more than 20 years away from it, her now-ex-husband made her decision easy.

Marie, who had been a singer since her teens, and her ex-husband became Jehovah's Witnesses, and the conservative group they were in frowned on singing nonreligious music in public places.

"I continued to play at home," says Marie in a call from her home in Fredericksburg, Va. "My husband played piano. I played and sang and our sons were musical. And whenever there was a gathering and there was a piano nearby I was on it. It was just at a gathering we might have or at a friend's house, but never on stage."

In her early 40s, though, Marie started singing again and was about to record her first album. Her then-husband disapproved.

"He said, 'If you keep singing, you have to get out. And if you gonna keep living here, you have to quit singing.' I was about to record a CD and he said, 'If you go to that studio tomorrow, don't come back home. If you do come back home you're gonna have hell to pay.' So I asked him if he was threatening me with physical harm and he said it was a promise, not a threat. Having grown up with that kind of physical abuse, I just decided the choice is clear for me. It wasn't that I chose music over my marriage, but I didn't want to be in that sort of a marriage where that kind of talk was considered normal or acceptable. So I left that night and things did get violent before I left."

She says under the circumstances, it was the best thing he could have done.

"It crystallized a huge decision I needed to make in my life. Am I going to make this change or am I going to stay in this situation knowing good and well what it's going to be like? But if he said, 'Oh, Rene, our kids are in college now and we've got an empty nest and I want to spend way more time with you. I miss you when you're gone. Sweetheart, do you really have to sing?' If he had said that, I probably would've said, 'No, I don't have to.'

"Sometimes we jump off a cliff and sometimes we get pushed, but either way we end up in the same place in the air. We can either fly or plummet to the ground. It's not how we get out there. It's now that we're out there, what do we do? It was a gift as far as I'm concerned."

If so, it was a gift that keeps on giving. Marie's status as one of jazz music's great singers continues to grow, and her album "I Wanna Be Evil (A Tribute to Eartha Kitt)" was nominated for a Grammy in 2014. She's earned critical acclaim and a solid following over the past 15 years.

Marie has won special notice as being a modern jazz singer who writes much of her own material.

"I wrote my first song when I was 15," she says. "My boyfriend and I broke up. Isn't that where all art comes from? Pain? So we broke up and I wrote my first song, which I really did like. We met in this musical group we were playing in, and when we got back together we started playing it."

 

Even during her time away from music, Marie continued to write songs.

She says that all the years of being told to not make music took its toll on her confidence.

"It took me about five to seven years to not have what he (her ex-husband) might say in a certain circumstance running through my head. What happens when you're hearing that stuff regularly if you don't replace it with something positive is you're just going to keep hearing it, whether they're standing there or not. I think that's what got to me. I was like, 'Wow. He's not here and I'm still hearing this in my head? I cannot blame him for this anymore. This is me. I'm the one dredging this up. I have to replace this with something beautiful and positive.' "

Marie decided to start calling her answering machine to leave positive, affirming messages to herself. When she'd talk to record store owners about selling her album, and having initially been frightened, she'd call her answering machine after the meeting, congratulating herself for going through with it.

"I'd say, 'You were crying in the car you were so afraid, but look at what you did! You still got out and went in there. You did a great job.' Or, 'You kept that appointment with so-and-so and you are maybe going to do this gig together!' I'd go back home and sometimes forget what I'd said and then listen to those messages. That was so powerful to me. It helped move me forward."

She says having confidence in her own compositions in a world where playing standards is more typical can also be difficult.

"I'm always encouraging other singers to write. They think it's big headed to consider themselves a composer. But you don't have to be a Tchaikovsky or a Duke Ellington to call yourself a composer. If you write a song and it's original, then, hey, you're a composer. It's as simple as that. It does take a little bit of guts when you're filling out a set-list and you deign to put on a couple of your own songs. You erase it, because it just doesn't seem right to put your own stuff beside someone else's, but it's a process."

Source: http://www.knoxnews.com/entertainment/music/when-pushed-over-the-edge-rene-marie-decided-shed-fly-2abe9c59-59c5-4663-e053-0100007f2221-367569061.html?d=mobile
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