The Singing Witch

This weekend I competed at the USKA Washington state final for Rock(Saturday) and Pop(Sunday) at the Airport Tavern in Tacoma. I learned a lot, made friends and sang my little heart out. Since the finals for Country and Showtunes are not until end of June, I thought it would be helpful to share my experience for the community.

As a neuro-spicy individual, expectations matter to have a good time at an event. Since I had no idea what to expect I overprepared and it ended up working out. However, I would have liked to know the following things before the event and I’m hoping that sharing this will help you be prepared for the day.

• Call Time was listed as 10-11am, but the venue didn’t open their doors until 10:30 on Saturday, 10:45 on Sunday. Don’t get there too early.
• Showtime is around 12:30-1pm, but if you don’t check in you don’t get on the list to sing. After you check in you can come and go as you please.
• The men sing first. This means that you may be waiting 5+ hours until you sing. On Saturday I sang around 5:30pm and was the 10th singer. On Sunday there were less men but I was #26 on the list and sang around 6:10pm.
• The men’s final 8 were announced after the women finished singing around 8:30pm and the women’s final started around 9:30pm. Everything wraps up with the final awards around 10:45pm. Be ready to be there for 12 hours because they want you to stay until the end to support the singers.
• It was really loud in the room, like concert loud. I wore earplugs the whole time until I performed. Backstage the sound was fine, but several people were getting hearing loss and ringing due to the sound. If you are sensitive to sound, bring earplugs!
• Clothing: Many performers brought suitcases with 2 performance outfits and wore their street clothes to the venue. This is the way! Luckily I overprepared and had lots of stuff ready but many women did not.

Even though I was not prepared, I had an absolute blast! I met some super cool people and had two full days of entertainment for free. The judges feedback was really great to get at the end too. I did way better than I thought and would compete again. Shout out to Leonard who took amazing photos and was giving full dad joke vibes both days.

I think song choice and showcasing your vocal range is critical to be in the top 8 for women. A solid performance is just average at the competition. I sat there in awe of the talent that showed up. Incredible! One of the women who won Pop was in her 70s and did Mariah Carrey. That’s the level of incredible vocals we heard this weekend.

If you are curious about what it was like, you can watch the live stream recordings of both days on Matthew Kroeger’s Facebook page. My performance is around 5:13 on Saturday and 6:09 on Sunday. You can barely hear my vocal on Sunday’s recording but watching that will give you a really good idea of what the day is like.