There was a lot of bonding going on at the piano bar last week…

My husband Bill and I have just come back from a two week vacation in Italy and Greece. We always have a great time when we take trips and this last one was no exception. We spent a night in Venice, two nights in Florence, two nights in Rome, a week cruising on SeaDream I, and three nights in Athens. Our trip was surprisingly musical, too. I discovered an amazingly talented guitar player in Florence and bought a couple of his CDs while he was playing in a piazza. I bought a couple of CDs in Greece, which I haven’t listened to yet. And I also spent quite a lot of time singing at the piano bar on SeaDream I.

SeaDream I is one of two ships owned by SeaDream Yacht Club. It carries no more than 112 passengers and 95 staff members at a time. There were 99 people on our cruise and since there aren’t any shows or revues, after dinner, people have to make their own entertainment. Since I like to sing, I usually head to the piano bar, where George the Filipino pianist plays hits for the masses. He seems to specialize in music from the 70s and 80s, which is also the music I know best. He has several books with lyrics in them and there’s a microphone, which gets passed around to those who want to sing. I like to show up early, so I can sing Bill a song in relative privacy, before all the other guests come in and it turns into a rowdy party.

The first time we cruised on SeaDream, it was April 2010. I didn’t go to the piano bar once during that trip, but I did take part in a rather pathetic karaoke session led by the ship’s guitar player, who wasn’t at all interested in putting on a good show and didn’t have the best materials for doing karaoke, anyway. Ironically, I ended up meeting someone in the music business that night during the lame karaoke session, which was only attended by about half a dozen people. After a rousing rendition of Carole King’s “I Feel The Earth Move”, a slender woman approached me and asked if I was in the music business. I said I was a housewife. She introduced herself to me and said that she and her husband, Kenny, work with Joan Jett. Then she asked me if I knew who Joan Jett was. Of course, having grown up in the 1980s, I knew exactly who Joan Jett is.

I didn’t think much of the meeting at the time. Her husband had stopped my husband in the hall to thank him for serving in the US Army and he told him stories of working with the USO with Joan Jett. I figured maybe the man was in her band, since I later heard his wife making a comment about how he didn’t like it when she goaded him into playing piano. When we got home after that trip, I looked them up and discovered that Bill and I had just met Kenny and Meryl Laguna, Joan Jett’s managers. They had taken a chance on helping launch Jett’s career at a time when no one else wanted to work with her because of her edgy style. The move paid off handsomely. I became Facebook friends with Meryl, who is a very charming and friendly lady and as down to earth as a person can possibly be.

On our next cruise, in November 2011, we were celebrating our anniversary. Karaoke was not offered that week; but even if it had been, I was determined to try singing in the piano bar. So Bill and I went there at 9:30pm and I shyly asked George if he could play “Someone To Watch Over Me”, which was the song Bill and I danced to at our wedding reception. I sang along and about midway through my song, one of the passengers we had befriended on the first day came in. He was surprised to hear me singing and said to Bill, “Now I see why you love her…” Yes, he really did say that. But I give him a pass because he was cruising alone, having just lost his wife to breast cancer. I think it was a rough week for him.

On that cruise, Bill and I befriended a couple from England, with whom I still correspond, mainly to pass along cruise ship gossip. The husband is a pilot for EasyJet, and when we weren’t hanging around the piano bar singing hits from the 70s and 80s, we were sitting at a table near the pool bar, talking about his job while sinking cocktails. Later that week, while we were in the piano bar, a bunch of rowdy Norwegians came in and hijacked my camera. They took a bunch of pictures of me having fun at the piano bar. Personally, I think my photos are best when I’m not in them, but I can’t deny that they got a couple of shots that show me with a sunburn looking like I’m genuinely enjoying myself. That’s what vacations are all about, right?

So last week, we were on our third SeaDream cruise. George noticed me waving at him, though I don’t think he remembered me from that last cruise in 2011. I didn’t expect him to, since he sees thousands of people every year. He asked me why I was so friendly and I said it was because I’m a big fan of the piano bar. And sure enough, at 9:30pm, I was there ready to sing. The first night went very well, but then I caught a nasty cold, which forced me to take a couple of nights off. I like to take a couple of nights off anyway, just to give other people the chance to enjoy the piano bar without me there, bogarting the mic!

There weren’t a whole lot of other singers on last week’s cruise. However, there was one German guy who was a hell of a piano player. I never caught his name, though he did come over and sing with me a couple of times. And one night, he managed to get George to let him tickle the ivories. George was a very good sport, since the guy turned out to be very accomplished. After the guy played a few songs, he gave George his spotlight back.

Bill never sings because he can’t. The only songs he can do are ones that require speaking, like King Missile’s “Detachable Penis”; and that’s not the most appropriate song for a cruise ship lounge. But Bill does sit around and watch people, which can be fascinating. A lot of times, people come up to him and ask about me. He tells them about my musical family who never heard me sing until I was 18 years old. Last week, we met a lovely couple from Belfast, Northern Ireland who lit up when I sang “Danny Boy” for them. The husband ended up bonding with Bill over glasses of scotch.

I know a lot of people like big cruise ships because there’s so much to do on those big vessels. For me, give me a small ship with a little piano bar and a pianist with game, where I can fulfill my fantasies of being a lounge singer for a few nights. I find the piano bar is a great place to meet people of all walks of life; bonding with people through music is a great way to break the ice. As one of our fellow passengers last week said, “Music is the universal language.” I was reminded last week of how very true that is.