New Zealand-born and Australia-based Pub Choir creator Astrid Jorgensen is about to release her memoir Average At Best. She's touring Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch in November.
Why did the creator of Pub Choir really quit America’s Got Talent? What song is she touring to New Zealand? And why will her new book change the way you look at empty chip packets? Astrid Jorgensen conducts a tell-all interview with Kim Knight.
Astrid Jorgensen didn’t know it, but at a pub in Brisbane, the theme tune from Footrot Flats was about to change her life.
Da-da-da ba-du da-da-da ...
“I wanted to pick a song that felt immediately familiar. And it’s a wordless opening, right? You just immediately know that you can start singing along.”
Jorgensen, 35, is the New Zealand-born and Australia-based choral conductor, composer, producer and entertainer who took a good idea (and a Kiwi music classic) to a Queensland pub and ended up on the world stage.
At her Pub Choir gigs, she takes a song and, in a single evening, teaches hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of people to sing it in three-part harmony.
“A song one-night stand,” she recalls in her new memoir, Average at Best.
“Film it, post it, then NEVER DO IT AGAIN.”
In 2017, on that very first night at The Bearded Lady, 70 people harmonised to Dave Dobbyn’s Slice of Heaven.
Today, more than 100,000 people have been recorded singing Jorgensen’s version of Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen).
During Covid lockdowns she pivoted to Couch Choir, receiving 21,000 individual video submissions across 11 sessions.
Meanwhile, almost 20,000 have put their voices to her arrangement of Toto’s Africa – including, in June this year, the live television audience for America’s Got Talent.
Jorgensen made it to the quarter-finals of the wildly successful show and then quietly disappeared. What happened?
“Well,” she says, “I guess I can give you the scoop . . .”
Long story short, filming clashed with a private booking from billionaire business magnate and Virgin Group co-founder Sir Richard Branson who wanted Jorgensen to conduct a Pub Choir at the launch of his new cruise ship.
“We were sailing into New York harbour in front of the Statue of Liberty and a helicopter was filming from above and I was teaching and holding Sir Richard Branson’s hand. I decided I would choose that.”
It was all a very, very long way away from Gore.
Jorgensen was born in NZ. She last lived here, aged 7, when her father took a job as a high school deputy principal in small town Southland.
She remembers a pet lamb, pig and rabbit.
She climbed trees, there was a sheep farm next door and, at her primary school assemblies, the entire student body sang the theme tune from Friends.
She did extension learning via Correspondence School, with lessons delivered by post and radio broadcasts.
“I had this really analogue time in Gore that I only have fond memories of. Now, as an adult, I hear my parents recalling that time and maybe they had a different experience ...”
Gore, population 8340, is the hometown of former Prime Minister Dame Jenny Shipley and broadcaster Barry Soper.
It is famous for a country music festival, a giant fake brown trout and a defunct oatmeal porridge factory. (See also: Mikey Havoc, Jeremy “Newsboy” Wells and the incident nobody mentions anymore).
“Gore is wonderful,” affirms Jorgensen.
“I don’t know if Pub Choir has enough reach to fill a room everywhere we go in NZ, but maybe I’m building up to Gore?”
Next week, Jorgensen releases her memoir Average at Best ($42, Simon & Schuster Australia).
It is funny and frank. That time, for example, when 16-year-old Jorgensen travelled solo to Zambia to become a nun.
And the 18 months she spent pretending to be two people for the sole purpose of winning radio station merchandise. And, also, an absolutely unspeakable act involving an empty pack of potato chips, brand and flavour unspecified.
“My publisher said to me, that is a brave thing to put out there. Do you understand that when you do this, probably for the rest of your life, people will come up to you and tell you the story of when they s*** themselves?
“And I was like ‘that sounds great. I’m only hearing the positives’.”
(I can’t help myself: “Flame Grilled Steak,” she says, delivering this interview’s second exclusive scoop. “From the specials aisle at Aldi.”)
Jorgensen has rubbed musical shoulders with some very big names.
Mick Jagger wore a kimono to sound check. Neil Finn is “a lovely man”.
She has crossed paths with everyone from Kate Bush to Radiohead to Sir Barry Gibb to Simon Cowell via that aforementioned global talent show.
America’s Got Talent before Gore?
“That, I think, is the natural progression of things.”
Jorgensen is actually coming to NZ. Post-book release, she’ll tour Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch (November 9, 10 and 12).
She won’t reveal her chosen song in advance, except to say that for every show: “I think about where I am going and who I will be singing with and what possibly would feel right for the moment ... and as soon as I thought of it, I thought ‘that’ll feel good’.
“Sometimes I hear people say ‘I’ve been rehearsing’. What are you rehearsing? I haven’t told anyone the arrangement yet. Free yourself.
“Take a load off. Try and relax ... I’ll tell you what to do. Your job is to follow the instructions to the best of your ability, but somebody near you will be cleverer and they’ll figure it out and help. It’s fine.”
Also, to take a literal leaf out of Jorgensen’s new book, it’s okay to be average (at best).
“Singing is so personal,” she says.
“That’s why a lot of us carry this shame or embarrassment around it, because if you sing anything out of tune, which is bound to happen at some point for everyone, then you are at fault – it’s your body that made the noise wrong.
“So it feels necessarily personal. But everyone has strange vocal moments. Our voice is a reflection of our health and how we feel that day and however many things that are happening for us in life.
“It’s time to let that go. It’s impossible to be the best at singing. It’s impossible to sing in tune all the time. It’s entirely unique and I think that’s the reason to sing.
“I hope, through Pub Choir or reading the book or whatever, that I’m starting to convince people that it’s OK to sing averagely and still have a nice time.”
There is a temptation to look at the photographs and video clips of Jorgensen and think this is all very easy for a person with her looks, talent and apparent confidence.
At that point, she might, perhaps, draw your attention to her chapters on body dysmorphia, bulimia, sexism in the music touring industry and why she won’t be getting Botox.
“I no longer want to hurt myself for the singular goal of changing how I look so other people think I’m beautiful ‘now’,” she writes.
And, on the phone to the Herald: “I feel like it’s radical just to exist in the packaging that you were given. I’m starting to wonder if we are drifting further away from an egalitarian visual respect for each other? I do worry about that a lot.
“That’s kind of why I write about digging my heels in for myself ... for me personally, I would like to hold on to my face as long as I can and be the wrinkly frowny lady on stage.
“I communicate with my face what I need from my audience and it’s worked for me.”
In her book, she warns that it is impossible to have a favourite song.
I wonder, does she have a favourite note? A musical building block that particularly resonates?
“Before Pub Choir, I used to run community choir. Regular, rehearsed choir.
“I would often start by saying ‘let’s find the note in each of our bodies that feels the nicest today. And we’ll take a really nice calm breath in and we’ll hum this note. It’s different for everyone, but it will be the easiest, most pleasant note you can imagine for yourself.”
Everyone would take a breath in. And then?
“It’s a horrible cacophony! And I’m like ‘this is what humanity sounds like’. That’s my favourite note.
“I know it’s sort of ugly, but it’s sort of cool at the same time. It’s definitely not boring.”
Average At Best by Astrid Jorgensen (Simon & Schuster Australia, $42). Pub Choir New Zealand tour dates: November 9 (Auckland), November 10 (Wellington), November 12 (Christchurch).
Kim Knight joined the New Zealand Herald in 2016 and is a senior journalist on its lifestyle desk.