Sometimes, in order to follow your dream, you have to take an indirect route — the long and winding road, so to speak. Career paths can veer in many directions, but according to entertainer John Tesh, you have to find out what your real passion is and act on it.
“Lately, I’ve become the poster boy for quitting your job and following your dream,” he says.
For a decade, Tesh had a “dream job” as co-host of the popular television show, “Entertainment Tonight.” But his life-long aspiration was always to be a professional musician and composer.
“I was born in the early 50’s and so I grew up with the Ed Sullivan Show, Dave Clark Five, The Beatles, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, all that stuff,” says Tesh. “From the time I was twelve years old, I was in a garage band. Making music is what I wanted to do for a living.”
But in order to pay the bills, Tesh ended up on television, first at CBS Sports and then on ET.
“When I was hosting Entertainment Tonight, I just really wanted to be a live touring musician. I spent all my downtime writing music themes for news shows, sports coverage and the Olympics, but nobody really took me seriously as a musician or a composer.”
Ironically, his breakthrough success in music came about completely apart from his TV fame, when NBC held a contest to find a new NBA theme song with a requirement that all entries be submitted anonymously. Overseas covering the Tour de France for CBS at the time, Tesh came up with a melody and phoned his answering machine back in the states to hum the tune so that he could write it down when he returned home. John orchestrated, recorded and submitted the song he wrote. A few weeks later he received the winning phone call.
“A producer from NBC called and said the song had won the international competition, and then she asked my name. I said ‘John Tesh’ and could hear her chin hit the floor. People were shocked.”
John’s theme was eventually played on every NBC broadcast of the NBA, some 12,000 times, and millions more times as promos. The song also won an Emmy Award. It was this event that proved that Tesh could be successful as a musician and composer.
Tesh’s next move was to envision and create an amazing live concert experience and then take it to the general public.
“I had seen some amazing PBS music specials and knew that it would be a great format for me to showcase the live concert experience that I had in mind. My wife and I basically took out a second mortgage on our house to pay for it all. It was a huge risk, but Live at Red Rocks worked on PBS and it became the turning point for me musically.”
Seven million albums later, a string of number one radio hits, two Grammy nominations, six hit PBS music specials, and a Keyboard Magazine award, it’s safe to say that people take Tesh’s music seriously. Three of his releases, A Deeper Faith, Christmas Worship and Power of Love have all resided on the Billboard pop and Christian music charts, and Power of Love was nominated for a 2003 Grammy for “Best Pop Instrumental Album.” His Live at Red Rocks concert was certified Gold by the RIAA, and the subsequent Red Rocks Platinum was a hit national television special.
Earlier this year, Tesh and his band began reinventing the live concert experience, adding an eight-member horn section for swing arrangements of classic songs. By incorporating the horn section into the show for the first time, Tesh returns to his roots, since, before playing the piano, he played the trumpet in high school and college jazz bands. With the added horn section, he hopes to introduce young fans to a new sound while offering a bit of nostalgia to the older crowd.
“Starting with this Christmas tour and continuing with some new recordings next year, people are going to see something different than I’ve ever done and get to experience music in a more ‘vintage’ form,” said Tesh. “With the big band-style arrangements, we’ll be performing my songs and many of the classics the way Sinatra and the Rat Pack did back in the day. For the kids who’ve never heard this style of music in concert before, they are going to get a taste of big band swing. And for their parents, there will be a lot of nostalgia.”
For Tesh, knowing what will make his fans happy is critical to the success of any musician’s live performance. It’s why, at his more than 50 concerts each year, he rocks the house with elite musicians and vocalists in his band, features a state of the art light show, treats the audience to spectacular dancers and plays a mix of audience favorites and classic tunes covering a variety of genres of music.
But even more than these things, Tesh knows that there’s a big difference between merely a good performance and an unbelievable concert experience.
“The most important thing for a musician onstage is to connect with the audience, know what they are feeling and take them to the next level. We feela responsibility to our fans to get to know them, what they want, and to give them an experience they can use in their lives.”
Tesh adds, “I learned this, of all places, while working at Entertainment Tonight, interviewing and covering concerts for superstars like Sting, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Billy Joel and Garth Brooks. Being up close and speaking with those guys about performing music, and how they practice co-dependency with their fans, changed the way I looked at everything.”
Sometimes the long and winding road has a lot to offer.
“There is a quote by Howard Thurman that says it all for me,” says Tesh, “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what it is that makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs are men and women who have come alive.”
