New tricks for New Kids
Performing hasn’t gotten old for New Kids On The Block.
WHEN New Kids On The Block’s Joey McIntyre is sitting on a pedestal 20 feet in the air singing Please Don’t Go Girl, he has plenty of time to think.
“I’m pretty present up there,” McIntyre says, calling from a tour stop in Fort Lauderdale. “I think about all kinds of stuff. One of the gifts we’ve had is that in the seven years of being back together, there are still New Kids fans who haven’t been back to see us. So when we keep coming back together, we get to hear, ‘ Oh, my God, I finally met you’ and we look out in the audience and see people freaking out. That’s awesome. We don’t take that for granted.”
And there are plenty of people freaking out on the New Kids’ Main Event tour. McIntyre says he and the rest of the New Kids – Donnie Wahlberg, Jordan Knight, Jonathan Knight and Danny Wood – are happy about that because they are still having fun and they are still learning new things after all these years.
He says that the way he performs Please Don’t Go Girl, which was the group’s first hit single in 1988, on the current tour is one example of how the New Kids are still trying new things.
“Now, the technique is kind of just letting go,” he says. “The more I let go, the better it sounds ... I’m not singing the song. The song is singing itself. I’m thrilled with how it sounds 27 years later. It fits me better now more than it ever did. It’s really special.”
The new approach to their old songs is only one reason why New Kids On The Block continue to fill arenas at a time when many of their contemporaries struggle to fill venues a fraction of that size.
It doesn’t hurt that the package tour also features hitmakers TLC and Nelly.
“We perform,” Wahlberg said at a Madison Square Garden news conference. “TLC are performers. They come from our era. They dance. They work. They put effort into the stage show. We learned from the Motown era, New Edition and groups like that and we took it to our level. TLC learned from groups like The Supremes. It’s not just a couple of girls standing around singing and making sure that their hair’s good. They put it out. And so does Nelly.”
The New Kids have also put a lot of effort into the design of the show, using an enormous stage that runs across most of the arena floor, with VIP bar stools right next to the stage.
“We will be literally reaching down and stealing fans’ snacks and sharing their drinks for the show,” Wahlberg says.
McIntyre says it took some time for him to get used to the enormity of the stage, but now he has come to appreciate it. “It doesn’t feel that big any more,” he says. “And it’s not too much for the audience. It really works well and production- wise, when we see the photos of what it looks like from the fans’ point of view, it’s incredible.”
Perhaps the biggest tool for keeping the tour fresh is that the New Kids continue to grow, as a group, working on new music that could find its way into the current tour, and as individuals. Wahlberg stars in the CBS drama Blue Bloods. McIntyre recently wrapped up work on the CBS sitcom The McCarthys, while Jonathan Knight was a contestant on The Amazing Race.
McIntyre, 42, says he is working on a one- man show that he hopes to test in Boston this fall and perhaps move to Broadway down the line.
“Theatre is a huge part of who I am,” says McIntyre, who has performed on Broadway in Wicked and Off- Broadway in tick, tick... BOOM!. He worries, though, that he may not have the time needed to get a show ready for Broadway in addition to touring and working on the next New Kids album.
“You have to dedicate two years of your life to do it,” he says. “I’m not so sure I’m ready to do that now.”
McIntyre says the Main Event tour, which has them performing five or six nights a week in addition to travelling, can be a bit of a grind. But between watching the road crew put up and take down their set every day and his moments of reflection on stage, McIntyre says he can keep things in perspective.
“You see how hard everyone works,” he says. “It’s easy to keep a level head.” – Newsday/ Tribune News Service