In a two-part episode of Washington Square On-Air, Melissa Ford Lucken continues her conversation with singer, writer, and statistician Jarod Jeffery, who enrolled in Lansing Community College after completing two intensive gifted & talented academic programs at Michigan State University, describes his DIY approach to his own high school curriculum, how finishing math coursework early led him to creative writing, and the art of singing pop songs vs. musical numbers.

Related Podcast: Calculating the Probability of Truth, Pt. 1

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Washington Square On-Air is the audio town square for the Washington Square Review, Lansing Community College's literary journal. Writers, readers, scholars, publishing professionals, citizens of the world, gather here and chat about all things writing. So after lcc, you went to Grand Valley?

Yes. Had four fine years.

Okay.

And your major was Music. And my primary instrument was voice.

All right.

Not that you can tell from this, you know, conversation, but.

Okay, well, you let us know about your minor. So that seems. That's a striking difference between those two.

Part of it was definitely that I just wanted to have some kind of minor. And again, my major, the music major, was so course heavy. Trying to fit in like anything else was just really difficult. So, you know, I'm.

Like I said, I'm very structured. So, like, I was researching everything, even when I applied for schools, about, like, how are my credits going to transfer? What credits do I need?

How would I structure my course?

And I still have the spreadsheet I made with outlining all of the different courses I need and, like, the different times that I could do them and all that jazz. And so I picked mathematical statistics because I was still interested and intrigued by it.

And then I had, you know, plenty of basis from high school and LCC to make the move that way.

Okay, how did you pick theater as your major?

Yeah, to put it simply, I didn't get everything out of high school that I wanted in terms of performance opportunities. So junior year of high school, I went to my voice teacher and said, I'm gonna go to college for performing. And she was like, great.

Let's start, you know, rehearsing, and let's start preparing for college auditions. So then, senior year in the fall, I auditioned for four schools. Msu, Western U of M, and gvsu.

And I was lucky enough to get into all of them, so I had my pick of the litter. But I did go with gvsu, partially because I am also very financially motivated, and that was the best.

That's where I had the best scholarships and whatnot. And, you know, I always say there are three things that I got out of college the most. That is a degree, amazing friends, and minimal student debt.

And I am now proud to say that that minimal student debt is zero student debt.

Nice.

Regardless of some of my experiences at GVSU in the music department, I am still.

You know, I don't necessarily think I would have changed my decision because I. I don't think I would do well with $200,000 in student loans looming over my head the way it would have if I had Gone to like maybe MSU or U of M. That could.

Be a difficult balance. Working in theater and trying to pay off a large chunk of.

Exactly. No, because I did have. After I graduated, I did have a performance apprenticeship at a professional theater.

And we were provided housing and then a $200 a week stipend, which.

So no food.

Yeah, no, you had to use the $200 a week for your food. So, you know, we made it work. But it was just.

It's not exactly, you know, living wage when they're providing housing and you're like, not in New York City. It's. It's definitely doable. But nonetheless, if I had been trying to pay student loans at the time as well.

And that was over the summer.

There was like a two week break at the beginning of October, but then we came back for one fall seasonal show.

So it was definitely an experience again, even in college, you know, I went to college and did music because I was like, I want performance opportunities that I'm not getting in high school. And unfortunately, similar issues persisted in college.

I still, again, there were various different things that I really appreciate about college friends. I did love a lot of my professors. And, you know, like, without going to college, I probably never would have studied stuff like music history. But I.

Since I did have some great professors in music theory and music history, which really did, you know, inspire me and to learn just in general. I had, yeah, I was interested and I did do a lot more learning about that stuff than I ever would have. And I am definitely grateful.

And they're still. I still think about them and they're just. They're exceptional people. They were exceptional professors.

And so I definitely appreciate, regardless of any performance opportunities I did or did not get in college, I again, don't regret my choice. I got a lot of good things out of it.

One thing that comes up a lot from everything you've been talking about is how strategic you are, you know, and figuring out this is what I want to happen. So you didn't really go to college. Just like, this will be fun. I'll get some kind of experience.

I'm guessing you probably had some pretty clear expectations of what you were hoping would happen.

You. Yeah. Yes. And yeah, unfortunately, what we expect and hope don't always work out. But I did still. Yeah, I went very much in with the idea of a plan.

And like, I, you know, just during college auditions, there are people who audition for like, they will audition for, like, 30 colleges for, like, music or musical theater programs and whatnot. And I very much was like, well, if I go out of state, I'm going to be spending so much more money than in state. And, you know, well, just going to.

The audition has to be expensive.

Mm. And when I have, like, Michigan has really amazing music schools and theater schools in state, so I was like, I don't see any reason not to.

