Rancho Mirage students lift voices for reality TV, charity

The Rancho Mirage High School's "Singing Rattlers" didn't expect to come back from their spring break to find out that they will be a part of a new E! Network reality series focused on singer Rod Stewart and his family. Or that they'd end up helping a school halfway across the world.

Ruby Stewart, the daughter of Rod Stewart, who has known Rancho Mirage High Choir Director Andy Eisenmann for many years, e-mailed Eisenmann to share that she had written two songs for her new charity, One Light, which provides solar light "puffs" to schools and communities in need. She asked Eisenmann if his students would be interested in singing background vocals on the new songs.

Of course, Eisenmann said yes, and they went to work. Ruby Stewart and singer-songwriter Alyssa Bonagura collaborated with the Singing Rattlers during two evenings to record the songs, and an E! crew was there to film it for the reality series, which begins in June.

"The fact that Ruby Stewart came to [the] Rancho Mirage High School choir to collaborate with our very own 'Singing Rattlers' is a huge feather in the caps of Rancho Mirage High School Performing Arts, Rancho Mirage High School as a whole and the Palm Springs Unified School District," said Eisenmann. "The six hours of collaboration time was magical, to the students, artists, professional visiting artists and to me."

For Ruby Stewart, the experience helped her through the grief she was experiencing after losing a friend in a car accident just the day before the visit earlier this month.

"I found out [about the accident] an hour before I came to record with the kids on April 8th," she wrote to Eisenmann in an e-mail following the recording. "My head was a mess, and my heart shattered, and I honestly didn't know how I was going to muster up the enthusiasm to sing with them. Yet, the very moment I heard them sing 'SOMEONE'S' [one of the songs] my pain was released, my sorrow absolved and the sound of their voices lifted me out of the pain of my friend's death and made me truly appreciate how beautifully he once lived.

"While watching them I realized I was in the exact place I was supposed to be, with the people I was supposed to be surrounded by," she continued. "So beyond saying thank you for having them sing on our tracks, I want to say thank you for helping heal my heart."

Eisenmann said that Stewart sent the choir students some of the light puffs she donates through her charity, and the students decided to send them to a school in Haiti, the location where the project began, to "pay it forward."

Joan Boiko is the communications manager for the Palm Springs Unified School District. She can be reached at jboiko@psusd.us or (760) 416-6010.