Facing the Music And Living To Talk About It (7 page)

CHAPTER THREE

MY BSB FAMILY

M
USIC WAS A
great escape from the chaos at home when I was a kid. I had a small radio with silver knobs and a chrome casing. At night, I listened to rock and R&B stations and somehow the songs made me feel better. One of my favorites was “Bizarre Love Triangle” by New Order. I could tune out my parents’ arguments, get lost in a melody and disappear into my own world. Music was a comfort for me even before I realized that I could build my life around it.

MUSIC WAS A GREAT ESCAPE FROM THE
CHAOS
AT HOME WHEN I WAS A KID.

The stress and lack of nurturing at home took a toll on all the Carter kids. Our schoolwork suffered and we were often in trouble for acting out in class. My sister BJ started as the best student in our family. Because she’d earned straight A’s, she was picked for the honored position of student patrol officer. In that role, she would help kids cross the street before and after classes. I was jealous of BJ and the other school patrol members, mostly because they got to wear super cool neon-colored safety belts. As things got worse at home though, BJ became rebellious and her grades dropped.

I, on the other hand, was never much of a student. While the teacher talked, I’d find myself daydreaming. The studies seemed beyond my grasp. I felt lost and very insecure. I was never in the advanced classes with the smartest kids. My classroom was one of those portable units that always seemed reserved for the worst students. I felt like an outcast. It was as if they put us in there so we wouldn’t infect the smart kids with our contagious stupidity.

All in all, school wasn’t a great experience for me. I was bullied some, especially at the bus stop. The street we lived on in Tampa—131
^st
Avenue—was in a pretty tough neighborhood. One kid terrorized me even though our sisters were friends. He beat up most of the kids who rode our bus, so I guess it wasn’t personal. I just tried to stay off his radar or at least out of his reach.

Studying and doing homework were difficult for me, especially when there was so much drama between my warring parents. When Nintendo video games came out, I spent hours playing them. My mother tried to pry me away, but that was pretty hard to do. The one thing we both liked was music so that became something we shared. There was always a radio or stereo on in our house. My parents may have cashed in on the disco era when they owned the tavern but they were mostly big fans of the golden oldies of rock and roll from the sixties and seventies—what my mom called
real music
.

She liked harmonies and strong vocals. In fact, one of her favorite songs when I was little was “Bridge Over Troubled Water
”
by Simon and Garfunkel. She bought a cassette tape with the song and played it all the time, so I knew it by heart. When I was eight years old, Mom was working in the kitchen one day and she heard me singing that song in the backyard.

I often sang while bouncing on the trampoline, but this time I was on solid ground pretending to be on stage at an outdoor concert. I imagined the blades of grass were my audience. (It was a very
green
crowd.) Mom suspected that I planned this as a performance for her benefit since I was belting out a song she loved, but I was singing for the fun of it.

My parents always said that I was a natural born ham. Mom has written that sometimes she feared I was overly needy and starved for attention. When I think about it, there may be some truth to that as she and dad worked so hard they weren’t around very much. If I was hungry for affection and attention, singing that song sure did the trick.

Mom—who genuinely thought of herself as an unbiased observer—immediately decided that I was destined for stardom when she heard me singing that day. She was so impressed, she dragged me into the house to sing for my dad too.

This was the first time my parents realized I might have marketable talent, though Dad was less convinced of my greatness than Mom. He wanted a second opinion, and probably a third.

I INHERITED DAD’S BLUE-COLLAR WORK ETHIC AND DRIVE...

Dad was a total realist about life—not at all what you’d call an optimist. My father was a truck driver before he became a bar owner and nursing-home operator. (He’d met my mom on the road—he picked her up while she was hitchhiking. He charmed her by giving her a ride, but he also warned her never to do it again.)

I inherited Dad’s blue-collar work ethic and drive, and I have to say that those gifts have served me well. Still, as hard as my dad and mom worked, they struggled to pay the bills. Money was always an issue. When I first started to develop my performing skills, Dad would blow up over the cost of my singing and dance coaches, and of traveling to auditions, rehearsals and performances. He questioned whether there would ever be a payoff for the investment he and my mom were making. I could hardly blame him. He had other kids and a lot of expenses.

