004 Every Sing: Dennis Coleman Choral Director

Welcome to Every Sing Podcast, episode number 4. This show is about singing from every angle because singing is as big as the world, and hearing about the driving passion of contributors to music enhances our own love and understanding of singing. This is Nancy Bos, and today's guest is Dennis Coleman. Now, the bio that Dennis gave me is very short. Dennis Coleman is the director emeritus of the Seattle Men's Chorus and Seattle Women's Chorus. Where he served as conductor and artistic director for 35 years. He has also served that long with Bellevue First Congregational Church, which is my church, and continues to work with that choir to this day. As you can imagine, a man who's changed the choral world and witnessed our changing times regarding rights and health of LGBTQ people— Dennis has done a lot more than that short little bio says. So this interview starts to chip away at Dennis's journey. He's a fantastic choral director, but he's got his own motivations about what singing is for him and what he wants to do for his audience. Now, as a person who sung in his choir for around 8 years, I have to say that Dennis is clearly understated. He comes off as a quiet man and very thoughtful, and that serves him very well with the choir. He respects the people who are singing for him And he creates a web of openness and willingness and love in any choir that he directs. I absolutely cherish that he's my choir director, and I hope that after hearing this podcast, you'll understand what a gift he is to our industry. Now, before I start the interview, I need to tell you a few things about the podcast. Notes and links from this conversation are available on the show's Facebook page, which is a public group called Every Sing Podcast. Now normally I would say if you'd like a quick way to engage the EverySing podcast guest in conversation, Facebook is the way to do it. But guess what? Dennis isn't on Facebook, and he's not tremendously interested in engaging. Therefore, if you really want to know and understand Dennis, you can show up at our church choir rehearsals on Wednesday nights. Now podcasting is a pretty expensive little hobby that I've got, so if you'd like to donate to EverySing in order to help me devote more time to this podcast, You'll be able to do that at patreon.com/everything. Patreon is spelled P-A-T-R-E-O-N. I would really appreciate the help. But other than that, I do have a show sponsor, and my show sponsor is Teadora. You can find them at teadorabeauty.com. Teadora is offering 25% off to all of my listeners who enter everything, all one word, at checkout on teadorabeauty.com. Our favorite Teodora products around my house are the Beauty Butter, Brazilian Glow Radiance Oil, and the Sugar Scrub Mask. Everybody loves the soap, and I have it at every sink in the house. I'll tell you a little bit more about Teodora at the end of the podcast. Also, I'm offering some help after the interview for people who are new to listening to podcasts. After the interview, I'm going to tell you how to subscribe to your favorite podcasts, like this one, and how to rate them on iTunes. So they get better ranking and what the show notes thing is all about. To start out the interview, here's a little bit of music from Seattle Men's Chorus.

We shall overcome. We shall overcome. We shall overcome some day. Amen. Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe we shall overcome someday. We shall live in— we shall be in peace! We shall serve him— we shall obey thee! We shall live in peaceful land! In my heart, I do believe we shall live in peace someday. Someday deep in my heart, I do believe we shall overcome someday, overcome. Overcome, overcome, overcome someday.

My love for choral singing began in the church, absolutely. And I was from a young age raised with either my mother for some years and then primarily with my aunt and uncle in a Southern Baptist congregation. And hymnsinging was fairly vital there, and they had a decent choir, a good, you know, choir program for the young people. I was, you know, the star of the primary choir.

Absolutely.

So was I. Of course. I still have photos of that from the the newspaper.

But what town was this?

Klamath Falls, Oregon.

Klamath Falls, that can't have been very big in that day and age.

Well, it was big. It's bigger than you think. It was, you know, 16,000 in the city limits. And, uh, for instance, my high school had a huge number of kids in it, and the music department had 3 large rehearsal suites, plus practice rooms and offices for the staff. There was a choir director, an assistant choir director, there was a band director, an assistant band director, and there was a string specialist in our high school. And so we had, you know, all the various choirs back then. It was Madrigal and the freshman choir, the girls choir. The Madrigals were the pop group, if you wanted to call them that. What?