So, you know, know, I did research other schools heavily, and, you know, that $60,000 a year really did just look absolutely terrible, especially to me, who had never made more than $14 an hour in a job. So I was like, okay, I am. So I very much was just. I was. Yeah, I had a goal and an expectation, and then I did, you know, I did meet those goals.

The first goal was to get into the college and, you know, not be limited by choice because I did or did not get into any school because I didn't initially know, is there one I want to go to more than others? And then, you know, part of it was just waiting, like, if you get in, great. If you don't get in, the decision is made for you.

But I did get in, so I got to make that choice for myself. And I did get to go to these schools for the auditions and see them, because I didn't do a lot of college tours in high school at all.

So I did find out that, no offense to Western Michigan. I hate their campus. I hate the city of Kalamazoo.

Just the aesthetics of it.

It's ugly.

I remember driving into the city for my audition, and as soon as I got in the city limits, it smelled like cigarettes, and I was like, I don't like that at all.

Yeah, well, Grand Valley's really beautiful.

Yes.

It's got the lake.

Yes.

It's hard to compete with that.

Yeah.

No, and it's a nice, small, walkable campus, and, like, I lived right off campus junior and senior year, and so the bus stop was right outside my town home, and I just.

That's pretty great.

Yeah.

What kind of singing did you do in college? Or what's your favorite kind of singing to do outside of college? How does that.

However that works? Yeah. So in college, you know, very much focus on classical and musical theater outside of school.

Like, I love musical theater, and, like, ideally, that was. And, you know, potentially eventually still is the route of, you know, musical performance that I'd want to go in.

But, you know, I don't admittedly listen to as many musical soundtracks as Most people expect and think I probably should. I remember that theater apprenticeship I did.

Suddenly I felt very out of place, mainly because they were singing songs, you know, just while working and doing stuff and talking about musicals that I never seen, never listened to, never heard of. And suddenly I was like, wow, do I actually like musical theater that much?

But I think the main thing that I gathered is just that I prefer to be on stage than seeing the shows. And that's not trying to be arrogant. That's just. I have more fun that way.

Okay.

And so outside of, you know, that aspect of performing, though, I listen to a lot of different. Just like, you know, pop and indie and alternative artists.

And so I don't, you know, not doing a lot of performing these days, except for, you know, the occasional solo at church. And, you know, that's fun and nice. I do appreciate that. But other than that, I am singing in the car every single morning on my way to work.

I'm glad to hear that.

No, I sang all the way here from work to the studio.

Nice. You and I were talking before we started recording about the way that you approach singing for musical theater versus singing for a pop song.

Yeah.

So one thing my voice teacher in college had mentioned for my senior recital, I basically was like, here's everything I want to sing, you know, and I just took it to her, and I was like, this is what I want to do. And she's like, all right, we'll make this work.

Because, you know, there are still certain expectations because it's basically one of your final projects for the. For your degree. But we made it work for the structure that they expected. And two of the songs I wanted to sing were, like, indie pop songs.

And so, you know, I'm singing them, I'm rehearsing them, and then at one point, she just stops me, and she was like, you're not really saying this like a pop artist. And I was like, okay, what do I need to do? And, you know, regardless of vibrato and timbre and however you do that.

One main distinction she made was that, you know, in musical theater and opera, you are playing a character, and you have to bring a certain amount of realism to that character. Opera, less so they are more over the top, essentially, but you're still inhabiting a character and giving.

You know, you can draw on your own personal realism for it, but you are still existing within a story. Whereas pop, it's more like sung poetry.

And so in that way, it is very much about the individual performer's personal experience with the song and then using the song as an opportunity to share that with the audience.

So, you know, I had to think about it differently very much in terms of just vocal stylization because especially since a lot of pop artists don't really use a lot of vibrato because it's very, it's very toxing. Like even musical theater is very more like is also talk singing, particularly compared to opera.

But there's still a certain amount of essentially space in the throat and whatnot to make it this beautiful quality of sound and stuff that even like non Americans still, when doing musical theater, often will sound American because the American accent is the natural singing accent when singing classical. And with that space though, obviously, you know, you can have an accent when, whenever you want to, if you try really hard.

But you know, with pop, no matter what, because of just how much more in yourself it is, you know, it's not to say you're not singing as beautifully, but you're singing in a different way that your accent and tone will come through.

So, you know, one of the songs I was singing, the artist was Australian and she sounded Australian, which, I mean, one, I will say this, I have a terrible time recognizing different like accents of English.

I work at a job where I get calls all the time and sometimes I get people from Australia, England, New Zealand, Ireland, and I cannot tell them apart to save my life.

