Interview: Other Voices
Posted on 28. Feb, 2007 by admin in Lisa News.
Interviews
This interview is transcribed from Lisa’s appearance on Other Voices, an Irish TV show that was first broadcast on February 28th, 2007.
The interview was conducted by John Kelly.
JK: When you were about, I dunno, say about 11 or 12, would you have had a party piece or a particular song that you would have sung?
LH: At that stage I wanted to be an opera singer and I got really obsessed with Maria Callas, and I was listening to that all of the time, singing along to that. So that would have been my party piece.
JK: Did you have that kind of operatic voice in a natural way or did you sort of effect it?
LH: I sort of put it on like an accent really. It wouldn’t be that natural to me, but I could put it on like an accent. So that’s why I wasn’t really that good at it obviously.
JK: And at school then were you engaged in the school musicals and the choir and all that kind of thing?
LH: I did but I never got any lead parts because I was so quiet. Mine was a very, very small voice. And I only sort of got loud when I discovered microphones. And then only very small roles, I’d be in the chorus. And loved it, but I wasn’t the lead. I wasn’t Eliza Doolittle at any point. I was the urchin. Second urchin with candle.
JK: How did you become then a singer, a public singer, someone who would get on stage? Was it just fortuitous encounters with other people?
LH: Yeah, it was a fortuitous encounter with Damien, that I bumped into him and eventually ended up singing a song with him at a gig in Whelan’s. But it took awhile for it to really happen. I remember seeing a video of the first gig we ever did in Whelan’s and I stood about three feet away from the microphone, head down, hands locked in a very awkward position in my pockets, and shaking for the whole time. So it was lucky that they gave me a second go.
JK: And how long did it take to, not get over the nerves, but get over that initial sort of terror, I imagine?
LH: Just a few goes at it. I still get nervous for things.
JK: Well they say it’s good to be nervous.
LH: Yeah I think so, ’cause that’s what keeps you on your toes really. And anytime that I haven’t been nervous, I don’t think that it’s worked out so well.