Wait a minute, Madrigals were the pop group?

Madrigals were the pop group.

Oh, okay.

And Uh, then you had the concert choir, the a cappella choir, and we had a full orchestra. We had two full bands. We did Messiah each Christmas with orchestra. And the high school did?

Yeah.

Wow, that is so ambitious.

So even though it was a small town, there was lots of musical training there.

Yeah, really special opportunities when you were there.

I got good training as an accompanist That's all I really did. I didn't sing through high school at all, but I got good at accompanying, at improvisation, and I found the greatest acceptance in the church where improvisational playing on hymns and things was, you know, should and did come naturally.

Yeah, almost mandatory in the church that you were raised in.

Yeah, and you learned from listening and So that way you were able to—

of course you were studying how to read music and music theory, but hand in hand you got to do improvisation. And for a lot of people, those two things are separated.

I wasn't studying music theory. I was a natural at the keyboard. I never had really good teachers who made me do fingering and scales and that kind of stuff, or harmony or any of that.

Hmm.

To back up now a little bit, my love for choral music, in particular for the human voice and choral music, came through two recordings, two or three recordings. Uh, my father bought Messiah, the old, um, Sir Thomas Beecham. You know, it's when it was massive forces. And so I got that, it was I believe 4 78 discs, and listened to it pretty much day and night. And then I got turned on to Robert Shaw and his recordings with the Robert Shaw Chorale, and that's where I really began to listen for detailed choral singing. And while I didn't understand what was going on about vowel placement and tuning and, you know, blend and so many things that I understand now, I got that ear for it right then. And then I learned how to do it in years to come.

What age do you think you were when choral music first got your attention?

Oh, junior high.

Wow.

That's pretty uncommon.

Yeah. And then I played for the choir all through, for all the choirs.

Now you have a great singing voice. I mean, you're a terrific baritone. So I'm really surprised your middle school and high school choir directors didn't take advantage of that.

I didn't sing a note.

They just didn't know.

Not one note. I refused to. So when I got to the University of Washington, yeah, I had to take a voice class as a freshman.

Do you remember what year that was?

1966, in the fall.

Okay.

Joyce Berger would have taught the class. Terrified me.

Oh, no kidding, because you felt unprepared.

I never sung, you know, for years and years. Now, in the meantime, I had tested out of all the sight singing. And that kind of stuff because my strong piano skills, even though I didn't have them trained, you know, with the classic theory training of harmonization, I still understood it instinctively because I could play most anything that was on a page. I could therefore sing it.

Of course.

Yeah.

It just worked in your brain.

But having to stand and sing a song is another matter totally.

Oh.

But then I started taking voice lessons I got over that, started taking voice lessons, and not real seriously, but some. And, uh, it was good.

Yeah, good. So you didn't go into being a choral director as a singer who was branching into another division of singing. You went into it as a passion for choral—

yeah, for choral directing, right? Uh, passion for two things. The two influences were music, particularly choral music, and the church, and my belief system was that music was a tool to use to move people to— from one place to another, hopefully in a good direction, you know, and we would call it evangelistic tool. So I really saw almost everything I did musically, or at least at— in the church level, I would see it as, you know, means of reaching out. And trying to, you know, affect people. Now, at school it wasn't quite that way, but I was still, you know, tied into the choral music and that sort of thing. But so as I grew up, it was my love for choral music plus my love for using music and my deep understanding of it for using music to move people. Those two elements.

To move them to a new state.

Whatever that might be.

I think that's still true for you. You're talking like it was past tense, but I feel like that's driving you.

Oh, absolutely.

More so every day.

More so every day.

Like I was thinking about our trip to Romania.

It's coming up here in a year.

