COURTESY OF MAXI-MEDIA USA Martin Nievera It's not unusual for a recording artist to have a hit with a song that was originally penned for someone else. Sometimes a record label will rush-release a cover version of another label's budding hit. And sometimes that cover sells better than the original.
comes home
John Berger
jberger@starbulletin.com
Martin Nievera's experience with "The Sorry Song," which was written for him by Brian McKnight, is a bit more complicated, however.
Martin Nievera and Regine Velasquez In concert
Where: Hawaii Convention Center
When: 7:30 p.m. tomorrow
Tickets $75 and $100
Call: 843-8808
"It's a beautiful song -- it's all about being sorry," Nievera said in a Tuesday luncheon interview.
"While we were recording it in his studio, he wanted me to do it in Tagalog ... so I did and sang it for him a couple of times, and then I taught it to him. It took him only one hour to record his English song -- now in Tagalog -- and it came out first in the Philippines before my English version, which was the original idea.
"Now his song -- in Tagalog -- is a big hit, and when mine comes out, it will be like the English version of his Tagalog song."
Three other McKnight compositions are among the English language songs on Nievera's new double-CD album, "Chasing Time." McKnight even appears as a special guest vocalist on one of them, "Thank You for Saving My Life."
"He was a guest on my television show and I asked him if he'd ever write me a song if he had any extra," Nievera said. "He made a promise on television, and then about a year later, I got six songs (from him) and I recorded four."
Nievera, known to his fans as "The Concert King," looked sharp and ready to go, despite the lingering effects of jet lag. He had just arrived in Honolulu the previous day, gotten up early that morning for a promotional stop at KITV and then gone back to bed for an hour or two before starting another round of promotional engagements.
The reason for Nievera being here is that he's appearing at the Hawaii Convention Center in concert with Regine Velasquez tomorrow night.
"She's awesome -- what a voice, what a range," he said.
While the two have guested on each other's concerts over the years, he says it's been almost a decade since they've performed together as a scheduled double-bill.
And while they did two sold-out shows in a 15,000-seat venue in the Philippines back in 1994, this is the first time they've toured together internationally, and their schedule includes five concerts in the United States and several more in Canada, Europe and other parts of the world.
"What makes this tour bigger than usual is that it's the first time we're joining forces with another Filipino artist, and also that we're working with a company that usually imports talent from America or other parts of the world to the Philippines -- this time, they're doing it the other way around. This world tour is going to be the first of many, we hope, where artists are going to join forces together. I think it's good for the market, too."
COURTESY OF MAXI-MEDIA USA
Martin Nievera and Regine Velasquez join voices again but this will be the first time they tour together internationally in a double bill.
VELASQUEZ, born and raised in the Philippines, is still better known within the local, expatriate Filipino community, despite being a world-class vocalist and concert performer. Nievera, who grew up and performed here in Honolulu, is the more familiar of the two and, after 20 years as a Philippines-based artist, still describes his concerts and showroom engagements here as "coming home."
It's not that he isn't proud of his local Filipino heritage, but Nievera said there were advantages to starting his career in the Philippines.
"I think I got a lot of opportunities because my father (Roberto Nievera) was well-known already in the Philippines. That's probably why I went there, to get some sort of experience. Trying to train myself to be a good singer and good performer came a lot easier," he said.
There were times, however, that he encountered people who viewed him as a brash American outsider who would have no more than a short-lived career, at best. Nievera proved them wrong. He worked hard, applied himself to the challenge of becoming bilingual and developed into a multifaceted entertainer.
"When I put together a show, I always try to please everybody and do a little bit of everything in one show. I'll do a three-hour show, with no intermission, because I love being on stage and I want everybody to feel that they got their money's worth," he said, adding that during one performance here with the Honolulu Symphony, he and his longtime arranger and keyboardist Louie Ocampo, carried on as an acoustic duo through the designated intermission, while the Symphony took a break offstage.
NIEVERA went through both a personal and professional crisis several years ago when his supposedly fairy-tale marriage to "Pops" Fernandez ended in an annulment (the equivalent of an divorce in the staunchly Roman Catholic Philippines). He spent over a year trying to win her back while publicly working through his trauma with poetry, original songs and three studio albums -- and sometimes facing people who blamed him personally for the break-up.
Since that time, he has rebounded -- at least on a professional level. Although some pundits were claiming that changing tastes in music had passed him by, Nievera has been drawing big audiences again, setting attendance records and picking up his career as a recording artist and poet.
And old-time fans were thrilled when Nievera and his ex reunited for six sold-out concerts earlier this year. It was the first time in seven years they had performed together and he says it worked out well on stage.
Locally, he has performed as a concert headliner at the Blaisdell Arena, played the Outrigger Main Showroom and Sheraton Princess Kaiulani, and guested with the Honolulu Symphony. Call him a pie-eyed optimist, but after two decades in show business, he is still working for the day when mainstream American audiences will learn to accept entertainers from Asia simply as entertainers, rather than pigeonholing them as marketable only to their respective native ethnic groups.
An upcoming engagement in a showroom at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas may take him another step forward to realizing his dream.
"These are the things that are slowly getting me closer (to completing) my 20-year mission, and I feel like every day is Day One. You're only as good as your last hit or your last performance. In my case, coming from the Philippines, I would like to say it's an advantage, but it's always been a disadvantage, as well, because, except for Lea Salonga, no one has really hit the American mainstream yet. I hope to be one of those guys before I die.
"The recording industry has been very generous to me in the Philippines, but here in America, I've been approached by people who produce mostly for Latino singers and have done very well for them -- and I'm about to finalize a contract to do a demo! Can you imagine 20 years (after my debut album), I'm doing a demo!"
But Nievera remains philosophical about his chances.
"If the contracts go through, at this point in my life, after 20 years in the business, I'll be starting all over again. It's a great feeling!"
Martin Nievera
Regine Velasquez Multimedia
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