{"id":1171874,"date":"2018-02-15T08:56:42","date_gmt":"2018-02-15T13:56:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/?p=1171874"},"modified":"2018-02-15T08:58:42","modified_gmt":"2018-02-15T13:58:42","slug":"a-qa-with-sal-valenetti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/2018\/02\/15\/a-qa-with-sal-valenetti\/","title":{"rendered":"A Q&amp;A With Sal Valentinetti"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1170\" height=\"658\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/93MPdJEZ8_c?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The scene appeared pulled from \u201cThe Sopranos.\u201d The year was 2016, during season 11 of \u201cAmerica\u2019s Got Talent.\u201d Sal Valentinetti walked in slow motion along with two family members in the bright sun. His cousin, Big Tommy, ate a canoli while walking.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow you doin\u2019?,\u201d Valentinetti said when he sat down for a confessional video. The Italian-American from Long Island said the same thing to judge Heidi Klum after he walked on stage.<\/p>\n<p>The video showed Valentinetti joined by three aunts, his mother, and his two cousins, including Big Tommy. The family shared several pizzas while Valentinetti waited to perform.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUp to a few years ago, I barely sang Happy Birthday out loud,\u201d Valentinetti said in the show\u2019s confessional. \u201cI didn\u2019t come here to try out, I came here to win.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The 20-year-old has a trimmed beard and a boyish grin. His age can be difficult to define, since Valentinetti\u2019s voice is inspired by crooners like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. He would listen to these legendary artists with his grandmother, and after she passed, music served as a form of an enduring connection. With this inspiration, Valentinetti can sing so much like past crooners, the only thing that seems missing is the hiss of a record player. He stakes his career on this skill, in going by \u201cSal The Voice\u201d on his social media channels.<\/p>\n<p>Valentinetti wowed the \u201cAmerica\u2019s Got Talent\u201d judges as a finalist, and now he plans to wow the Weinberg audience when he performs this Friday. We spoke with Valentinetti to learn how this \u201cpizza delivery boy,\u201d with the support of his Uncle Joe, became an international touring artist.<\/p>\n<p><strong>When did you start singing?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When I was about 15 years old.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Did you know you were a good singer?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Once everyone started complimenting me \u2014 when they didn\u2019t throw tomatoes, I figured I was a good singer.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Did your dad or a family member inspire you to start singing?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>My Uncle Joe. I mean [my dad] encouraged me to do it professionally to make some money off of it, but when I was 17, I was delivering pizzas in a Cadillac. The most counter-productive thing you can do. So, in order to make some extra scratch, he said, \u2018Thursday night, a friend owns this restaurant and he needs a guy to come in and do three hours. He\u2019ll give you $100. Would you be interested?\u2019 Yeah, sure! I felt like Rockefeller with a hundred bucks.<\/p>\n<p>He saw that I liked it and said \u2018Hey, \u201cAmerican Idol\u201d is coming to the coliseum in a couple weeks, it might be something you should think about.\u2019 I said, \u2018I\u2019m not thinking about anything.\u2019 \u201cAmerican Idol?\u201d It\u2019s a pop show. It\u2019s a popularity contest. He said if they don\u2019t love you, I\u2019ll give you my Range Rover for the rest of the summer.<\/p>\n<p>I went, and I was so confident that I wouldn\u2019t be on the show, they put me on the show [and went to Hollywood].<\/p>\n<p>Harry Connick Jr. turns around. He hated me. Hated me! Why? Because I\u2019m everything he wishes he could be \u2014 I\u2019m kidding. I wish I could be married to a former Victoria Secret Model. He heard that I got on the show as a bet so he bet me a $100 I didn\u2019t know the real name to the song \u201cFly Me To The Moon\u201d on national television. He didn\u2019t like me then. He goes, Jennifer [Lopez]\u2019s cold; does anybody have any suggestions?<\/p>\n<p>They\u2019re all yelling out \u2026 So I go, \u2018Jennifa! I got a nice warm comforter. It\u2019s back in my hotel room. How you doin\u2019?\u2019 She starts laughing. She asks how old I am? I say \u2018Jennifa, I\u2019m 19.\u2019 I said, \u2018It doesn\u2019t matter how old I am, just like the music that I sing, it\u2019s timeless.\u2019 It went over pretty well. So well, I got kicked off the show the next day. But, an \u201cAmerica\u2019s Got Talent\u201d casting producer saw this video and a year later, they gave me a call.