Seattle, WA --  Hollywood Records' hot new recording artist, Marié Digby, and I had a chance to link up at Neumos night club in Seattle, when Marié hit town as part of her first national concert tour.  We've been e-mail pals since 2005 shortly after Marié won The Pantene Pro-Voice^® music competition. 

I posted a link to Marié's MySpace page on my employer's website.  Fortunately  my boss is a wonderful human being who has a great eye for talent, so he said it was okay.  He really is the salt of the Earth. 

Since the link went up we have stayed in touch (Marié and I have stayed in touch, not my boss and I, although my boss and I have stayed in touch too).  One of the reasons we've stayed in touch is that people who saw the link contacted me asking about Marié.  One gentleman, formerly associated with the Algonquin Hotel in New York City, books talent for major NYC hotel chains.  He discovered Marié while listening to my interview with actress, singer Donna Coney Island.  Assuming I was Marié's father, he contacted me about booking her. 

"Why her father?"  I asked.  "Why not her husband, or brother?" 

"I see why you won the Robert Benchley Society humor award," he said. 

I hadn't meant to be funny.  I was just thinking that we would make a cute couple (Marié and I not the booking agent and I). 

Marié's friends on MySpace and now facebook kept growing by leaps and bounds, from a few hundred in 2005 to 36,000 the last time I looked.  Meanwhile I have 72 friends (including Tom, and, as my pal Twylla, who points out, that a bunch of my friends are already dead).  Marié's search engine popularity is growing too.  Googling "Digby" used give mostly hits for me.  Now almost all the hits are for her.  Even the hits I get linking to my websites seem to be about Marié Digby.   

At the same time, Marié's songs on MySpace and videos on YouTube have gone from the thousands of plays to millions.  Every time I look she has more songs.  She writes faster and better than Lennon and McCartney (and there were two of them). 

When Marié Digby's tour dates came out I started working on my boss to pay for a trip to Neumos in Seattle.  In addition to being the salt of the Earth, he is generous. 

Neumos is an interesting night club.  Most of the inside is painted black.  The showroom is split to accommodate people over and under drinking age.  The crowds went wild for Marié as well as her colleague on the tour, singer songwriter Eric Hutchinson who rounded out the bill.  Marié's songs got a rave response.  Her music clearly touches the fans, who, amazingly, range in age from perhaps eleven to very young at heart fifty and even sixty year olds.  No kidding.  I was surprised. 

One of the Neumos' bouncers told me this wasn't their usual crowd.  "We usually get indie rockers.  This group looks it's from the East side." 

"You mean they have stocks and bonds?" I asked.  [Bill Gates and Paul Allen live on the "East side."  In fact, there was a Microsoft gathering at a club just across the street.] 

"No.  I have stocks and bonds," the bouncer said.  "I mean they look and dress like people from the East side."  The crowd looked pretty main-stream to me.   

Another fan, I'll guess in her early 20s, had pre-ordered Marié's album as soon it came out, and purchased tickets for Neumos the day they went on sale. 

Marié Digby's fan base in Seattle also includes at least one banker, a structural engineer and a handful of their thirty-something friends.  A bouncer had to caution one of them.  "The promoter doesn't want people taking pictures with high-end cameras." 

Eric Hutchinson, who shared the bill on this tour, is a consummate entertainer.  He even does an impersonation of Cher (no kidding).  He really knows how to work the crowd to fever pitch.  Well at least as feverish as people from the "East side" get, apparently. 

A few songs into his set, Hutchinson began chiding the audience, "You know, it's alright to have fun . . . It's even alright to pretend to have fun."  By the conclusion of his act, Hutchinson was proclaiming, "This is perhaps the best crowd response I've ever had . . . Maybe even the best crowd ever at any concert in Seattle history." 

Introducing his final songs, he told the crowd, with practiced mock sincerity, "I feel a little nervous.  I feel like a pitcher with a shutout going.  I just need to keep throwing strikes."  He assured us that if we could keep our intensity going for just two more songs, this would definitely be the "all-time best concert in Seattle's music history, EVER!!!" 

Perhaps there was a certain honesty to his hype.  What ever it was, the crowd loved it, even though we all suspected he had told those same sweet lies the night before in Spokane, and would tell them again the next night in Portland.  (I was in Portland the nest night.  He did.) 

Marié Digby took the stage next, to squeals of delight, and not just from the pre-teens.  It was fun watching fans sing along with the tunes.  I even found myself joining in more than a time or two.  Marié Digby wrote every song on her play list for Seattle, except "Umbrella." 

