Episode# 016: America's Got Talent Champ & Lead Vocalist of Sons of Serendip, Micah Christian, on Pursuing Your Purpose
Micah Christian, a former teacher turned singer and lead vocalist of Sons of Serendip, a TOP act on America’s Got Talent season 9 AND recently America’s Got Talent- the Champions Competitors is HERE on Scaling Up to chat all about the pursuit of his dreams (and what exactly that looked like)!
I admire this man not just for his second to none voice, but for the example he is to all of us… as a son, a husband, and a leader in pursuit of his dreams. He is making his massive impact in the world by using his God-given gifts and talents through music and you get to hear more of his story of how he got off his backside and went after it!
My freshman year I was scared, green to life outside of my bubble of home and I walk into my first day of class to see the warmest, sweetest smile greeting all of us! It was Micah Christian - the TA for this freshman only class that focused on leadership. What a joy!
Micah and I became friends over a friendly college football fan rivalry - unfortunately for Micah, he’s a Michigan fan, and I’m a fighting irish fan through and through. But despite that rift between us, I would still make my way to Sunday mass to hear that michigan fan’s voice in the choir each week.
And now I’ve had the pleasure of listening to his music in the car, or hearing my kids sing his songs at Christmas time, or going to see him perform live and even watching him shine on TV! Everyone loves a great story of the good guy getting what he deserves in life.
What was the journey to get to that place where you realize you had a passion for music?
I was going to a church and at this church they had an incredible percussionist. And I remember being inspired at a really, really, really young age. And so I asked my parents if I can get drum lessons. And so they, they tried to find a teacher that would teach someone that was young and nobody was willing to do it. And so after church I would just sit at the drums and they would just let me just play and play and play. And so I, I fell in love with the drums first. And then when I was eight years old, I got into the piano and started taking piano lessons. I enjoyed it for a little while and then just sort of wanting to do like create my own music.
I kinda just fell out of love with, with learning, you know, theory and just started creating on my own and then when I was 12, I got into singing on my chorus. Teacher brought me aside and she's like, I think you have potential as a singer. And that was the first time I had heard that before, because before that it was like all sports. That my thing. I loved sports and so I'd never heard from anyone that they thought that I could actually sing. Over time I developed a passion for singing, start auditioning for choir's and I had a lot of support from my family cause my, I come from a very artistic family.
I joined a group called Hyannis Sound on Cape Cod and it was 10 guys. We all live together for like every summer of my college life. We performed, we rehearsed like six to eight hours a day for the first three weeks of the summer, then performed like 90 to 100 shows for that summer. That was life changing for me because I really got a chance to dive deeper into music. So I went a number of different ways, but eventually landed right back where my deepest passion is.
Reminding the people listening, hasn't all been gravy. you've had bumps in the road to get to where you are today.
Part of my issue that I had with why I didn't think that I would ever do music full time was because I spent a lot of time comparing myself to other people and I spent a lot of time, I'm just wrestling with self confidence issues. I thought that I could sing and I enjoy singing, but when I would hear other singers, I'd be like, aw, I can't do what they can do. Or I hear other musicians, I'm like, man, they know so much more than I do and that lasted for a good seven years. I was doing very different things after I graduated from Stonehill, I traveled in and did some volunteer work and then came back and studied theology in Grad school. Then did more traveling after Grad school, but never thought that music was where I would, I would end up.
But I had a moment when I was in Peru with my wife, we were volunteering and I'm working with this Catholic organization and there was a moment halfway through the year where I had a pretty intense conversation with the head sister of the community and the head nun. She said something to me, cause I was asking her, we're here, we're working, you know, you don't really give us any feedback on how we're doing. You don't tell us we're doing a good job. And she said something that at first made me really angry, but then after I really thought about it, it was something that I needed to hear.
She was like, Micah, you need to stop waiting for me to tell you you're doing a good job in the patch. You need to look within yourself, find value in your own work and just do it and just do it. So when I heard that I was angry, but afterwards when I really thought about it, I started thinking about all the things that I was waiting for other people to tell me, you know, was valuable rather than looking within myself, finding value in it and then just doing it because I love it. And music was one of those things. So at that point I just started, I've made a decision that I was going to bring music back into my life as a central part of my life.
So there, there's a period of time where you guys start making music together and you're not full time with it yet. So what did that period look like and how, and when did you know that it was the right time to go full time?
So when I got back from Peru I reached out to Cordero and we got together, just started making music together. And at that time I was teaching ESL in a private English school in Cambridge. But during that time we had just decided to audition for America's Got Talent on a whim and I had no expectations and I was, you know, committed to what I was committed to. it's like no matter what, I'm going to make music, so I'll do what I have to do. If I need to work another job, I'm going to work another job just to make ends meet. Thankfully I do love teaching too I had fun with that too, but I just knew that no matter what I'm going to make music and so like that commitment stayed with me. So even though I had this other job I would always carve out time every day to making music.
We didn't hear back from (America’s Got Talen) for like three weeks. And when we did, we still had no expectations. But throughout that time we kept going further and further into the show, I knew that something was going to change for us, but I didn't know what that was gonna look like. That entire time I was still working and putting food on the table, but I think in my gut at around that time I did know that something was going to be different as we kept moving further and further into the show. After we ended up placing fourth that season (season 9) in 2014. We all just made the commitment that the only way that we're going to make this work is by just diving in.
What was being on America's Got Talent like?
That was exciting! We got the call three weeks after we sent in an audition tape and they asked for more information about the group, nine page bio about each member of the group and know, and then they wanted to hear more music as we kept sending them song after song after song. Then they were like, all right, we like this one. Do you want to do this in front of the judges for national TV?
And that moment was crazy.
We said yes and actually getting to the show. There weren't a lot of nerves being on the stage because we had put a lot of time in with preparation.
Each one of us had our own day jobs that we were doing at the time. And so we didn't, sometimes we didn't start rehearsing until like 10 or 11 at night and we will go until two or three in the morning. But we were committed to putting in those hours to make, to making sure that we were prepared so that when we got on the stage it was just like, this is what we've been doing in the rehearsal, you know, we're going to do right here. And before that we only had, we only had one other performance for like 20 people and so like to be on that stage in front of, you know, 3000 live audience members and then knowing that it's going to be shown to millions, we knew that we just had to be prepared for it.
We got through that that first round and we're like looking at each other like, guys, is this a group? Like, is this a real thing? Before that we weren't even a group. Yeah and so we're all right, well let's just see what happens, see what happens. And we kept getting further and further into it and now, and the excitement, you know, like growing and growing. I'd say like, probably the most nerve wracking part of it was just as we kept getting further and further in, there was less and less time for prep.
So we were getting song after song thrown after us, it thrown at us and by the time we got to the end, I mean we were completely exhausted and the nerves were starting to show up a little bit more. We gave everything we had to this and we placed fourth, which was exciting and we had no expectations going into it.