My Life Under the Covers Explained

By Mary Scholz

What IS the “My Life Under the Covers” project?

A few months ago I was putting together a book of cover songs to have available to me when I performed down at the 3^rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica, California. I was also compiling new covers to throw into sets at shows where the crowd seemed a little on the rowdy side, or where people had already heard the ones I love to play so much.
Then I got thinking about some of my all time favorite songs. Why had I never learned to play and perform those? I had always wanted to play the guitar and piano so that I could write all of the songs that were pent up inside of me, and so that when it came time to perform, I didn’t have to rely on anyone but myself to make it happen. But my desire to get my own music written down left me skipping what is usually everyone’s first step: learning to play the songs that made you love music in the first place.
But I didn’t want to just learn the songs. I wanted to learn about why they meant so much to me; to get to know myself a little better. And I wanted to share that with you;  so that you might get to know me a little better too.

So I decided that I was going to start a project – the My Life Under the Covers project.

Step One: Make a list. The list must consist of the songs that most seriously influenced or inspired me – either as a musician or a human being, struggling with the ongoing changes or life.

Step Two: Figure out why these songs meant so much to me. Why did they come to mind right away when thinking about the soundtrack of my life?

Step Three: Write it down.

Step Four: Make a simple, home recording of the song to attach to each individual song blog, and make it available as a free download to everyone reading.

Just a little piece of me, reaching out to a little piece of you.

I hope you enjoy.

(This project will also serve as a lead up to the release of the music video for “Hide,” which is where this photo comes from!)

It’s taken me two full weeks to figure out what I wanted to say about this. I’ve written many versions of this blog, but when I woke up today I realized what it was that I really wanted to say. It’s not going to be very eloquent – in fact I think it’s going to get a little choppy. But I just want to get to the point.

The Arts saves lives. It has continually, throughout my entire life, been an irreplaceable outlet for me. It has saved my life numerous times.

The world knows me as a positive, happy person. Which is the truth. But I have my undercurrent of sadness and  points of depression. And one of the things that continually came to my aid in these times was the arts. Music. Acting. Painting. Writing. I don’t know where I would be today without them. Certainly not living the life I am or pursuing this career. I know for a fact that I wouldn’t be as happy, or feel as fulfilled. I was made to do these things – born to lead a life pursuing the arts. What would have happened if I was never provided with the education that taught me just how to use the things I felt inside of me?

What about the kids who maybe aren’t born to pursue a career in the arts but learn how to communicate through music, or find therapy in painting? What about the ones who learn how to make friends because they find common ground with their classmates who also feel the need to be on stage?

Education in the arts is not just about learning a craft, but developing crucial communication skills that can and will be applied later no matter what other field a person eventually enters. Additionally, the arts allows a person to communicate not just with others, but with themselves. Learning about yourself and learning to have love and confidence in yourself is one of the most important lessons you can learn in school.

As a voice teacher, my favorite moments with students are the ones where you can see them become proud of themselves – proud of their work. No longer afraid to let their voice be heard because they know that it matters. Because it does matter.

An arts education provides learning about cultures all over the world. Cultures that our children need to learn about to better understand how our world moves. How economies work. What is held sacred to others. Understanding each other is the only way the world can move forward in a positive way. Learning about passions expressed through art from all over the world helps provide that understanding.

You may not connect with another person because you come from two very different locations and upbringings. But what about that moment when you both realize that you have the same favorite song that came to your aid in a time of suffering or crisis. Suddenly you understand something about each other. A huge step towards having compassion for those who are different from you.

Education in the arts allowed me to learn about myself, kept me from bringing harm to myself when I was in my darkest moments, and helped bring light to my life every day.

Don’t discount the power of education in the arts just because you think it is not applied to life as readily as math or science. It is applied daily, in everyone’s lives – musicians, accountants, engineers, teachers, actors, mechanics. We are all alike – please don’t take away what teaches us that this is true.

