The Day I Met Joey McIntyre From New Kids on the Block

When my friend Jan sent me the ticketing info about Joey McIntyre’s one man show called The Kid coming to Denver, I snatched up tickets as soon as I could. We, along with my girlfriend Chris (who attends every NKOTB concert with me whenever they’re in town)  headed into the city for brunch and to check out our Joey Mac in a show we knew nothing about. Turns out it’s a coming of age musical about his family, growing up in Boston, and how NKOTB came to be- then ended- then back again- in a developmental performance where they take your input at the end and adjust things accordingly in hopes that it will one day be on Broadway.

The basic rundown of the show:

Alcohol wasn’t allowed. This was especially weird since the theater’s bar is such a great one. And after all, wouldn’t you want people loosened up for a one person performance?

There is a piano on stage although he doesn’t seem to know how to play. He used it twice and only played a few basic chords while singing. We found this to be odd.

He can actually sing. I know that sounds like it would be a given, but it’s so rare to hear someone’s voice live in a small setting where it’s pure and stripped down without 4 other guys chiming in and the sound of girls screaming in the background.

There wasn’t nearly enough NKOTB stuff in the play, which overall was a bit disconjoined and slow to start.

After the show Chris saw a small line form and figured out (it wasn’t announced) that he would be taking pics with those who stayed behind which was only about 20 or so people. There were probably fewer than 100 at the performance anyway, and most left not knowing about the photo opp which left us part of the lucky few to snag a picture and a few moments of his time. We were so excited! Then they came out and announced that he was ‘working on the show’ and wouldn’t come out. In a flash we went from the most excited we’ve ever been to the most disappointed. Long story short, we decided to go back to the Galleria that Wednesday after his next show and just hop into line hoping he’d be more in a picture-taking mood that night. Our gamble totally paid off as we entered the theater a few minutes before 9:30 when the show ended. A small line started to form, he was on his way out, it was happening!

The lowdown on the meeting:

He absolutely didn’t want to do the photo opp and had someone from the production use a ‘house camera’ where they would uploaded the photos themselves to the venue’s Flickr (see HERE) because they wanted to ‘speed things up.’ Um, there were only around 30 people in line, let’s be realistic on how much longer this would actually take using your own camera. This especially sucked for us because Jan is a photographer and brought her fancy camera so we’d get the best quality pics we could. We scrambled for a plan, but ended up taking turns using her camera anyway off to the side (why you don’t see us looking directly into the camera) which I’m glad about since the ones they took didn’t turn out that great.

I don’t remember him saying anything to me or anyone else really. He’d respond with a quiet ‘thank you’ to compliments, but he really seemed tired and totally not into it at all which was awkward since the girls in line were so totally excited to be there and were all realizing their childhood dreams of meeting him. The energy between him and the fans was unbalanced.

He smelled good.

He was shorter than I thought he’d be.

I didn’t care that he didn’t want to be there. This was on my bucket list and not his, he was only a prop for my dream that was 25 years in the making. And it was awesome.

Our tickets and program from the show.

Paparazzi! Here I am snapping as many pics as I can.

The money shot. Here we are! It’s a framer!

Chris, straight from kickboxing. Her pic turned out really cute.

I love this one with Jan. They look like old friends.

Just us 3 moms out later than usual on a Wednesday night. I’m 8 months pregnant here too.

Thanks to my girls for a fun night!