By Fred Topel | Image property of respective holders.
Michael Bolton
NBC's Clash of the Choirs gave Michael Bolton an emotional homecoming. Going back to New Haven, CT to audition aspiring singers for the musical competition, Bolton found himself truly in his old stomping grounds.
Bolton Judges Clash of the Choirs
"It took me to a place where it seems like only yesterday I was just performing in clubs to survive, "said Bolton. "If the show was canceled because of the snow in New England, there was no food money. So that’s where it took me back to. We did the auditions at Toad’s Place which is a club in New Haven where a lot of artists have done showcases and performed through the years. But it’s in downtown New Haven, right in the middle of Yale University and literally two miles from where I used to live."
If the hopeful crooners were nervous in the presence of Grammy award winning Bolton, they might have been comforted by the chills he was getting. "It was intense. I didn’t expect it to feel that way, but when I sat there, I was sitting where the audience usually was when I used to perform there. My dad who passed away, who raised us in New Haven, used to come to shows. My mother lives five minutes from Toad’s place. My brother and sister are still there within ten minutes and we used to live within two miles. The irony of it is that I didn’t expect to get hit with the feeling of what it was like when I used to play there and that’s what determined whether our rent checks bounced when I had three young kids, three young daughters and a family. That’s literally what Toad’s Place reminded me of and where it took me in time because that’s how we fed our families back then."
Now that he is successful, Bolton can use such an opportunity to give some new talent a break in the business. "I had a couple of things at work at the same time, kind of very extreme opposites that I was experiencing, how many years it had been, how far I’d come only to return and sit there, and say wow, this is where I remember I had these dreams and my aspirations of becoming an artist and my struggle of trying to become a successful artist. They’re all connected with this venue, let alone New Haven, the town of my birth."
While shows like American Idol might trade in the criticism judges dish on the contestants, Clash of the Choirs will be all positive. "I didn’t want to get involved in anything that was a trashy part of reality TV. Then we were told the song selection would be broad enough that we’d really enjoy the music. So I was happy to step up and do this. I also heard, you know, right away that Patti LaBelle was involved and that excited me about the project because I felt like the standard was going to be very high. I never even thought about a possibility of it going towards the negative or it being about trashing certain singers who shouldn’t be there and shouldn’t be part of the choir because we were going to get right past that quickly. So I didn’t think about it in terms of how different it would be than some of the reality TV that we have to bear with."
Clash of the Choirs airs December 17th through the 20th on NBC.
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