Nick Jonas is looking back on a challenging live performance.
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In 2016, Nick Jonas joined Kelsea Ballerini at the ACM Awards, playing guitar during her performance of her hit, “Peter Pan.” The Jonas Brothers joined host Dax Shepard for an episode of his podcast, Armchair Expert With Dax Shepard, where the youngest Jonas revealed that the experience was “traumatic,” as he came out onstage for a guitar solo that he felt confident going into, but blacked out when he hit the stage.
“I rehearsed it a million times, I’m feeling really confident about it, not even really thinking about it like it’s a thing that’s gonna be problematic,” he explains (quote via Taste of Country). “I started off, it was fine and as I walked towards her, I just went completely blank and I hit a wrong note and blacked out basically and clocked that it was wrong and I couldn’t stop.”
Jonas says that the flubbed moment threw him off his axis and left him in shock afterward, so much so it compelled him to go to therapy. “I was rushed to a car and rushed to a plane right after it and I looked at my manager and said, ‘I think that was bad,’” he continues, stating he was in “shock.” “It was a really traumatic moment that shaped the pressure I put on myself to be perfect and to always be on.”
Looking back now, Jonas says that even though there’s an air of mystery about why he blacked out, he can “laugh” at the mishap. “‘Til this day and hours after unpacking it, I can’t really figure out what happened,” he says.
The Jonas Brothers and Ballerini reunited in 2021 when she joined them as an opening act on their Remember This Tour. The brother trio of Nick, Joe and Kevin Jonas released their latest project, The Album, in May 2023. The album hit No. 3 on the Billboard 200. They’re set to embark on The Tour in August 2023, which opens with a two-night stay at Yankee Stadium in New York City and ends at the Kaseya Center in Miami, Florida, on October 14.
Photo by Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images
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