Wayne Henggeler      •      303.870.1656      •     widleys@comcast.net

Publish Date: 7/24/2006

By Pam Mellskog
The Daily Times-Call

LONGMONT — If his voice lessons go well this summer, Tom Goetz will drape himself this fall in a black robe and white stole — duds he described as a “glorified pastor’s uniform” — to sing with the choir at First Evangelical Lutheran Church of Longmont.

The 50-year-old cook has driven past You Can Sing on Main Street and its 2-foot by 8-foot sign for nearly nine years. But until one scorching day in June, he felt too psyched out to test his voice and improve it.

“I finally just pulled over and slammed on the brakes and stomped in there,” he said. “I’ve never been able to sing worth a darn . . . . It was a now-or-never situation.”

Other students have confessed to dialing three times and hanging up before booking a lesson on the fourth call. Then they arrive with butterflies in their belly and excuses in their mouth, said owner and certified vocal coach Wayne Hengler.

“They look like their own pickpocket,” he said. “They pull up their pants. They look for sheet music. They say, ‘I just got out of the tub’ or ‘It’s Friday.’ Anything they can do to prolong the singing of the song.”

Still, You Can Sing earned its name over the years through success stories like Sarah DeVasto’s. She always loved to sing but hated the sound of her voice until she started taking lessons from Hengler 14 months ago, she said.

Now, DeVasto, 24, sings off the second-floor balcony of her Longmont apartment like an opera diva. She’s not planning to quit her cheesemaker job at a local goat dairy for nightclub gigs. But learning some technical skills freed her to sing Elvis and Eagles tunes with more unshakable confidence than a karaoke singer a few beers past midnight.

“It’s an extension of that feeling you get when you’re singing in your shower or your car,” she said of training.

Hengler established the school, which also offers instruction on a dozen instruments, in 1994 to encourage singing and prove his motto: “If you can walk, you can dance. If you can talk, you can sing.”

To loosen things up, he rumbles the piano’s bass keys: “OK. We’re going to Pretend Land. There are 350 people out there. No, 347 people. You’ve prepared over the years with the best vocal coaching money can buy, and you’re opening at Red Rocks tonight. Picture it. You come out, and they go absolutely crazy.”

He’ll then pound on the keyboard and hoot like his home team just scored a winning touchdown in the Super Bowl with three seconds left on the clock.

“Singing needs to be based on positive experiences,” Hengler said of his keyboard chicanery. “The consequences of a bad experience will be that the person will never sing again. … It’s amazing what goes on inside of the head when you believe you’re good or not.”

Besides using humor to help settle nerves, Hengler touts his “pure and natural” voice philosophy. It sounds like a billing for mountain spring bottled water. But he remains convinced that anyone can sing well by dumping imposter voices — voices they think they should use — for the true voice that comes from opening a personal space inside.

Goetz, the cook who took years to stop in, booked his first lesson in this process for 2 p.m. July 11. He showed up a little early that Tuesday wearing nothing too flashy, new blue jeans and a salmon-colored polo shirt. Then he bravely walked from You Can Sing’s tiny lobby decorated with frog figurines singing and playing instruments down the long narrow hallway to the back studio.

There, Hengler’s retired greyhound Weezie curled up between a music stand and a microphone. She doubles as the school’s mascot and token audience member with zero bad attitude.

After delivering the briefest speech on drinking at least a liter of water daily, avoiding mucus-producing dairy drinks and foods before singing, and understanding how the four vocal chords work, Hengler popped in a blank cassette tape and pushed “record.”

“Today is July 11, and we’re with Tom on his first exercises,” Hengler said with all the sunny optimism of an early-morning radio personality.

The two men then stood shoulder to shoulder in the silent studio and faced a black and light blue-painted cinderblock wall. With hands hanging at their hips, palms up, they took the first official breath of the lesson to make the practice tape and sang lifting their arms like conductors summoning a 100-member choir off its derriere.

Both voices rumbled in the basement of the chest and steadily swooped to the cupola of the head voice, or falsetto, before sliding down again. After practicing the swoops loudly and in various pitches, Hengler stopped, turned to face his student and posed a question that Goetz never imagined, he said.

“What’s the oldest automobile you’ve ever owned?” Hengler asked.

Goetz dutifully described the burnt orange 1955 Dodge pickup he drove as a 17-year-old high school student in Lawrence, Kan.

“Then he asked me to describe what it sounded like when I tried to start it in the morning in the winter when the battery’s weak,” Goetz said.

The newbie voice student remembered the sound the old, cold engine made after he turned the key in the ignition. That auditory recall perfectly informed the next vocal exercises, called pulses.

Goetz tugged on his belt loops, sucked some air and repeated Hengler in singing: “Wee, eee, eee, eee, eee.”

“Woo, ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo” he continued.

Then, he stopped and coughed like an allergy patient overcome by a cloud of pollen.

“I got stuck,” he said, shaking his head.

Hengler pressed on by singing “Waa, aaa, aaa, aaa, aaa” and “woaaah, oaah, oaah, oaah, oaah.”

Then the men repeated the call-and-answer format of the pulses in various pitches and at different speeds to warm up and build a foundation for vibrato — the sound a held note makes when it unfurls and waves like a flag in breezes.

By the end of the 45-minute lesson, Hengler had moved to the keyboards to play “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” For every held note, he asked his new student to practice pulsing.

Goetz stayed the course. He sang, “Twinkle twinkle little staa, aaa, aaa, aaa, aaar, how I wonder what you arr, aaar, aaar, aaar, aaar. Up above the sky so brii, iii, iii, iii, iiight. Like a diamond in the nii, iii, iii, iii, iiight ...”

Silly as the first lesson may have likely sounded to eavesdroppers, he left his vocal lesson debut with a practice tape and hope that You Can Sing can deliver on its promise.

“It sounds far-fetched to sing ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,’” the closeted choir member hopeful said. “You’d think you’d go in and sing the national anthem. But it felt good, and it was fun. After you reveal yourself to somebody, you have more self-confidence.”

Pam Mellskog can be reached at 303-684-5224 or by e-mail at pmellskog@times-call.com.

For more information: Call 303.870.1656 or visit www.longmontmusic.com