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“It was just a catalyst to get me here,” he says. Taking home the title on “Strip Search” earned him a slot on the cast of “American Storm,” the all-male Las Vegas revue, which DeJesus immediately used to his advantage. So I won the whole show, and then when I got back, I just got very excited, so I moved to Las Vegas.”
Adelitas way album tv#
I was on this TV show called ‘Strip Search.’ I won the entire TV show, which was based in Las Vegas. They packed a suitcase for me, and they took me to Los Angeles. “My mom and dad were in on it,” he recalls. I was just myself, the same crazy guy that I am.” DeJesus didn’t think much of the audition until the day the producers showed up with a bunch of cameras and whisked him away to his future in Los Angeles. “And when I walked in, they immediately were like, ‘You, come here.’ I was like, ‘Me?’ I walked up and they interviewed me on camera and asked me all these questions. “I was this young, 18-year-old kid, always in the gym working out,” DeJesus says. Although the singer was just tagging along to the audition, he instantly attracted the attention of the producers. The buddy had reached out to DeJesus mainly because he was the only one he knew who had a car. Back in Philadelphia, he got a call from a friend asking him for a ride to try out for a reality show. It was like, this is where you’re supposed to be.”ĭeJesus indeed ended up here not long after that, and the way that happened is a story in itself. When I did a pit stop in Las Vegas, even before I decided to 100 percent move here, the city was so infectious to me, the city was so … it was calling my name. You go to Hollywood and you become a rock star.’ For me, it wasn’t like that. When you’re all the way from the East Coast and you’re 17, 18 years old, you think the only answer is New York or L.A., because that’s what everybody tells you your whole life, ‘Oh, you’ve got to be from Hollywood. “I was interested in Los Angeles,” he remembers. Something just told him a new life awaited in Las Vegas. Not long before that, he had made a scouting trip of sorts, scoping out Los Angeles first before making a stop in Vegas, where he felt an unmistakable pull, he says. The cramped, makeshift accommodations came about only because the singer was so excited to start a new life here that he hopped in his car with a friend and showed up in town two weeks early, before the job he had lined up was set to begin. Although DeJesus, then 19, lived in his car when he first arrived in Vegas, his story is not as hardscrabble as it sounds. Sure, there was an element of risk in moving here, but it was more of a calculated gamble. I’ve always wanted to come to the West Coast, and finally, one day, I woke up and I made the move, and I took some risks, and I drove across the country to Las Vegas.”
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I’ve always had a real positive energy about me, and the East Coast isn’t like that, man. I’ve always been real laid-back, real easygoing. And a lot of my friends, they were dying, man. I firmly believe that there’s guides in life, you know, and something kept telling me: You need to get out of Philadelphia, or you’re going to end up like a lot of your friends. I think at some point, you get guided places. “I was getting caught up in some of the wrong things. “You know, Philadelphia was just a really bad situation for me, man,” DeJesus recalls. A transplant from Philadelphia, DeJesus came to Las Vegas more than a decade ago in search of a better life, and he found it. Pounding the pavement again, so to speak, the Adelitas Way founder is once again putting his music directly in the hands of people, just like he did when he first moved to Las Vegas. Rick DeJesus is right back where he started, and he couldn’t be happier or more excited.įree from the constraints of a major label, DeJesus and his band, Adelitas Way, are hard at work on a new album, one that was funded entirely by fans through a Pledgemusic campaign. Whenever I‘m out on the road touring, I go on these long speeches, even onstage sometimes, about how great Las Vegas is." JOHN BARRY/COURTESY PHOTO "Eleven years later, here I am, and I‘m very proud to be from Las Vegas, and I‘m very proud of this city. I‘m very pro-Vegas," Adelitas Way frontman Rick DeJesus says.