Please sign this petition to keep the arts in the Upper Darby School District.

www.saveudarts.org

It was an exciting week for music last week here in Hollywood! Wednesday April 18th was the ASCAP Pop Awards at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel where the writers and performers of the last year’s top Pop songs were honored. I had the opportunity to work the event as an escort for the red carpet. Basically this meant that I would walk the red carpet with attendees and let the press know who was coming up.

My first trip down the red carpet was with Grammy Award Winning songwriter and performer Dan Wilson. Some of you might recognize him from his days as a member of the band Semisonic – and for writing their hit song, “Closing Time.” Most recently he won Grammys for co-writing and producing the song “Someone Like You” with/for Adele. Here is a link of his acoustic version of the song! I did get a little video of him singing it at the award ceremony but not a long enough clip to post myself.

In the forefront of this picture is Peter Frampton being interviewed, with Dan Wilson just behind him. Not two seconds after I took this photo Jane Fonda made her way down the carpet and I was standing between three insanely talented and successful individuals. I loved that moment

Here is the beautiful Katy Perry walking the red carpet! Her song “Firework” was honored that night.

The Expo itself was filled with great panel discussions on songwriting, music as a business, marketing, touring and more. Some of the highlights for me was getting to hear Carly Simon speak (she received the lifetime achievement awards at the Pop Awards), bumping in to Eric Bazillion and watching The Smeezingtons (Bruno Mars, Phillip Lawrence and Ari Levine) entertain the crowd of songwriters and artists. Here is a small clip of those shenanigans

But my FAVORITE part as always is hearing from the songwriters behind the hits – people whose names or faces you might not recognize but whose work is the soundtrack of your life. People like Sam Hollander (Train’s “Marry Me”, Toby Gad (Fergie’s “Big Girls Don’t Cry”), Brian Kennady (Kelly Clarkson’s “Mr. Know It All”), JT Harding (Kenny Chesney’s “Somewhere With You”), Chris DiStefano (Jana Kramer’s “Why You Wanna”) and so many more.
As usual, it was an inspiring and insightful three days and I am so glad to have been a part of it! Thank you so much to ASCAP for always providing their members with excellent resources for furthering our careers!

(Read up on what ASCAP is doing to help secure copyright and intellectual property laws for creators and songwriters like myself!)

This is a photo of me and my good friend Tiffany Gilman on the red carpet last Wednesday. Such a fun event! Thanks to Bobbi Marcus PR for having me!

This last photo is me with two awesome songwriters and friends of mine, Jill Krachmer and Elyse Haren. We realized it had been exactly one year since we met and became friends (at last year’s Expo) so we cheesed up the photo a bit. But hey, it was a big deal for me meeting fabulous women who would become a few of my best friends in my new home!

I hope you enjoyed this little taste of Expo week in Hollywood – I’ll be checking in again soon!

It’s April already? We’re knee deep in editing for the “Water Rising” music video and “Hide” is almost ready for your viewing pleasure as well!! Here’s a couple of screen shots…

In case you didn’t catch it (which you probably didn’t because I didn’t really tell anyone about it…) here is a screen shot of me in 90210 – it was the music festival episode and you can see me walking around a few times as well as right behind the main characters here…

I’ve also been a busy bee working on “Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie” on the production end, doing some location scouting, extras casting and Assistant to the Directors on set. I’ll also be working as an actor for the film closer to the end of the shoot. I love working with this crew – it’s been a great experience! I’ll post more photos as the shoot goes on.

So I’m keeping busy!

On  a more personal note, I’m endlessly enjoying the beautiful weather and hiking that Los Angeles has to offer…here’s a shot from a hike I took to the Hollywood sign on Easter Sunday!

 I hope all is well with you – Happy Spring!!

Well, Grammy week 2012 has come and gone and left me completely exhausted! As you can guess it’s a big week in music here in LA – tons of networking events that have you dressing up, running around and meeting a million people. I kind of loved it

Here are a few photos from the week! I had the opportunity to attend the Planet LA/ VH1 Save the Music Foundation Pre-Grammy Party on Thursday, the Renaissance/HMMA Pre-Party Saturday and the Rolling Stone After Party on Sunday!

