Sometimes rock & roll dreams do come true. In a very short time, Nate Peck went from fronting a local band to the national spotlight on American Idol, to stepping in for an ailing C.J. Snare to front FireHouse. After recently catching FireHouse live, I reached out to Nate to share his story.
Please press the PLAY icon below for the MisplacedStraws Nate Peck interview –
On how he hot on American Idol – I was in contact with a talent manager type person from the LA area. He said, “Hey man, would you be interested in maybe doing American Idol?” I said, “Yeah, I’d love that”. I kind of squeezed through the backdoor process of of the audition, and that’s how that happened.
On how he picked “Lightning Strikes Again” from Dokken as his audition song – So I had three songs picked out. I had Foreigner’s “I Wanna Know What Love Is”. One of them was the Dokken song and the other one was Aerosmith man, I don’t know the song. It’s not coming to the top of my head, but it was an Aerosmith song. The producers were going through the three songs and they’re like, “Which one would blow away the judges and really get their attention?” They’re like, “We got to do the Dokken song. It kind of shows the range, the high pitch notes”. So they went with that one.
On what led to his love of 80’s rock – I grew up in a, in a musical family. Early on there was always music playing in my house. Stuff like Ambrosia, Styx, Boston, Krokus, Journey. So there was that musical influence. I’d have to give my mom credit for sure for the heavier stuff, like Dokken, and Scorpions. So yeah, the credit’s going to have to go to her on that one.
On is the end of his American Idol stint – At Hollywood week, I left the show. Fast forward a few months later, I moved to Nashville with a bunch of American Idol friends. That year was really special. The amount of kinship and friendship we had on that show with the other contestants. We kind of all migrated to one part of Nashville. So we all got together and we did some shows around Broadway.
On how he hooked up with FireHouse – Before FireHouse, I was a guest singer with Jack Russell’s Great White. Me and Jack are really close, he’s a great guy. I would come out and guest sing on a song called, I’m sure you’re familiar with it, “Save Your Love”, which is one of the biggest ballads, right? So I would I’d go out and sing with him. Their guitarist, Robby Lochner is good friends with Bill Leverty of FireHouse. I got a call one day from Robby and he’s like, “Hey man, you know, FireHouse is looking for a fill in singer, C.J.’s undergoing surgery. Would you be interested?” I said, “Well, hell yeah, I’d be interested”, all excited. So, I went out to my car and I did I did two songs and I did “Love of a Lifetime” and “All She Wrote” and I sent those to Robby. He sent those to Bill. Next morning, I get a call from Bill. He’s like, “Hey man, love your voice, love what you did, saw your American Idol audition. It was great”. He goes, “Would you be interested in, in filling in for us for a little while?” I said, “I’d love to”. Before you know it, I had a flight out to Norwalk, Connecticut, and that’s where it began.
On if he was familiar with the band’s work – The only song I was familiar with was “Love of a Lifetime”, everybody knows that one. But I had to learn 14 songs in roughly like two weeks. So I just played them over and over and over again until they were implanted in my head and went out and did the show.
On if he was nervous for the first show – Oh, the nerves were definitely there for sure. I would say it’s a little bit of an uncomfortable situation because you’re not the original lead singer and seeing that response from the crowd and you’re getting in your head a little bit on stage, they liking this, are they digging it? But I saw some smiles and some, “all right, he can do it”. That kind of helped a lot, but there were definitely some nerves there for sure.
On fan reaction to his performances – I think when I first let out those high notes is when people are like, “oh, wow”. Sometimes they think I’m a female when I hit those notes for a second, but it takes a few songs, probably the third song and people are like, “Okay, he can do this”. But I think they’re shocked.
On his approach to the songs – Out of all the things I sing I make sure to keep it as authentic as what you hear when you first hear it on the studio album. I’ll try to with any little vocal trill or phrasing, I try to keep it exactly the same because that’s what everybody knows from listening to the stuff. But I try to keep it pretty close to the original, with thrown in a couple high notes or something that’s not in the original..
On playing his first arena show – I have to say playing in front of that many people is easier than playing in a small club or a theater scenario because everybody’s kind of right up in your face. Because the lights are dimmed and you can only see like the first five to ten rows, but the rest is just pure blackness. But you can hear it. But it was pretty surreal. Yeah, it was a little scary.
On how long he will fill in for FireHouse – So we’re just we’re waiting for C.J. to get better and he should be back very soon, but for the meantime, I’m just doing a few handful of shows left and that should be it.
On what comes next – I’d like to branch out and try to find my own sound and get a bunch of great musicians together and see what kind of chemistry of what we could put out a possibility of that in the future, maybe. But I’d like to explore that avenue. That would be cool.