I'm gonna do once a month or so, or every 6 weeks, something, put something into our repertoire that is wordless. Or such a word that is such a text or something that's universally understood, right? You know, and I'm thinking of things like, um, oh, uh, that theme by what's his name, I can't think, uh, and, um, it's the theme for Delta Airlines over here, but, but it's really began as a chorus.

Is that Ravel?

No, but it sounds like that.

It does.

It does sound like that. Uh, so that's the piece that Jenny sang with the women's chorus, uh, Something True to Evora, Tango to Evora, which is just oohs and aahs and, and has a little bit of rhythm.

A choral vocalese.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm gonna, I'm gonna program maybe 4 to 6 of those into the tour. And I think particularly in Romania where you have a gypsy tradition, a Roma tradition, that that Not trying to copy that, but we can do our own American music that speaks with that language.

I love that.

And some of it may have some hand motion to it, some— so other language, but the music will primarily still communicate some feeling, some emotions, some affectation that we want. I'm beginning to think about how Even in Romania, the church choir can sing good quality music, and we'll do, you know, some of the classic things we do that are in our repertoire that we really know, but also some of this just music alone without words.

Love it.

And try to communicate in different fashions since we're not going to sing in Romanian.

Oh good, I'm glad to hear that.

But we can sing in Latin.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, they'll get that. Just, you know, anybody will understand the The Maria, Mozart, you know, Ave Maria.

Moving people has been a long time continuing theme, but what I'd like to do is back up to what happened after college.

Conducted for 3 or 4 years in a high school in the Midwest, and I did musicals and had the choir. They got an A They did well.

So you were launching your full-time choral director career.

I actually moved there to go to seminary, and I finished— I didn't finish my degree there. I finished one year of my Master's of Divinity. Then I accepted a job teaching at a high school, took it, taught for 3 years, came back then to miss the Northwest. You know, Missouri. Came back to the Northwest. And worked in church for about 6 years, and that's when I switched over, when I lost a job, or when I came out. And at that point, I came to the church in Bellevue immediately. Like, uh, we were on the summer break, but I started the choir that, that fall. And with the men's chorus, I was nearly seamless. I was sort of hanging out with them, trying to get to know some gay people, and they hired me very, very quickly after that. So the men's choir existed before you conducting with it?

Okay, and it was the Seattle Gay Men's Choir at that time?

No, it was just the Seattle Men's Chorus.

Okay.

And, um, they had some identity crises and, uh, fought amongst themselves. And after, uh, two conductors— the founding conductor who stormed out because it was taking a direction of being more openly gay than he was comfortable with, and then the next conductor was also not committed to that. It was a closeted man from Chicago.

Oh my.

And his only experience had been singing in the Chicago Symphony Chorus.

Oh, that's a whole different—

yeah, good beautiful voice, but he began to drop out at the very same time that I sort of, sort of visiting the chorus anonymously at rehearsals. And so in the process of about 6 weeks, I took over.

Wow, what a perfect opportunity.

Yeah, it was, because everything I learned in the church applied to this group of gay men.

Was there such a thing anywhere as a gay men's chorus at this time?

Yeah.

Did this then chorus identify with that fully at that point?

Yeah, uh, there were several, probably 3 at that point, when they started. Then immediately upon my taking over in June of '81, the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus, which was the founding chorus, came to Seattle as part of a 7-city national tour and sang at the Opera House, and that really spurred the movement on all over the nation. Now prior to that, some of the guys from Seattle had gone down because they'd heard about this chorus down there and they had heard them and come back and started the Seattle Men's Chorus with about 27 people. Wow. And so by the time I came into it, there were about 50 singers, and pretty, you know, it was starting to get a sold-out crowd at Meany Hall.

Okay.

At Christmas.

That's a big hall.

That's a big hall. No other choir was doing that. And so I came in, we were just on the ascendancy, and there we go. Wow. Yeah.

Where were the other big gay men's choruses?

Um, that was by far the biggest one.

Okay.