<\/p>\n<p>Getting there was crazy. The experience was bananas. No one knew how it was gonna go. \u2026 It\u2019s been a dream come true.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What was crazy about getting to \u201cAmerica\u2019s Got Talent\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It was crazy in the sense that now I knew it was real. OK, people like me. They think I have a talent. What do I do now? How do I take this seriously? I always said I was a pizza delivery boy and I was going to school full-time. I didn\u2019t know what I had. I gave it my all. I worked at it. I got a vocal coach and everything. [I] left myself on that stage just the way Uncle Joe told me. Be yourself and they\u2019ll love you. Go out there, and that was the most incredible experience of my life. Imagine being on this earth for two decades \u2026 you got to figure out what you want to do &#8230; and you have no idea what that is. You go out [on stage] and in an instant, your entire life is affirmed. You go, \u2018Wow, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. I love this.\u2019<\/p>\n<p><strong>Can you share why you donate a portion of your concert proceeds to Shriner\u2019s Hospital?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I think that children are among the world\u2019s most vulnerable. The fact that there are lives ending before they\u2019re even beginning, that to me &#8230; that\u2019s such a powerful thing to think about. So when I had the opportunity to take a tour of Shriner\u2019s facility in Philadelphia, I was overwhelmed with what I saw. Equally overwhelmed with sadness, I was overwhelmed with the amount of work that the Shriners and the nurses and the doctors are putting in to finding not just cures for terrible diseases but solutions for kids whose lives were interrupted. Shriners is one of the world\u2019s foremost actual manufacturers of speciality prosthetic limbs for children in hospitals like St. Jude and hospitals across that country that call on Shriner\u2019s to mold and make most of their prosthetic limbs. These are for kids who are growing. They showed me all the different solutions for all the different issues that will eventually come up in these kids\u2019 lives.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What do you have planned for your Weinberg show?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Definitely to have a lot of fun. My show is cut loose. Check your expectations at the door because I don\u2019t even know what\u2019s going to happen. It\u2019s a whole lot of fun, it\u2019s relaxed, it\u2019s great music from a great time, it brings back great memories for people and allows younger people to make new memories of a live performance of music, and this style of entertainment. My demographic range at my show is as young as 10 years old \u2026 and as old as 105.<\/p>\n<p><strong>So you said that \u201cMy Way\u201d is a song that you have to sing at every concert. And you dedicate this song to your Uncle Joe?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>You know why? The end of the song goes like this: \u201cFor what is a man, what has he got, if he\u2019s not himself, then he has not, the favorite things he truly feels is not the words of what he kneels.\u201d The reason why that song resonates so well with me and I dedicate it every single show to my Uncle Joe is because when I grew up, I wasn\u2019t popular. I was made fun of all the time. I was bullied. I was tortured. My Uncle Joe always told me, listen kid, they gotta catch up to you. You\u2019re ahead of your years. Don\u2019t worry about it. They\u2019ll catch up. You be yourself. Never change. Be yourself and they\u2019ll love you for who you are. And now, here it is a year later, and everything he told me is true.<\/p>\n<p><em>This Q&amp;A has been edited for clarity and length.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The scene appeared pulled from \u201cThe Sopranos.\u201d The year was 2016, during season 11 of \u201cAmerica\u2019s Got Talent.\u201d Sal Valentinetti walked in slow motion along with two family members in&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":1171875,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[31],"class_list":["post-1171874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-qa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1171874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1171874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1171874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1171875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1171874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1171874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnpsites.net\/playlist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1171874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}