One of the incentives for me to work harder and harder was my desire to make up for those expenses. I really wanted to show my appreciation for the sacrifices and the time my parents put into my training. I also wanted to earn enough money so my parents would never have to fight over finances again. When my singing career took off, I did pay back my parents and I made up for the some of the things my siblings didn’t get, too. I even tried to help them out before I was making big money. The first singing competition I won was a talent show on the pier in St. Petersburg. I was ten years old and there was a crowd of only 20 people, but I won the grand prize of $100. I remember taking the check home to Dad; he was sitting on the couch watching television.

“Hey Dad, look what I did. This is for you. I want you to have it because you work so hard,” I said, handing him the check.

He mumbled something, then thanked me. He may have been embarrassed that I was giving him my winnings, which I understand. I didn’t mean to make him uncomfortable. My only goal was to provide him and my mother with some peace of mind. My thought at the time was that if I kept giving him money, he and mom would be happier, but it never seemed to work out that way, even when the checks I brought home were for hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars.

The lesson I ultimately learned from these experiences was that my goal should never be to make more and more money. I realized that once you covered your bills and a few other basic comforts, more money does not bring you more happiness—in fact it often brings more problems, jealousies and greed.

Instead, the thing that makes me truly happy is making the most of my talent for singing and performing. That became, and still is, my career goal.

Ours wasn’t exactly the Osmond family or even the Partridge Family, but our family tree did include other musicians. Mom and Dad both played the guitar some and we all sang when we went on vacations or when we were just hanging around the house. I’ve never had a problem keeping a beat, which may be due to living above The Yankee Rebel when I was a baby and hearing the thumping of disco music through the floorboards all night.

Anyway, it was around the time that teen pop singers and the first boy bands began making waves that I guess Mom decided if Tiffany and Debbie Gibson, New Edition, and the New Kids on the Block could make it, so could I. The next thing I knew, she had me booked for singing lessons, dancing lessons, and every other kind of lesson in the star-making machine. We burned up Interstate 4 between Tampa and Orlando as we hit all the talent competitions and auditions for theme park shows, musicals, dinner-theater, and commercials.

My theatrical career was actually launched shortly after the day Mom witnessed my backyard performance. I was in the fourth grade at Miles Elementary School when the kid who’d been chosen for a leading role as Raoul in the production of
Phantom of the Opera
got cold feet. The teacher in charge of the play, Miss Montes de Oca, had to find a replacement quickly. She’d heard that I was taking singing lessons and auditioning around the area, so she recruited me to step into the part.

…THE THING THAT MAKES ME TRULY
HAPPY
IS MAKING THE MOST OF MY TALENT FOR SINGING AND PERFORMING.

I definitely wasn’t one of the cool kids, an athlete or an honor student before then, so it was sweet to step in and take the role of Raoul, especially since the guy who had chickened out was one of the smartest kids in our school and was on student patrol too.

Being cast in the
Phantom of the Opera
was one of the best things to happen to me at that time. It was one of those rare moments in our family when everyone seemed to join in the fun. Even Dad rallied and got into the spirit. He went to work building the chandelier for the set, which was the centerpiece on stage. Mom worked on the play too, making costumes. They brought the other kids to rehearsals and to the design sessions, and everyone seemed to have a good time without any drinking, fighting or yelling. For a moment there, we felt like one big happy family.

PLAYING TO YOUR STRENGTHS

Even if you never made it past Introduction to Psychology 101, you can see what drew me to performing. All of us Carter kids craved parental attention and affection. Everyone seemed excited about the play and my role as the Phantom. It really brought us all together.

No matter what was happening at home, everything seemed better when I was singing. Instead of the bickering that marked so many of our days and nights, my parents were happy when I sang and so were my audiences. I was happy too. I poured all of my energy into the music because when I performed, my worries, fears, and insecurities disappeared. It was a high like nothing I’d ever experienced, and the larger my audience the better it felt.