Uh, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle would have been right there. It's mostly West Coast. Houston. Where else on the East Coast? Nothing immediately there. There was a mixed chorus in New York City, but the New York City Gay Men's Chorus came Shortly after we did.

Yeah, so, and then in the 1990s you guys dropped the word gay from the title.

No, it was never in there.

It was never the Seattle Gay Men's Chorus?

No, it was never in there.

My apologies.

Yeah, no, it's quite all right. That's what the identity crisis at the beginning was, and knowing where those guys who had founded it came from, it was understandable. We decided we were so well known already as the Seattle Men's Chorus, and we so strongly felt that we didn't want a title which at that point would have blocked people from coming that weren't open-minded, and they were the very people that we were trying to reach. And it was almost always through family members and friends, or the, the early audience and their family members who were coming, and they could bring their mothers and fathers because it didn't say Seattle Gangsters.

It wasn't going to be in their face.

But then they would come out to them. And we heard that over and over and over and over again. So it was a, a real way to show the larger community in Seattle that the gay men's community that you see portrayed is not always anything more than just a stereotype, and that what you're seeing tonight is something very respectable. The stage opens at the Orchestra Hall and you see a 200 men in tuxedos, you, you know, it's pretty just impressive right off the top.

Yeah.

So it— you have that impact, but then it's careful programming in the concert that weaves universal plus gay-specific themes throughout and weaves different styles of music, sometimes all one style, but, you know, to somehow make some sort of 11 o'clock hour number happen. You know, at the end of the concert. That's how I think— thought of it.

That's how you've always thought of it.

Yeah.

So how big is the choir now?

Men's Chorus?

Yeah.

Oh, I imagine they have 250, 260 singers.

That's a good size. Yeah, it's just pretty much maxes out most stages.

It does. It's, it's hard to get much bigger than that. And by the time they get to Christmas, it's usually down to 220 or something. It just self-selects. Yeah, uh, or it can be bigger than 220, but it, it's manageable.

Were you involved with starting other choruses or inspiring other choirs around the country that were similar?

Oh, to some degree. You know, I'd go and work with struggling little choruses in that movement from time to time, and I hope it helped them. We put out a lot of albums and a lot of TV shows in those days. That were shown all over the world. I mean, we did broadcasts on PBS, on Channel 9, that were seen by millions of people. So we really sort of— I think we did help a lot of other people, a lot of choirs and individuals.

And then somewhere along the way, you started the Seattle Women's Chorus.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, at the request of some women in that sort of peripheral community of singers, and we knew that it would be good support, and the men's chorus was at a financial place that they could risk that. And it's a costly thing. Yeah. To invest in another full chorus with some different staff and all the expenses of the performances, the music, the halls, the rehearsals, you know, to take that on in an overall sweep for gay and lesbian choruses, that may be where they're losing their initial impact, and they've got to figure out how to continue to have an impact. The women's chorus came into it late when that's already beginning to subside. They have to work really hard to find their place, but they can do it, you know, and it could go several directions. They could become a more serious women's chorus and sing more world music. They could become become more radical in their— what they sing. I mean, there's so many different ways to approach it, and they've got to figure that out. The men's chorus is, you know, they've sort of passed an arc.

Yeah, they've got decades of precedence.

Yeah, but then they've got the same thing to face.

So that's right, because our, our world, our environment is changing.

Oh yeah, quite a bit recently. The kind of programming I did for 30-something years worked during that period. You know, there are new, new challenges now.

Yeah, there's new challenges.

And new audiences who might not be reached in the same emotional fashion, right, as my age group was.

That's a good point.

So I understand all that and glad to pass on the responsibility.

There's a lot of courage involved with, with taking the, the position, and I'm sure at no point you decided you were going to be courageous?

No, I had no clue what I was doing. Absolutely no clue. Just kind of da da da da da and went along with it. I did. I'm not really joking.

Maybe you were led.

Oh, I have no doubt about that as well. I was exactly where I was supposed to be at that point, and it's worked out nicely. And now I'm where I need to be too.

