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Tim Patrick

I was a guy who was too afraid to sing in the shower for fear that my family would hear me and tell me to shut up. But, in August 2004, I found myself in front of a microphone for the first time in my life at Nye's Piano Bar in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I had decided that if I didn't try it at that time that I'd regret it for the rest of my life.

I heard my name called by the pianist at Nye's. Lou Snider had been the pianist there for close to 40 years and knew how to make a new singer feel comfortable. As a matter of fact, my mother used to go down to Nye's to sing with Lou. I grabbed the microphone and the lyrics book. As I fumbled to find the words for "Unforgettable", Lou asked me what key I wanted to sing in. I didn't have a clue. She had me sing a couple of the opening words and quickly found my key. I held the book up high enough to hide my face and my shaking hand held the mike up to my mouth. After I finished singing, I was surprised to hear very loud applause. Of course, their applause encouraged me to sing another song, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco". The applause after my second song sounded thunderous to me and I was hooked!

I returned to Nye's every weekend for two months until I got up the courage to audition for "Amahl and The Night Visitors"—a mini-opera put on by the Woodbury Community Theatre in Woodbury, MN. I was not exactly looking to do an opera—I was just trying to find any musical that was currently looking for my talents. I won the part of a singing and dancing shepherd (singing very high tenor). The experience in Amahl gave me the courage to audition a second time, and I earned the part of one of four male lead singers in "The Original Broadway 'Swing'". It was in this show that I learned how to scat.

After Swing, I was in "The Music Man". That summer, I was invited to sing in a "Singer's Showcase" at the Times Cafe in Minneapolis, MN, and got to sing mainly Sinatra songs for an hour with the extremely talented Lori Dokken at the piano. My fourth play was "My Fair Lady", and I was able to play the part that I had wanted to play all my life but had only fantasized about-'Freddy', the love sick young man in love with Eliza Doolittle. The theatre sure has a lot of tricks to make a guy look younger! During the run of this play, I got to sing "On The Street Where You Live" more than 30 times and it never got old!

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