Sunday, September 1, 2013

Joey McIntyre talks with the Denver Post

Joey was featured in an article by the Denver Post:

New Kids on the Block's Joey McIntyre tells his stories in one-man show "The Kid"

At 40, Joey McIntyre looks boyish. Just not boy-bandish.

The youngest member of the Y-chromosome behemoth known as New Kids on the Block sits next to director Eli Gonda at a diner not far from the Denver Performing Arts Complex.

The pair are taking a break from rehearsing McIntyre's work-in-progress, the one-man show "The Kid," which runs through Sept. 15 at the stripped-down Garner Galleria theater.

McIntyre was the youngest member of NKOTB and the last to join up with the group composed of Donnie Wahlberg, Danny Wood and brothers Jordan and Jonathan Knight.

"New Kids came along because literally someone was calling a local school in Jamaica Plain, looking for little white kids who could sing and dance. It ended up being Maurice Starr, who started New Edition." That R&B group also hailed from Boston.

The group "didn't blow up all of a sudden," says McIntyre. "For three years, we played around Boston, at fairs. Then we got a hit record when I was 15, and all hell broke loose." The band has sold more that 80 million records globally. One Direction makes you itchy? NKOTB share the blame for that.

McIntyre is also youngest of Katherine and Thomas McIntyre's nine children. He was raised in the street-car suburb of Jamaica Plain, where the nation's oldest community theater, the Footlight Club resides.

"That was two blocks away. My mother was a member," he says. So were his seven sisters. His father was a union leader and involved in politics. McIntyre quotes his Dad, who figures into "The Kid."

"Like he says, 'It's all show business.' So I love being in theater.

"I've had a one-man show in my head for a while now," he says. "I would do tours of my own, I would do acoustic sets, I would do 'evenings with,' I just felt I wanted to do it in a legit way. Get a writer. Get a director. Get a book."

So here he sits with that director. Television writer Christine Boylan wrote the book that recounts McIntyre's many chapters.

"We all have multiple version of ourselves,"says Gonda. "What I find remarkable is Joe is being all versions of himself in the course of this two hours, in this story, in this night. He's embracing all sides of his personality — family, performance, theater, pop. It makes the evening that much more dynamic."

McIntyre chimes in. "I know it sounds corny, but I have to do it." He flashes an easy smile.

"I've lived me with me my whole life. I've always wanted to do it all."

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