And where is that?

The church.

Yeah, love it.

Yeah. The choral director seems to have a relationship with a choir, with a body. How's that work?

I'm basically an introvert, and, um, talking with people on a one-to-one basis kind of saps me, you know. It's not what I just like to do naturally or anything. I've been in the position where I've had to do a fair amount of it, but when I go in front of a group where I have that, that sort of, that image, that position, that title, whatever it is, I can just slip into that and kind of turn on. But that's not my normal personality necessarily. So I don't know where I learned that, to have the charisma, but I did learn it somewhere, or else it came naturally. And I've been very lucky to have that because A lot of my skills are very weak— discipline and various things like that. I just don't care about that kind of stuff that much. As long as we get the work done and we sing at a high level, let's have fun along the way. It's my attitude. And so, you know, I'm, I'm not disciplined in that sense and never went into the college route, the university conducting route, because it just doesn't— it bores me to think about that. Yeah, yeah, I have. And I am finding some kind of newfound pleasure in singing lately because I haven't sung solo work except for maybe once every 2 years at the church. I do something, right? And I don't practice.

I say, how do you keep your voice in shape? Because you're not really singing in choral rehearsals either.

I sing too much in choral rehearsals. Okay, but I do sing there to demonstrate and I have a real, a better instinctive understanding of vowel placement and intonation and all that business than I have, let's say, like you have, a technical understanding.

Yeah, book knowledge of it.

Book knowledge. But I can immediately know how to adjust that in such a way to get it in tune and to get the choir unified. And so I oftentimes model —that, and that certainly helps because I don't have to think that much anymore about placement when I sing myself. It's usually just there automatically, as you understand.

And I think that an awful lot of the men, especially in our choir, they're going to learn auditorially, or they have a very similar voice type to you, and so that modeling just gets them right there. They don't have to try anymore, they just hear it and understand. I hope that works for them. I think it should work.

Perfectly in tuning, you know, the placement of the tongue, all this business. Yes, that's really key.

And if you got all nerdy and, and was like, well, you need to lift your zygomatic arch and your soft palate—

I don't even understand that, let alone try to teach it. Beautiful.

And it just tends to wrap people's brains around things that are a waste of time.

But for some people, that's how you teach them. It is. That's how I used— why I used to send people to Charles Peterson. I'd have these students who were really stellar and who have gone on to win Tonys, stuff, you know, especially through my work at Roosevelt High School.

Oh, you have to tell me a little bit about that. I've always meant to ask you about that.

And so I'd pass them on to Charles and he'd work with them more specifically, you know, and all that technique stuff that I didn't begin to understand. And I wasn't that good at that point. In the real understanding. That was taught to me by more by Vance George and the San Francisco Symphony. But yeah, I did probably 15 years of being the specialist they would bring in to work on musical theater.

For like 3 months a year?

Yeah, about 3 months. Okay. And I would basically train the choir which was pretty much the entire cast of the musical would have maybe 80 kids in it. Wow. It was a big program. Cool. And so I'd train the choir for 1 hour and then I'd go off with into practice rooms with this trio or that soloist or something and just teach them their—

15 years is a lot of shows. Yeah, I did a lot of shows. And they'd all have to have big choirs. That's a lot of productions of The Wizard of Oz.

Oh, they were, they were pretty sophisticated. They did a lot of, you know, the big dance shows like the Gershwin shows and the Cole Porter shows. And every 3 years it had to be a tap show. Oh my goodness. Yeah. And huh, they were really good and were recognized nationally. And I went with twice with them to the Edinburgh Festival, the Fringe Festival, where they performed one time, did a couple performances, but the other time they performed every night for 2 weeks in a theater. Wow. You know, that sort of thing.

So I've been to the Fringe Festival about 3 years ago. That is one strange event. But I guess if you're taking a big choir of high school kids, you're gonna really nail down a contracted place that you know you're gonna be.

