Lessons Learned from NOT Playing in Front of Ten Million

Singer, songwriter, guitar player Natalie Gelman was the guest on Episodes 262 and 164 of “Now Hear This Entertainment.”  She has opened for Bon Jovi and was going to be shown recently on “Monday Night Football.”  This is the first in a three-part guest blog detailing that experience.

I was thrilled one morning when I received an email a few weeks ago from a producer for ESPN. Their team had found me on the Music Under New York website — the home of MTA Subway buskers. MUNY is a program you have to apply and audition for, so it features many of New York City’s top street performers.

I grew up in NYC and still get back there a lot and often go busk when I do, so I still have a profile on the site. From time to time people find me on there and reach out for opportunities like this. ESPN was contacting me to ask if I would be interested in performing the “Monday Night Football” theme song for one of the games coming up. They are featuring local talent in all the home cities for games this season as part of the 50-year anniversary of the theme “Heavy Action.”

The promise of playing for tens of millions of people sounded pretty amazing and I was even up for flying out to NYC on my own dime to take advantage of this lucky opportunity. I did hesitate to say yes though so I could confirm a flight and place to stay and in that time they found someone else to play who was local.

That’s my first lesson; if something is important to you, say yes right away and figure out the details later. That’s often what I’ve done in the past, but I didn’t this time around and I’m going to try to remember moving forward to trust myself to say yes to things my intuition feels are right and figure out the “how” later.

Back to the story. I knew from our conversations that ESPN was looking for artists in other cities for the season and though they had already been talking to someone from L.A., it wasn’t totally firmed up yet. I politely followed up a few times over the next few weeks to see if perhaps something had fallen through and I could play instead.

Luck would have it that the original act did fall through and they ended up needing me for the Los Angeles-based Rams vs. Ravens game! That’s my second lesson in this – polite persistence will always help increase your chances for luck in this business.

Once it was confirmed, I immediately went to work learning the song and other details for the shoot. It actually wasn’t a song so much as an instrumental piece, so I had a lot of work ahead of me to find a way to interpret this orchestral piece for voice and guitar. That ended up also part of the fun as it came together and I got to explore parts of my voice that I used to use a lot as an opera singer that I don’t use as much singing my original music.

When the blog continues next week, Natalie offers more insight into working with the song – including direction from the legal department at ESPN – and takes us on the set for the taping of her performance.

Meanwhile, visit her official website and talk about this blog (or even her interviews on NHTE) in our Facebook group!