Perth singer-songwriter Toby Beard was nervous enough playing to 12,000 people as support for the great Carlos Santana at a concert in Germany in July – but when her childhood idol asked her onto the stage to sing with him, it fulfilled a dream.
Toby and her band had struck up a bit of a relationship with the legendary Mexican-American guitarist.
Backstage, Santana had been jamming to what Toby said was a cool version of Ain’t No Sunshine, which she hadn’t heard before.
“I just naturally started singing along a bit, even though I’ve never sung this song in my life. And he said: ‘I’d like you to sing on stage with me tonight,” Toby says.
“I tried to be all cool, but the version he showed me was quite different to the original, it had a whole set of words that aren’t in the original song. So suddenly I’ve got to learn the words to this song because I’m about to sing in front of 12,000 people.”
While Toby admits to missing the odd word or two during the song, she was pretty pleased with her performance – even more so because her family was out the front in the audience.
Toby is used to working with well-known musicians – she’s been on the same bill with people such as Sheryl Crow, John Butler Trio, The Waifs, and Jimmy Barnes.
But Santana has been one of her favourite artists since childhood and she says this moment was very special.
The band had driven for 12 hours from a concert in Germany and all were tired.
“We hadn’t slept; we were nervous and excited because there were going to be 12,000 people. And then when I got there and saw the hugeness of the stage and the setup, I was like, oh s***, it just magnified everything.
“I’ve never seen a stage that big at anything, nor had the boys – and it started off really badly.
“The soundies took us onto this huge stage and told us what space ours was.
“I was listening intensely while casually leaning on an amplifier. And then this sound guy just screamed at me, ‘get off it, don’t touch it!’
“I didn’t realise I was leaning on Santana’s amp, which is worth the equivalent to half a million Australian dollars. I was mortified and just so embarrassed. It became a joke in the end, but I felt like an absolute idiot.”
Toby asked if there was any chance they could meet Santana, but they didn’t get their hopes up until they got a call to come and meet him.
“He just has this lovely, quiet nature about him that makes you feel quite calm. Although when I say calm, I suddenly was very nervous, like, oh my gosh, there was this living legend standing in front of me.
“He said, ‘do you wanna come and hang out in my backstage?’ And of course, we’re all like, ‘okay, sure’. And you walk into his backstage and it smells of beautiful incense and it’s like you just entered this spiritual guru’s space. And he started showing us some of his favourite songs.
“At some point, we had to sound check.
“I said to the guys, you go sound check, I’ll stay. Call me when you actually need me, so I had one-on-one time with him for 20 minutes or something, which was pretty special.
“It feels there’s a lot to learn from him. The way he looks at the world, he’s very calm, he’s very, very spiritual. I like the way he talks. None of my band are religious, and he is, but he doesn’t do it in a preachy way. He does it in this sort of beautiful way of just making sense of life, I suppose.
“And he had no ego. What stuck out the most to us was that music is everything to him. You have to play it from your heart, which is so true. I think that’s the biggest thing in music. If you’re playing it as an ego-driven thing, it’s not going to come across as beautiful.”
Halfway through Santana’s show, he called Toby onto the stage.
When Toby had found out earlier that she was going to perform with Santana she had kept it from her family. They were all backstage after Toby’s performance when she told her aunt that she needed to get her mum and dad out the front.
“She asked, why? And I said, I’m about to sing with him.
“She bawled her eyes out and I was like, no, no, no, stop doing that. You need to get my parents out there now. It was really a beautiful experience, for them as well, to suddenly hear the way he introduced me to the stage was so special.
“He said, some mornings you wake up and you just know that something very special is going to happen to you that day.
“And that happened to me today, and I’ve had the honour and pleasure of meeting this beautiful woman with a wonderful voice, Toby.
“The crowd went crazy and he just made me feel very calm and confident. And it was so much fun.”
Toby says she did a pretty good job of the song, but if she could do it again it would be better.