As for the actual award ceremony, I’m making my way there, I’m making my way…

Loved all of Adele’s wins – he is amazingly talented and her album is equally amazing.

SO sad about Whitney Houston… she is a musical icon and I will always associate her and a couple of other beautiful women singers with the beginning of my love of song. I’ll get into that in another blog…

Rolling Stone Grammy After Party!

Wait wait, we’re 29 days into the new year and I haven’t posted yet?

Shameful!

Well if anything you know I’ve been busy.  But before I back track, let’s start with today!

Starting at 2pm I will be dancing as a part of Penn State Los Angeles Alumni’s Hollywood Dance-A-THON with my friend Matt, who is a PSU alum. What is THON, you ask? Great question. It’s like running a marathon for charity, but instead you raise money and promise to dance for hours and hours straight! This yearly event (with the main event hosted at PSU for a full 46 hours…we only dance 6 here in Hollywood) is a very familiar and important one to my family, as the fundraiser is to raise money for pediatric cancer research and awareness. As some of you may know, my family lost my beautiful six year old cousin Tyler to neuroblastoma in 1997. His sister, my cousin Megan, has been participating heavily in this event for years. This is the first year that I have had the opportunity to participate and I am so excited to do so.

To read more about this cause and to donate money, please visit THIS WEBSITE - I’m pushing all donations to Matt’s page!

It seems to have been a Penn State themed week for me – I think last night was the only day of the week that I didn’t see at least one PSU alum…I am not one myself (UArts baby!) but as it a big school for my family and a lot of my friends (not to mention the many many weekends I spent there in college), between THON, JoePa, football, crazy travel stories to get there and the giant margaritas at Mad Mex, there was a lot of blue and white chatter going on.

Penn Sate is usually known for all of those things – football, parties and post-party-pizza…but what it should be known for is the work it has done with the largest student run philanthropy in the world. They’ve raised over 78 Million dollars benefitting the Four Diamonds Fun at Penn State Hershey Children’s Hospital.

I plan to live stream a little bit from the event on my phone if I have decent enough cell reception – we’ll be dancing from 2-8pm pacific and you can access my UStream page HERE.

Have a wonderful rest of your weekend everyone, and thank you in advance for your donations!

“When they say ‘We Are Penn State,’ this is what they are talking about.” – Joe Paterno

(For more info about THON and how to get involved, visit www.thon.org)

Well well well… another year gone by… (insert comment about how time flies here)

One day until 2012 – I’ve got myself a little year end cold so I’m hoping to wrap that up along with the end of this year!

It’s been big year for me as you know – relocating to Los Angeles, the HMMA nomination, music videos and other fun stuff.

Do you mind if I jump around a bit? I thought it might be more fun than going in chronological order…I promise to follow some kind of order, but let’s do some jumping first, shall we?

In August I had the opportunity to act in a music video for Disney/Pop star Drew Seeley – it was a blast! (You may know him from High School Musical, Another Cinderella Story and other fun flicks.)

Here’s a photo with Drew, the cast and crew and the final product!

Also in August (and September) I did some background work for CSI: NY, CSI: Miami and Good Christian Bells.

A few of the people I had the pleasure of meeting along the way or working with…

Some show pics from the year…

I started out the year on the road – in the snow – on a southern tour. The snow literally followed me the whole way down through Nashville and Atlanta, where they had a record breaking ice storm. Getting to Louisville was a challenge – apparently they don’t salt the roads in Cincinnati and truthfully, after driving through blustery snow for a while it starts to look like a scene from Star Wars. Since I was going south I didn’t bother to pack my snow boots – foolish – but my cowboy boots really lived up to the job!

Nashville was awesome – I met some incredibly talented musicians and look forward to returning there sometime soon to do some writing!

