Seven years ago, Christine Greenawalt formed her Worcester-based cover band Touched as a form of therapy after going through a divorce and an ensuing mid-life crisis.
“It was the best mid-life crisis ever,” she quipped, giggled. “I never sang with a live band in my life until age 36.” As a youth, Greenawalt sang in church choir but only because it was better than going to CCD class. When she was married to her now ex-husband, a guitarist, she worked a career in marketing and sales. She helped him out with websites, e-mails, newsletters, back in the day when everyone put up posters everywhere. Greenawalt had to visit a lot of club owners to sell her then husband’s band.
Greenawalt separated in a December and by February she found herself sitting a roomful of her half of that band’s equipment. “I said, ‘Geez, I don’t miss my husband, but I miss working with all those club owners.” So, she decided she would start her own band, put an ad out, and, after saying, ‘What the hell, I can do this’ she became a singer.
Greenawalt initially recruited a young woman bass player who helped her get it started. Greenawalt also recruited her ex-husband’s former drummer and she advertised for a guitarist and the guitarist she picked up is Chris Terp. Terp became her boyfriend and now she and Terp are the only remaining original members of Touched.
Classic rock, eighties pop, and disco span the range of songs Touched can offer their audiences. “Anything from The Beatles to Z.Z.Top. We’ll do The Bangles and The Go Gos, Duran Duran, The Outfield, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin.”
The band members all come from different backgrounds.
“My boyfriend Chris comes from the straight up metal and classic rock background her grew up with,” she said. “Every band he’s been in, he’s been the hired gun. He never started a project from scratch. He was hired in as a musician when they were looking for somebody to replace somebody. He’s always been in straight up classic rock bands.”
Guitarist Mike Cenedella comes from original music band Kaos and he also sings and has a background in The Beatles music. Brothers John (bass) and Paul (drums) Prunier are brothers grew up on Steely Dan. “Paul can play just about any song you throw out there,” Greenawalt said, “just off the top of his head, and sing you the guitar parts so that you can figure what part he’s playing.”
All the players have a classic rock thread and Greenawalt is a disco queen with a taste for 1980s superstars Madonna and Prince. Touched play out all over central Massachusetts. Next weekend they’ll be in Leominster and they play in Worcester and Dudley on the Connecticut border.
Greenawalt does not have a rock star’s taste for sucking in the audience’s adoration. She prefers the work. “I do a lot of the leg work and I do a lot of the heavy lifting,” she said. “I just like being with a group as a whole. It’s not about everybody looking at me. I just find it a really fun accomplishment. I just like to hear the total sound all together. I love to see people having a good time.”
Her approach seems to be working. Marketing alone cannot account for turn out at Touched shows. “When they come to hear us, they just can’t get over it,” Greenawalt said. “We have all phenomenal long time musicians and we have three lead singers in our band. We don’t have a lead guitarist and a rhythm guitarist. We have two guitarist. We don’t have a lead singer. I just happen to be a vocalist with this band. Chris and Mike also sing lead. We back each other up. We have these gorgeous three part harmonies. We have great harmonic guitars going at the same time, and we pick a lot of songs that accentuate the fact that we can do all of that.”
Touched can also change the tone and feel of a known song when Greenawalt sings a song popularized by a male singer. “There’s a lot of guy stuff that I end up singing and they end up singing background,” she said. “It’s great because we share the whole front line.”
After seven years together, Touched is now considered one of Worcester’s top cover bands. They’ve been nominated for several awards by Pulse Magazine and Worcester Magazine. They play Leominster and Dudley rooms as well as Worcester rooms. “We could play two totally different shows back to back the whole night,” Greenawalt said. “We could pull out enough songs to do two shows in a row and not repeat a song.”
The band has an expansive merchandise page where fans can purchase everything from teddy bears to thongs with the Touched slogan. Those products came from the day when merchandise tables were a big thing at gigs. Now, they direct fans to their merch page. Greenawalt’s Touched plays out only about twice a month. “We’re all that forty(ish) crowd, and we all have lives and we all have families. We do it for our own enjoyment, and we don’t want it to become a job.”
In between Touched gigs, Greenawalt and Terp take in Worcester area blues jams and open mikes. Terp fell in the love with blues jams two years ago while Greenawalt started attending them in the last year. Terp has also started a second band, On The 5, that focuses on blues, a project spawned by the couples new found mutual interest.
But Touched remains a fun project. They have no plays to write original music or to expand their fan base beyond central Massachusetts. “We’re just a bunch of average people that just like hanging out with all of our musician friends,” she said. “We just find it such a small world that everybody seems to know everybody everywhere we go. It’s been a great ride for me, and I’ll ride it out as long as anybody wants to listen.”