The Italian singer Lucy Campeti visited Izhevsk a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, it was too shy to interview her right after the concert. But then she agreed to talk to me via Skype. Lucy told me how she relaxes after concerts, the funniest stories from the tour and she explained why she loved cats and Juventus football team.
— Lucy, do you remember any funny stories about touring and concerts?
— There are many. A few years ago we went to Astana; it was very late when we arrived, because we lost our connecting flight from Frankfurt to Astana.
At the airport we found a local driver who didn’t speak English, and we knew we had 2 hours driving from the airport to the venue. Everything was freezing because it was -36° C, snow everywhere, no one but us driving down the road. We spent more than 2 hours in the van, so we tried to ask the driver how long we had to wait to arrive at the venue, he understood somehow and answered that there was 2 hours driving left. Whaaaaat?!?
It wasn’t the information we had at the start, so we called the girl who was waiting for us at the venue, and she confirmed that it was her fault. It was 4 hours driving, instead of 2, to arrive at the venue. So she asked to the driver to bring us at the hotel and so he did.
When we arrived at the hotel, it seemed like. Do you remember the movie The Shining? Well, that kind of hotel. We looked around, there was nothing there. Scary!
So we got into the reception and asked for our rooms: “Hello, we are Gabin, we have six rooms reserved”. That very tall man didn’t speak English. He was very weird. He had a dress 2 sizes bigger than his size! He took a kind of radio and called for a girl who came downstairs to tell us that nobody paid for our rooms, so no money, no rooms, no food.
So we called again the girl at the venue, to ask her to send somebody at the hotel, to fix this situation, and she was completely drunk! By the way, in a half of an hour, a man came at the hotel.
He took a piece of paper, opened it and took some money out from this piece of paper, paid the receptionist and went out, without saying a word.
We were speechless. So we ate something and went into these damn cold rooms, slept 4 hours and went back to the airport, without playing our concert.
When we arrived in Rome, I thought: “Thank God, I’m still alive!” It looked like a nightmare, but thinking about it now, it was very funny too.
— You are constantly on stage and in public. How do you relax?
— I simply try to stay home, looking at the wall! Ahaha! No music, doing nothing. If I don’t have vocal classes, because I am a teacher too. Or maybe try to clean my house, that sometimes is such a mess, that I try to make believe it isn’t. But at least I have to give up and start doing something!
I have a few friends that I like to visit. My best friends. Sometimes it happen that we don’t talk for months, but when we meet it seems like we never stopped talking. We know each other very well, we have our secrets, our way of understanding each other without saying a word.
Unfortunately I have no time for hobbies, but the difference between me and other people who has hobbies, is that maybe my hobby became my job. Maybe at least I’m a lucky person.
— What about your family?
— Part of my family lives in Italy, in a region called Abruzzo, where I grew up, and the other half is in Santo Domingo. My mother was born there, and my father is Italian.
My mother was a dancer and a dance teacher when she was young. She stopped when she had me. My father is still a truck driver. I have two brothers, younger than me. My grandmother is still with us, 86 years old woman, stronger than anybody, old school woman.
In Santo Domingo there is all my mother's family, my aunt and uncles with many cousins, my grandma and grandfather too.
We don’t meet that often, even if we are not that far, with the Italian family, I mean. I work very much and it’s not easy to go back home. But we call each other everyday, so they always know where and how I am.
I think that they gave me a very good education, a big sense of humanity. They taught me to respect everybody, to always care for the others, and to be thankful for what I have.
— I found some photos with your cats. Why do you love cats?
— Oh, they are my babies. In my family we always had dogs, and I never thought that I’d come to have two cats! I always loved to have animals and I wanted to have one, but it happened that I found these two little sisters, they were playing together, so cool.
So I decided to take both, I didn’t want to separate them. And it’s been a good choice, because many times I’m not at home and they don’t get bored or sad, because they have each other.
— Which football team do you support? If it’s true that you love football.
— Oh, yes I do! My favourite team is “Juventus”. But unfortunately I never saw them playing! Instead, when I was 14 I went to many football matches of my hometown team “Giulianova”. I loved to go at the stadium with my brother, but maybe I was one of the few girls in the whole stadium!
Now I live in Rome and there are two big football teams in the town — “Roma” and “Lazio”. Between these two teams I prefer “Roma”, maybe because I find that Francesco Totti is a great football player, but the main reason is that Roma team has a symbol that’s a wolf, instead of Lazio that has an eagle. And the truth is that I hate birds! I’m scared by them! Hahaha! Just kidding, but my favorite team will always be “Juventus”!
— You like singing gospels too. Why do you like this music?
— It all started when I got back in time, discovering the existence of Aretha Franklin. When I heard her singing gospel and spiritual songs, I understood where did soul and funky music came from. It was shocking for me, I was young and discovering this amazing singer pushed me to search for old music as spiritual, blues. So I studied a lot of artists who played this music. But gospel is what I love the most.
Many years ago somebody invited to me to work in a gospel group with a few American singers. I was only 20 years old and it was a good occasion to learn a lot of things with them. We went everywhere touring together. It became a second family: November, December and January family.
I love gospel music, because I love when different voices mix together. One of the things that I love to do is making background vocals. By the way it isn’t always possible, because many times I work as a soloist. But maybe I prefer work in vocal groups.
— What do you want to be when you grow up?
— I can't imagine how will I be in a 30 years. I only hope to be happy, to be satisfied of what I will be doing. Sometimes I have only one vision of myself, a 50/60 years old woman, singing in a club for one hundred people, who came to receive some emotions from me.
For my private life, I’m not planning for now to have children or a family, I’m focused on myself at the present time. But maybe in the future I will, I love babies very much.
I’m very attracted by beautiful things, beautiful people. Maybe if I will meet a person who will keep my attention focused on him, I will think about a family. But he should be somebody who makes me feel free to show who I am. And who makes me feel free to keep on making my job the best I can.
I want to say something else, about this occasion to be here in Russia. Each time that I come here in Russia, I’m glad for this. Because you still have respect for culture and music. For example you have a good habit — you come with flowers, you are so glad for the music, you show your love with messages, very sweet and deep words each time I’m overwhelmed to meet you face to face. This is beautiful, and important for us that somebody appreciates our job. Thank you!
Photo by Maria Semyonova
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