Disney had released a radio-station single of Marié's cover of "Umbrella" a few months before the album came out, after her YouTube home recording of that song started getting air play on major market radio stations in Portland and Los Angeles.  Disney was probably concerned that their hot new star did not have copyrights to the song radio stations were already calling her first hit. 

The crowd enthusiastically sang along with Marié version, joining in to help with the important, "Under my umbrella, ella, ella, ella, aye, aye, aye," part, which brought out Marié's biggest smiles of the evening. 

When Marié Digby left stage after playing her hit "Say it Again," the crowd wouldn't quit applauding.  After what seemed like a long time (much longer than most concert musicians wait), her drummer and then her guitar player came back on stage.  Finally Marié joined them. 

Encores always seem awkward to me.  The audience, almost on que, keeps clapping, and then, usually way too quickly, one of the musicians shows his head from back stage.  Then, almost as if in a hurry to get their song started before the applause die down, the artists rush back out to play, surprise, their number-one hit single that everyone actually came to hear in the first place (but which the artists, as if by accident, forgot to include it in the main show).  

Marié hadn't done that.  She'd already played her big songs, "Umbrella," "Say it Again," "Girlfriend" and the rest.  

Instead, when she finally came back on stage, she seemed truly flattered and perhaps just a bit embarrassed as she admitted, "I never do encores.  I think they are stupid.  But you guys are really genuine."  So she gave us another song. 

After her encore, as Marié was thanking the crowd again, a young girl near the stage quietly asked her to play what happens to be the first song I had heard, Marié's hauntingly beautiful, "Miss Invisible."  

"I don't actually play that on tour," she told us, ". . . well maybe once or twice . . . but . . .  The band doesn't know it, but if you really want I can give it a try on the keyboard." 

The cheering crowd sealed the deal, but Marié didn't start singing right away.  Instead, she told us the song was autobiographical, about her habit, in junior high of hiding alone under the bleachers at lunch time.  

The tour pushed on to Portland, OR, and again Marié Digby fans were out in force.  This time at the Hawthorn Theater.  The age spectrum was the same as it had been in Seattle, with perhaps a few younger and one older fans this time.  As a professional musician of 25 years, I found it quite unusual for an artist to have such a wide sweep of age appeal.  Portland responded vigorously to Marié's hits, "Say It Again," "The Voice On the Radio," "Umbrella," "Girlfriend."  But true to her words in Seattle, Marié didn't play "Miss Invisible," and, although there was sustained applause following her show, there was no encore. 

I did find a small pocket of fans in Portland who came to see Eric Hutchinson.  "I saw him fill in at a Jazz show a year or so ago," a thirty-something music enthusiast and computer programmer from Camus, WA. said.  "He is fantastic.  When I heard he was coming to Portland, I had to see him again." 

Marié Digby and Eric Hutchinson made a wonderfully complimentary mix.  The computer programmer summed it up for me, "This is great.  I came out to hear one performer and I get to discover another I can enjoy just as much.  It's a real bonus." 

Digby and Hutchinson are great melding of complimentary styles and talents.  I'd definitely go see either or both of them again, even in back-to-back shows (which I did). 

Grassroots Popularity

Last year The Wall Street Journal ran a front page story about Marié Digby, suggesting her internet popularity was due to a "secret" album deal with Disney's Hollywood Records. 

In order of importance:  

1)  Marié Digby's "secret" album deal was not secret.  EVERYONE who had paid attention to her rise already knew she was going to do a professionally produced album.  The album was part of her prize for winning the Pantene Pro-Voice^® music competition. 

2)  How does anything "secret" makes an entertainer more popular?  The WSJ does not explain this magical phenomena.  Apparently the idea is that Marié Digby's YouTube MySpace fans would have liked her home recordings and videos less, if she had not been "secretly" signed with Disney. 

The weird thing is, I still love her music, even after her "secret" Disney album came out.  It was released, in April, debuting at #29 on Billboard's top 200 (the same week Leona Lewis who edged out Ray Quinn for number one on Great Britain's X-Factor, hit #1).  Now Marié has a second album out, and I'm still nuts about her.  Explain that WSJ! 

However this WSJ concept may launch a whole new mode of stardom.  "Secret Stardom."  Hey, maybe I can be one. 

I guess the real point is, any publicity is good publicity.  Leona Lewis never got a WSJ front page. 

-- Horace J. Digby (no relation) 
http://www.lexingtonfilm.com