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It’s early Friday evening in Pittsburgh and Alicia Keys is about to emit some deeply bizarre sounds. These trills and jabbers will loosen her vocal cords, exercise her diaphragm and guard against any accidentally bizarre sounds when she takes the stage at the Mellon Arena. Her valet, a skinny guy named Francis, enters her dressing room, adjusts the height of an electric Yamaha keyboard, then disappears to get his boss some potato-spinach soup. The decor suggests a mail-order catalogue called Diva Comfort Depot: Floral-printed scarves enshroud floor lamps; scented candles glow atop ottomans draped with light-purple fabric; dainty white ramekins cradle dried fruits; and in the corner, a humidifier puffs out little steam clouds of calm. The tableau is a portable monument to mood. On tour, every night, this is where Keys goes “to get my head right.” Which is why she’s kicking us out. “You,” she says bluntly, “need to leave now.” She is not unkind about it; if we are in the room, she explains, she “won’t be able to vibe” with her vocal coach, and to be fair, if we were about to perform some warm ups that split the difference between do-re-mi and the call of a marmoset, we’d probably want want to cut down on witnesses, too. Still, the evacuation order is abrupt. A few minutes ago, Keys was bounding onto the stage, tugging us along, giddily describing her show: the video screens, the dance routines, the spinning grand piano. “Isn’t that cool?” she asked, poking at a vintage Moog synthesizer stage right. Earlier, when she’d known us only a half-hour, she pulled some photo-shoot-freebie Gucci sunglasses from her handbag and offered them up: “I could see you in these. 42
JULY 2008
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