In February I made my way out to Los Angeles for a two week stint of shows there and San Diego. Also to do a little apartment hunting

On April 14th I performed on NBC’s The 10! Show to promote my Bon Voyage Show at the Tin Angel which was held that same night. That show’s turnout was incredible – one of my favorite performances to date for sure. Thank you to everyone who was there!

I went out to LA one more time again before making the move (literally a week later) – it was my second time at the ASCAP Expo and I thoroughly recommend it for indie artists looking to network and learn about the business of their craft.

A week later was the big road trip (find that blog and photos HERE)

Since living on the west coast I’ve had the opportunity to explore my hobby of photography a bit – I posted a few blogs about that as well, which you can find HERE and HERE….

Here’s a little look at it…

While back home in September I wrapped up filming for the Hide Music Video – final product coming soon It was awesome working with Jonathan and Mike again.

I have absolutely loved living in Los Angeles and getting to know the area and the artists who live there. I’ve been writing with other songwriters (songs like THIS ONE!)

It hasn’t all been work and no play though – I have loved having visitors and doing fun things like taking a road trip to San Francisco, seeing the Phillies beat the Dodgers (sorry Dodger fans), hiking the Hollywood Hills and taking tours of Hollywood!

November brought filming for the Water Rising Music Video as well as the Hollywood Music and Media Awards. Both were excellent experiences – if you click on those links you can see the blogs about those as well! Getting to walk the red carpet for the first time as a nominee was really special and fun. 

I rounded out the year back in Philly for a show at World Cafe Live and for holidays with my family. It certainly has been a whirlwind year and I am so happy to get to share it with you all! Thank you always for your support and encouragement – here is to another year of grand adventures in 2012!!

Merry Christmas Everyone! Just a couple of things to add to your holiday cheer – first off, two free downloads of Christmas tunes sung by yours truly – just visit www.soundcloud.com/mary-scholz and click the download arrow right next to “add to set.”

The song “A Silent Noel” was arranged and sung by myself and my sister Hilary!

Also, here are videos from last week’s concert at World Cafe Live in Philadelphia.

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season, no matter what you are celebrating!

Merry Christmas!!

Well, we had our day of underwater filming – and I do believe it was a success!

First of all, I should explain that the dreams I had that brought on the song I wrote that we are now turning into a music video ALSO brought about a bit of an issue for me when it comes to water. Usually that issue is only a problem in the ocean, but much to my surprise, when we started working under water in the pool for the shoot, I got a bit panicky! My crew and awesome fellow actor helped me through the work and I am really excited to see how everything turned out.

Special Thank You goes out to the Richardson Family for opening their home and heating their pool…and to Brian and Nima who spent so much of the windy December day in the water with me!

And of course thanks to my crew – Sarrahh, Nick, Chris and Eric!

Here is a video I put together as well as photos from the day! Obviously it’s a pool…but the end effect should be like swimming in the ocean…

Getting notes from Director of Photography Brian Alan Plummer

The incredibly dashing and fantastically talented Nima Dabestani!

Makeup by Sarrahh Blank

Out of the water and all warmed up…thank goodness!

Thanks to Eric Viale for the photos!

Well last week we started filming the “Water Rising” music video…had a few hiccups to start out, but ended up with a beautiful day for filming!

(Someone asked about the plot of the video…well the song is about a reoccurring nightmare I  have involving a tidal wave and being ripped away…so in short, that’s also what the video is about! It’s part of a two video series, beginning with the video for “Hide” – yet to be released – where I find myself from one dream into another, this time the scarier one, where I am on what looks like a beautiful cliff but what really lies ahead is imminent danger…)

On Saturday we’ll be doing the underwater sequence – totally new territory for us all, so it should be … interesting… and eventful

Here’s behind the scenes scouting locations as well as the first … two … days of filming and some pictures! Enjoy

The Good Year Blimp made a guest appearance on scouting day…

The rainy day where we DIDN’T film…

AND finally the day that we DID…

The day was not without casualties though…we had to climb down a pathway to reach the rocks where we filmed part of the video…and there was definitely a cactus attack along the way…

I can’t wait to share the finished product with you!!