Three years ago, I received a text from my friend, Marcia, which said “Rose, Lady A is holding a nationwide contest for horn players. The winner gets to perform with them in Nashville!” The deadline was fast approaching but I went for it anyway (with not a lot of time to prepare). Horn players were instructed to make up their own horn parts over Lady A’s new hit song called “You Look Good.”
I threw an impromptu video shoot together at Plum’s in St. Paul. About ten of my friends stepped up for me. Do I have the best friends, or what? I knew my playing on the video was not perfect, but I was running up against a deadline, and I decided “What’s there to lose?” I submitted my video and also put it on Facebook. My friends majorly came through for me, and within a short amount of time, it got over 20,000 views.
One of my tweets to Lady A read “Lady A, will you accept this Rose?” I received a lot of re-tweets on that one 🙂
One day, I received a call from Lady A’s road manager. She said “Rose, unfortunately you weren’t chosen as the winner, but Hillary, Charles and Dave all watched your video and they loved it. They want to meet you when they come to Minnesota for WE Fest this summer.” It was another “almost” for this kid. I was soooooo close … but I told myself God didn’t want me to have that cigar either. Â As the days went on, I became more excited about meeting them. Â After all, what a compliment it was that they wanted to meet me.
I got to bring my daughter, Carly, as my guest. Carly has worked at WE Fest several times so she was excited to go back and was super excitedto meet Lady A. When we got to the main stage, there were about 100 people in line who had won tickets from the radio station. We finally got up to the front of the line and when we started walking up to meet the band, all three of them said “Rose Duffy!” I have to say, Carly was impressed … and I was pleasantly surprised. They were all so kind and very encouraging! Security tried to rush us through, but Lady A took their time with us. All of their eyes just sparkled! I said to Charles “Can’t you just add one more player? I don’t take up that much room.” He cracked up (but his laugh told me “No.”) It was a shot and a miss (and I knew it would be).
I gave Hillary a little pocket cross. She seemed to really like it and had the most beautiful smile when she took it from my hand.
We spoke to Dave last (which was my favorite part). He was very complimentary of my playing and told me to “Keep going” because I have “what it takes.” Security then rushed us along and we began to walk away. Then Dave called out my name and motioned for us to come back. He said “Seriously, Rose … Do NOT give up!” and he sincerely meant it. Dave is incredibly talented so his encouragement was worth gold to me.
Here’s to always being willing to take chances,