Yeah, it was. We were part of of the Fringe Festival. Yeah, you know, we were an official part of it. An official part of it. Tickets were sold and all that. Yeah. Um, yeah, the first time it was through this high school program for performing arts. Perfect. But the second time it was on our own. Okay. Yeah, so that was kind of fun.

What a way for those kids to see the world. All the world comes to the Fringe Festival in every form.

Boy, yeah, they had to have You know, the kids have to— had to understand what they were getting into, and that's right, parents had to understand, and chaperones had to understand, and they all still went anyhow. And so I had most of my days totally free. Once in a great while there'd be some little flash performance somewhere, but I would— I bought a 2-week pass for the bus system. I just rode around Edinburgh.

You've worked with some of the big stars in choral directing. A few. And of course big stars in the entertainment industry through the Seattle Men's Chorus.

Well, um, working with Robert Shaw, the great American choral director, was where I got most technique. And I didn't work with him individually, but in a choir of choral directors who worked under him every day for 2 weeks. And then did a concert at Lincoln Center and at Yale. It's a wonderful program that he used to do, and they still continue with other choirs, but that taught me technique a lot. The other person who just really inspired me was Vance George, San Francisco Symphony Chorus, who's one of my closest friends in the choral world, and he really taught me to listen and know how to tune and place things for a choir. Anne Jones, Anne M. Jones. Okay. A lot of symphony. So would have been one of your contemporaries.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And I, you know, I got to know a lot of them through Chorus America, a lot, because I was on the national board for that. And so I met all the big conductors. The stars that we got to work with I, you know, I can't say that there was any one that just dazzled me more than another. I was dazzled by the kindness and the genuine humanity of a lot of them, like Rosemary Clooney or some of these big names that you're just afraid to even say out loud, and they're just people. Yeah, you know, uh, good people. Maya Angelou, had a— she realized who she was, and she was somewhat formal in her conversations. Sure. She once told the young woman who called her Maya after a couple days to respect her name. And, but, you know, but she also got down and was a lot of fun in the back rooms and all that. So she was, she was fun. But very few of them were picky. Some of them were so frightened, stage fright and everything, that they were difficult to work with. That was generally the case.

Interesting. Yeah. You would think that by the time somebody's reached the level of notoriety that they would be invited to sing solo with the Seattle Men's Choir, that there would be no more anxiety issues.

Well, the problem was that they be learning new material that wasn't already in their repertoire, and that made them nervous. Yeah, you know, but some of them, others, I mean, the real stars like, uh, Frederica von Stade, she memorized a huge new work, a difficult contemporary choral work with strings and metso solo and men's chorus. That was very, very difficult. She memorized it, and even when she lost one line in the middle, it didn't make any difference. She just died over right back in. You know, the ones that are the real pros, yeah, they've made all the mistakes already.

They know how to bounce back. Oh, for heaven's sake. Yeah. Now, did Hollywood ever call you? Did you ever direct for movies or anything? Oh no, no, no, no, no. I can just see you doing that. No, maybe next time. Yeah, maybe next life.

The only thing I ever wanted to do in another lifetime was to conduct Broadway shows in New York. Yeah, yeah. Uh, I got to do a little bit here, but you know, I, I like the idea of working on a piece for years. Yeah. And you know, and, and that sort of— then taking on another piece and your baby.