There’s no doubt that I threw myself into singing, acting and dancing with more enthusiasm than I’d ever shown for schoolwork or sports. My mom dedicated herself to helping me chase my dream. Some have questioned her motives over the years, but I have to credit her with making sure I received the necessary training and for doing all the work required to turn my passion for performing into a career.

MY MOM
DEDICATED
HERSELF TO HELPING ME CHASE MY DREAM.

She supported me as I progressed through a series of coaches and trainers. At age 10, I found myself beneath the wings of Bob Karl and Sandy DiMarco, professional dancers who owned the Karl & DiMarco School of Theater & Dance in Tampa. One of the first classes I took with them was tap dancing. I was horrible at it. Bob Karl, who looked more like an old-fashioned gangster than a Julliard-trained choreographer, didn’t seem to enjoy watching me trip over my own feet either. He was nice about it most of the time, but trying to turn me into a dancer made him grumpy.

In no time at all, I found myself banished to the back row of Bob’s class. Once again, I was put with the slow learners. Maybe Bob thought it would help me to watch all the other kids in the front row get the moves right.

I did ultimately improve enough to land a spot as a performer in a troupe that was every straight boy’s wildest dream. Bob’s wife and co-owner Sandy DiMarco had a side job as the choreographer for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ halftime shows. Sandy put together a team of beautiful cheerleaders—and me!

Actually, the bikini-wearing, pom-pom swinging Swashbucklers were more like a cross between Victoria’s Secret models and the Rockettes. The Bucs were my favorite team, and I was also a big fan of gorgeous, scantily clad young women, so I was a very lucky boy. Don’t get me wrong, Backstreet is a great group. Kevin, A.J., Brian, and Howie are my brothers and fun to hang out with, but they don’t quite do for me what my first group did. I enjoyed every minute of the Swashbuckler experience, though not nearly as much as I would have enjoyed it if I’d been about ten years older.

This was back when Tampa’s NFL team played in the old Houlihan Stadium, which was demolished in 1999. The Buc’s creamsicle-colored uniforms from those days are still my favorites, but the teams weren’t very good. I guess that’s why they needed a big halftime show to prevent the home crowd from just going home. We did our best during every game to keep them in their seats.

Sandy surrounded me with my own special mini-group, calling us Nick and the Angels. Our routine included performing Elvis’s “Jail House Rock” and Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Great Balls of Fire.” My guess is that 99 percent of the guys in the stands who weren’t related to me or in my grade school weren’t even aware that I was on the field with the Angels and the Swashbucklers most of the time. That didn’t bother me though.

I FELT LIKE I WAS PART OF
SOMETHING SPECIAL.

Walking onto that Buc’s field for the first time with them was an incredible rush. There were thousands of people cheering every move. It was scary and exhilarating at the same time. Is
scarilarating
a word?

That’s when I became truly addicted to the joy of entertaining. It was so exciting. We felt like we were part of the Buc’s team and the whole organization. The girls treated me like their favorite little brother. Strangers cheered us. Kids wanted our autographs. I felt like I was part of something special. My parents and brother and sisters were all excited for me too, which made things a little better at home.

Sandy DiMarco sent me to perform with the Angels and Swashbucklers at smaller venues around town, too. Those were mostly appearances to promote the team or community events. Some of us also participated in Showstoppers regional talent competitions against other performers, where we won a lot of contests. I still have those black and blue ribbons with first and second place written on them.

As the only guy on the squad, I tended to stand out. The fans gave me a lot of attention, which boosted my self-confidence and helped me become even more comfortable in front of crowds. Not that stage fright was ever a problem for me. When I heard the applause and cheers from thousands of people, nothing else mattered in that moment.

I loved being on that field, no doubt about it. Still, there was something deeper that drove me to work harder on my singing and performing than I’d ever worked in my life. To put it as simply as I can:
It felt right.
It made me happy. I could spend hours and hours singing and playing the guitar. Even practicing dance routines didn’t really seem like work to me.