Maybe eventually.

Maybe eventually.

But yeah, it's very much just about how, how you approach it in terms of letting yourself be in the song and letting the song be a part of yourself and just letting that influence. Because when you're reading poetry, when you're speaking poetry, you're not necessarily going for this huge performance. You are.

It's a performance, but it's not the same. It's not a character.

It's meant to be more. You yourself are part of the expression of the song.

Exactly.

Okay, well, you mentioned your day job.

I was unemployed for quite a while. Not for lack of trying, let it be known, but I was living in my parents basement just spending most of my time applying.

I got a temp job scoring 6th grade writing papers for the states of Indiana and Nevada. So that was interesting. But that lasted four and a half weeks.

And then after I ended up being told by someone from my church to, you know, they work at Jackson and they were like, oh, well, you know, they're always hiring at Jackson. Try something there.

And so I saw that and Helen was like, I think I have good enough customer, like, you know, people skills to be able to do this job. So I applied.

It was the quickest turnaround time of anything because I'd only gotten two interviews before that of the like 40, 50 and more jobs I could have.

Well, that was a rough time to be looking for jobs.

Yeah, it was not a great, Definitely not great. So it was the fastest turnaround time, which definitely made me hopeful that they wanted me.

And then, you know, the interview happened and it was like a Wednesday and they said, you'll probably hear back Monday, but maybe as fast as Friday. And then I did hear back Friday and I was very grateful.

I was not able to start for another month and a half from that point, which I was not as thrilled by, mainly because I was running out of disposable income at that point that I had saved from my previous temp jobs and whatnot. So nonetheless, I started there. And it's definitely very different from a lot of the stuff I've done.

My math skills definitely come into play because I'm dealing with. I don't deal with the life insurance. We don't sell life insurance anymore, but we still have those policies. I don't deal with that.

I never want to deal with that. Fingers crossed. But I deal with annuities, which are essentially a type of supplemental retirement income vessel.

I primarily deal with variable annuities, which are annuities invested in the market.

And so, you know, there are all different kinds of like add on benefits and stuff, and bells and whistles that get added onto these policies which involve different kinds of math all the time. So I definitely appreciate still having my math skills and all that jazz.

But I spend, you know, every single day talking to tons of strangers basically constantly. Right now it's tax season, so it's our busiest time of the year. And so we are, yes, we are very busy, thankfully the last couple of days.

Again, fingers crossed. I've, you know, I've had little pauses between the calls.

Okay.

But because they get auto routed to us, it's an inbound call center. And so I've had little breaks, but you know, at the beginning, the very beginning of the year, it was just back to back to back one call.

And, and thankfully, we're not measured by the number of calls we take.

We're measured essentially on how much time we have to spend in what's called after calling, where we're working on or like, submitting our notes and saving details so that we don't. Because, you know, the less time you spend doing that is the quicker you can get to another caller.

And obviously they still emphasize, you know, quality over quality and efficiency over just quickness.

But thankfully, we're not being measured on the number of calls we take because that would not work because there have been days where I only got three calls because it was just slow. It was a Friday and it was right before a holiday weekend.

All right, that makes sense. All right, I got one last question. Do people at work know you can sing.

Some of them. It depends on if they were. There's this organization, I don't remember what it stands for, but it's called sqm.

They measure, like, essentially effectiveness and quality and satisfaction for different call centers across North America and whatnot. And we have been one of the top three for, like, many years, including last year. And so we had a celebration in July for that.

And so at the SQM celebration, we had the Dueling pianists.

So two pianists came and they basically just were like, you know, put a song on a piece of paper, put it in the jar, we'll pull it, and then we will play it and sing it together. You know, assumingly songs that they hopefully should know. I put in Pink Pony Club by Chapel Roan.

He pulled it first and then he said, I'm not gonna start with Pink Pony Club. I will come back to this. So he played it second, and then I sang along with, like, half of it. So all of my co workers who were there.

Okay.

Should know. And you know, I can't say it was my perfect ultimate performance, but nonetheless, I was. I had a good time. And I think they know I could sing.

And I definitely not because I like to brag, but I definitely have mentioned that I studied music in college.

Good. So they know there's another side to you.

Yes. No, I think my personality comes across very clearly to both callers and. And my co workers.

That's awesome. I'm glad about that. Well, thanks a lot for coming out and talking to me today.

Thank you so much for having me. I had a great time.

Awesome.

Thanks for stopping by the audio town square of the Washington Square Review. Until next time, this has been the Washington Square On-Air from Lansing Community College. To find out more about our writers, community and literary journal, visit lcc.edu/wsl. Writing is messy, but do it anyway