I like that sort of stuff. Yeah, that makes a lot of Yeah, I guess I just want to say thank you so much for giving us your time and sharing your passion. My pleasure. Well, there you have it, Maestro Dennis Coleman of the Seattle Men's Chorus, Seattle Women's Chorus, and First Congregational Church of Bellevue. It feels like a really special treat to have this chance to get to know him better. As I said earlier, notes and links from this conversation can be easily found on the show's Facebook page, which is the public group called Every Single podcast. You just have to ask to join and you'll get in very quickly. If you're crazy about choral music and you enjoyed this interview, I have another podcast that I'd like to recommend to you. It's by my good friend Erin Gwidump. Her podcast is called Why We Sing, and in particular, episode number 2 is an interview of Jeffrey Boers from the University of Washington. It is an astonishing interview full of passion and inspiration. Before I wrap up and play some of the Seattle Women's Chorus music, I want to thank again Teodora at teodorabeauty.com for sponsoring today's episode. Now, the reason that a company would sponsor an episode is because they feel their product might be of value to the people that listen to that episode, and I hope that you will go ahead and give it a shot. You can take advantage of Teodora's generous offer of 25% off to discover their terrific products. Their natural products are inspired by ancient Brazilian beauty secrets using natural anti-aging ingredients from the Amazon rainforest. Their ingredients are toxin-free, ethically sourced, sustainably harvested, gluten-free, and made in the USA. Everything from beauty butter to beard oil is yours for a 25% discount if you use the code word "EVERYSING," all one word, when you check out. If you know of any companies that would be interested in reaching the listeners of this show through podcast sponsorship, have them email me to start the conversation. Info@studioboss.com. Next we're going to hear from the Seattle Women's Chorus, and if you stick around after their song, I'll give you instructions on how to subscribe to a podcast, review it, and to see the extra show notes that are provided through the podcast player. Here's the Seattle Women's Chorus with conductor Dennis Coleman.

I am open and I am willing, for to be hopeless would seem so strange. It is almost Those who go before us. So lift me up to the light of change. There is hurting in my family, and there is sorrow in my town. There is panic in the nation. There is wailing the whole world round. For I am open and I am willing for to be hopeless. Would seem so strange. It dishonors those who go before us. So lift me up to the light of change. May the children see more clearly And may the elders be more wise. May the winds of change caress us, even though it burns our eyes. For I am open. And I am willing, for to be hopeless would seem so strange. It dishonors those who go before us. So lift me up to the light of day. Give me a mighty oak. Mighty oak. To hold my confusion. Hold my confusion. Give me a desert to hold my fears. Give me a sunset to hold my wonder. And give me an ocean. To hold my tears. For I am open and I am willing, for to be hopeless would seem so strange. It dishonors those who go before.

Mm, that was gorgeous. So, about how to subscribe to a podcast, comment, review, that sort of thing. First thing is how to subscribe if you're on your phone. If you aren't already listening through the podcast app on your phone, first open the podcast app and search for EverySING, two words, or Nancy Bos, one S. Once you're on the show's page, you'll see a button on the right that says— or is it the left? You'll see a button that says subscribe. Tap that and you are all set. You'll get every episode downloaded to your phone every time it comes out. If you're listening on your computer, open up iTunes and click on the iTunes Store at the top of the screen. On the right-hand side of the iTunes Store, click the arrow next to Music and then select Podcasts. Search for Everysing, and once you open the show's page, you should see a subscribe button to click right under the gorgeous blue show logo. Next, how to review and rate. Getting ratings and reviews is super important to podcasters. If you've ever searched for a new podcast on a topic, you know that you are much more likely to visit podcasts with 5 stars. And the bigger the number beside those stars, the more likely you are to take a chance on the podcast. So the way to rate and review is to go to the iTunes Store again and search for EverySync. After you subscribe, you will see a tab in the middle of the page that says reviews. Go there and leave an honest rating and 1 to 3 sentences about what you value about this podcast. And finally, a lot of podcasts put show notes right in the podcast player for you. If you want to see the extra info in iTunes, look for the 3 little dots on the right side of the show when it's playing. Once you tap that, you'll see a bunch of options pop up, and one of them is "View full description." Many podcasters put loads of information specific to the show in this part. I'll try to remember to do that each time so that you can get to the show notes without having to open a browser. That's all for this episode. Thank you so much for tuning in. See you in a few days for the next episodes of Every Sing. Music out.

Deep in my heart, I do We shall overcome someday. Overcome, overcome. Overcome someday.