A former "America's Got Talent" winner has some interesting advice for Daphne teenager Jaycob Curlee, as he prepares for a make-or-break performance on Tuesday: Ignore the judges.
It might sound a little crazy, but the source – well, the source is no dummy. Terry Fator may be the definitive example of how powerful the show can be.
When he walked onstage for his first audition back in the second season of the show, way back in 2007, the judges weren't exactly receptive. David Hasselhoff, part of the season's three-member panel, immediately blurted out "Oh, no, a ventriloquist." But within a few seconds Fator had convinced the 'hoff that he was a potential season winner. A few weeks later he claimed the show's million-dollar prize, and from there he went on to earn a place among Las Vegas entertainment royalty, entering a world of multi-year, multi-million-dollar engagements.
Fator is currently on a tour that will bring him to Beau Rivage Resort & Casino in Biloxi on Sept. 13. He describes the show as one that tells the story of his career, including his life-changing time on "America's Got Talent." Fator continues to watch the show and was familiar with Curlee, recognizing him as the young singer who'd made a splash in the premiere of the show' current season with the story of his troubled early childhood and redemptive adoption as well as with his tender performance of a John Mayer song.
The Season 2 winner from Texas was happy to share some backstage insight with the Season 9 contender from Daphne.
"I'll tell you what," said Fator. "I am just thankful that I am not on this season. Because this season and last season were two of the best seasons I've ever seen. I would never want to compete against some of those people he's competing against."
That said, Fator observed, you don't have to win the show, to come out of the show a winner.
"My encouragement to Jaycob is to just enjoy every moment that he possibly can on that show, because whether he wins or not, his life's going to be changed," he said. "He can utilize this, he can use this as a springboard.
"I had a reasonable career before 'America's Got Talent,' obviously I wasn't making the kind of money I'm making now, but what I wanted to get from the show, I really just wanted to just be able to raise my price and be easier to book," Fator said. "Regardless of what happens to Jaycob, he's going to be able to put together an incredible DVD where people are saying great things about him and he shows the crowd reaction, so when he's trying to book himself, it's going to be a lot easier for him to book himself."
"It's what he takes out of it," Fator said. "If he wins, that's fantastic. But even if he wins, he still kind of has to take the bull by the horns, and that's why my recommendation to anyone who goes on that show, don't sit back and expect NBC or 'America's Got Talent' producers to do anything for you. Get your plans together now. Start planning on what you're going to do after, either after you get kicked out or if you win the show. It's a win-win, no matter what."
When the show moved to Radio City Music Hall for quarterfinals, small acts blossomed into big production numbers to fill the stage and dazzle the audience. Fator said much of that hoopla comes from the show's producers, not from the acts themselves. The trick for performers, he said, is to stay focused on what matters – and it's not the judging panel of Heidi Klum, Howard Stern, Mel B. and Howie Mandel.
"They kind of take it over," he said of the show's producers. "They kind of take over and decide. You don't really have a lot of choice, when they want to put all those dancing people behind you and stuff. The producers are going to want to make it as big as possible for television. A lot of times you don't even have a choice in the song choice, because there's only so many songs that they're allowed to do on 'America's Got Talent.' You can say, 'I want to do this one,' and they might say, 'We don't have the rights to do that but we do have the right to do this one.'
"So really, my advice again with that is, focus on your audience," Fator said. "Focus on the audience. Just don't care about all the nonsense that's going on around you. Because I'm sure when Jaycob comes out, they're going to have explosions and all kinds of other things to try to make it look bigger, but the fact is, the only thing that matters, and the judges don't even really matter at that point, all that matters is that audience that's in that theater watching you, in Radio City Music Hall. There are a bunch of people there that just want to watch you perform. And they are rooting for you. There is nothing to be scared of. You don't have to worry about the cameras, you don't have to worry about the judges, you don't have to worry about anything but that audience. And when you focus everything on the audience, only good things can possibly happen."
"You never know," said Fator. "It's all up to America, isn't it?"
Curlee may well have figured this out for himself. The judges weren't bowled over by his quarterfinal performance, but viewers voted him through to the semifinals. When host Nick Cannon asked for Curlee's reaction to the good news, he sounded a note of defiance: "Three of the judges didn't think that it was good enough," he said, "but that just shows that America is amazing, and from here on out, I'll be singing to them. So thank you all."
Curlee and 11 other semifinalists will perform in a live broadcast starting at 8 p.m. Central time Tuesday, Sept. 2, on NBC. On Wednesday, a results show starting at 8 p.m. will reveal which six of them will proceed to finals. (They'll join six other finalists chosen last week.)
The show will be well into finals by the time Fator hits Biloxi on Sept. 13. Tickets for the 8 p.m. performance range from $54.95 to $74.95 plus fees and are available through Ticketmaster; as of Monday morning, Ticketmaster indicated that only a handful of seats remained available. For more information, visit www.beaurivage.com.
Fator said he thinks Curlee's friends and family would find the show informative.
"If they're fans of Jaycob and they want to know what he's going through, come out and see my show, because you're going to see exactly what it's like to be on that show."
"The show that I'm actually bringing to Beau Rivage is the story of how I went from being a janitor in Texas to headlining my own show in Vegas," Fator said. "I take people through the highs and the lows, and I tell you what, people are going to leave that show on a high. They're going to feel so good."