There’s a time before a race when the crowd settles down and is quiet for a few minutes – during the singing of the national anthem. At last year’s TCS New York City Marathon, that honor was given to Danny Peter Smith.
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If Danny’s name seems familiar, it may be because his impromptu street corner performance of “Tennessee Whiskey” with Guitaro5000 went viral on YouTube last year. Guitaro5000 has over 1.5 million followers, but “I had no idea who he was,” Danny says. “I thought he was live streaming to a video game website. I didn’t know what he was doing. It was my lunch for work and I work right by that corner. I was just chilling on a bench, and I love music, so there was this guy with a guitar, and I was like, let me just sit here and secretly listen. I’m going to keep my headphones in, but no volume, nothing’s playing.
“I was sitting there for, I would say, 20 minutes, and he asked me [to sing] multiple times. And I kept saying ‘No,’ because I know I’m gonna be good, which is really weird to say. I almost wanted to fail because I didn’t want the attention. I was like, people are gonna stop and listen to me, and my friends are gonna walk by, and that’s why I was nervous. I didn’t want a crowd to form; I didn’t want anyone to stop and film me because, you know, tourists in New York love to film. They’ll just stop and put a camera in your face. After the third or fourth time he asked me, that’s when the video starts.”
Danny didn’t think about it much afterwards. Around a month later, he was at work when he got a notification on his phone that someone had tagged him in something. It turned out to be that video. “Then I refreshed it and every refresh, it was like 10,000 views, 10,000 more, 10,000 more, 50,000. And the weirdest thing that came out of it was that first week slash month, people wrote articles about it. You name a company, they have reached out to me about this video. You name a TV show, any of those singing shows, they all reached out.”
He turned them all down. Danny grew up doing theatre, even missing part of eighth grade to go on the road with the national tour of Peter Pan. “I got back from that show and I was like, ‘You know what? I don’t really love this. I don’t like doing the same show, eight shows a week.’ And of course, everyone else loved me doing it, but I didn’t like doing it myself. So I kind of just put it on the back burner and I was like, ‘I can sing, but it’s not my job.’”
He was also disillusioned by a previous experience.“One of the shows that reached out was American Idol. For the past five years, every year they’ve reached out to me. And sorry for spoiling this; it’s a very fake show. They had me make up a fake storyline about myself and say that I’m from a city that I’m not from. And I felt so uncomfortable that I was like, ‘I don’t want to do this.’ So props to anyone who does do the shows; it’s just not my cup of tea.”
Singing the national anthem before the TCS New York City Marathon, on the other hand, was. “I’m kind of a go-getter; if I want to do something, I’ll do it. Not in a bratty way, but when I ran the marathon, I heard the national anthem and I was like, ‘My gosh, they’re on top of a double-decker bus; that’s so New York.’ Frank Sinatra is playing, and the cannons and helicopters, and I was like, ‘I’m going to do that. One day, I’m going to do that.’ I didn’t know that one day would end up being the next year.”
He sang it three times, for different waves of the race. “I went into it saying, ‘I’m doing it three times. I have three chances to make it better and better and better.’ And I’m not tootin’ my own horn, but I think I sounded pretty damn good. Of course, I was shaking in my boots, but I look back and I’m so happy how it went because I feel like I was so in the moment. I remember the whole morning. I didn’t black out. I didn’t get so nervous that I was shaking physically. I felt really comfortable in my skin that morning. I look back and I’m like, ‘That day was just such a good day.’ There was nothing that went wrong, and my family was there and I got to meet them after, at the finish line. And it was just thrilling. There’s no other way to describe it.”
Danny runs as a guide for Achilles International, and he’s fundraising for them for the United Airlines NYC Half, where he’ll also be singing the national anthem. He’s talking with New York Road Runners about singing at this year’s marathon, as well. “I love running and I love singing. New York Roadrunners has been so nice and sweet to me and has offered me so many more national anthems. And that to me in itself is just like, if that’s all I have going for me with my singing career, I’m happy, ‘cause I get to combine two of my favorite things.”
Resources
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