It’s a Saturday morning, and Sueli Cavalcanti has been awake since 6 a.m.
It’s now 9:30 a.m., and she is still at Skylab Studios in Gainesville with studio owner Gerry King and her manager, Michael Deall. Two Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cups sit on a table — Sueli’s and Deall’s fuel of choice for these early sessions.
Sueli’s here for one thing: to sing.
Her voice carries over the light brown hardwood floors and through the glass wall of the studio’s main room. King sits at a table strewn with recording equipment, adding a techno beat.
“Breath into me … Melt into me … Fly to be free … With me ....”
Her black-and-white-striped T-shirt stretches as she swings her hands up and belts another line.
Sueli, 27, is recording under her stage name, SueliPop. A graduate of UF’s musical theater program, she abandoned her Broadway dream to pursue one of becoming a pop star.
The singer, only five feet tall, finishes a stretch of high notes.
“Let’s do the ending again,” King says.
Sueli nods and dives back into the song. On a machine in the dark-paneled recording room, a bar of lights tracks her voice. It starts in the lower green lights, but as the note rises it shoots straight into the red.
Sueli didn’t grow up with visions of being Britney Spears. She thought her future was in musical theater.
She planned to move to New York after graduating from UF’s School of Theatre and Dance bachelor program in musical theater.
Instead, she’s living in Gainesville, trying to make it as a pop singer.
Recording with Skylab since December 2009, she is on the verge of her first release, “Take Me for a Ride.” She is also recording a full-length album she hopes to release in the spring.
“I’m not going to be like, ‘Yeah, I’ve done this and I’ve done that and I’m almost there,’” she said. “I know it could be one year, it could be two years, it could be five years, it could be 10 years [before I make it].”
Even as she develops her sound as SueliPop, she hasn’t forgotten her days in theater.
As a child, Sueli loved to sing.
She performed in plays in high school and dreamed of being on Broadway. After starting at Florida Atlantic University, she was accepted into UF’s musical theater program. About 100 students apply each year, but only four make it.
She performed in UF productions like “West Side Story” and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” But she had few friends in the department. She thinks the other students disliked her because of the roles she won. They considered her a bit of a diva, she said.
She used antidepressants to help herself get through the days.
Sitting on her living room couch, Sueli’s voice wavers as she talks about UF. Her hand fidgets against her leg, tucked underneath her.
“I felt like I was trapped and I couldn’t get out. I felt like I was being tortured for no reason. It sounds kind of emo, but it was how I felt.”
This is one of the first times she’s really thought about what happened since she graduated. Her boyfriend, Zach Stashis, moves to the couch, placing a hand on her shoulder. Her manager hands her a tissue.
After countless practices with students who didn’t like her, she now feels comfortable working with two — Jackie Zima, 21, and Dayana Falcon, 21 — who perform as backup dancers at her concerts. They smile at her as they plan new steps to her song “Take Me for a Ride.”
When Zima fumbles a move, they all laugh and suggest changing that part. It still feels strange, laughing her way through a practice instead of forcing herself through one.
Since graduating from UF in 2009, Sueli stopped taking antidepressants — she’s happy almost every day now, Stashis says.
It’s a nice change from the girl who came home from practices quiet and upset.
Although Sueli says she loves the creative aspects of her job, SueliPop is a business. It’s a brand — a way to make people notice her, from concert audiences to record company executives.
She chose the name SueliPop because it draws attention to her name and personality and also alerts listeners to her music style.
Without a strong brand, her passion could amount to nothing.
“The world works in terms of what makes money. That will never go away,” Sueli says. “I’m always constantly thinking, ‘Is this something that someone can look at as a marketable product?’”
After almost a year of working in private, she is taking her first public steps as SueliPop. She is performing concerts in Gainesville and later wants to do a statewide tour.
When she isn’t working as SueliPop, she earns money giving voice and piano lessons and performing with Deall at an Ocala country club.
She has faith, and so do her friends. But no matter how hard she works, her fate isn’t guaranteed.
“You can rest when you’ve worked to get to where [you want to be],” she says. “Until then, it’s hell week, it’s hell month, it’s hell year.”
She has learned that some people don’t follow through on promises. People who seem enthusiastic about her project have pledged their help, only to fail to return her phone calls. Maybe they were just busy. Or maybe they really don’t want to help.
“I’m the type of person [who feels] it needs to be perfect. The mindset is: Okay, we’ll find someone else or take care of it ourselves,” she says.
When the stress is too much, she hops on her skateboard or plays with her small, fluffy dog, Fiji.
She also finds an escape in exercise. She works out several days a week to stay healthy and in shape — in the pop industry, image can be as important as voice. Exercise lets her forget about the stress. When she runs on the treadmill or lifts weights, she can forget about her to-do list for the day.
She just keeps moving forward. Keeps singing new notes in front of the keyboard. Keeps practicing with two of the first partners who smile at her sincerely.
Sueli stomps her feet and hits her final mark as the ending notes of “Take Me for a Ride” fade. Zima and Falcon talk about a section where they improvise their moves.
Sueli jokes that she should throw in some country dancing, launching into a rendition of June Carter Cash’s “Juke Box Blues.” Grabbing the waistband of her sweatpants, she kicks her feet alternately in a display more appropriate for a country club like Gainesville’s :08 than a pop singer’s dance practice.
“It’s like Miley Cyrus, three-dimensional,” a dance says.
Sueli laughs, smiles and gets back to work.
