Telishia: Tell us a little bit of your backstory, and who, or what inspired you to sing.

Tony Terry: I’ve been singing for as long as I can remember. I can say the early influence was my grandmother and my family. I’m sure that I picked up a lot from them before I started venturing out and listening to people like Aretha Franklin, Shirley Caesar, and Donny Hathaway. The list goes on and on and on. I grew up between Washington, DC, and North Carolina, and every summer in North Carolina, we were in the country. There weren’t really a lot of music options outside of gospel and country and Western.  I listened to a lot of that. I like to think that I am all those people, the voices that I listened to growing up make me who I am as a singer.

Telishia: If you were not a singer, what line of work or career would you be in?

Tony: Well, since I like to argue, I’d probably be a good trial attorney.

Telishia: As a man of many gifts, talents, and dreams, what is the one thing you aspire to do that you haven’t done yet?

Tony: Consider me first. I always put other people’s needs in front of my own. Consider me first. I think that’s the thing that a lot of us deserve to do for ourselves.

 “If we would take the time and listen more, we would love each other more.”

Telishia:  if you were given the opportunity to speak to the nation about life and living or the state of the world today, what encouraging words would you say?

Tony: I would say that most words are misunderstandings or miscommunication and that if we would take the time and listen more, we would love each other more. Our women don’t hear our men. Men don’t hear our women; our parents don’t hear our children.

 As a child, no one asked me how I was doing as if I didn’t have any problems.

Imagine the kids with the stimuli that they have today, that we did not have. All the images they have access to that we did not have, and all the information that they have access to, nobody checks on them to see how they’re doing. Questions like what are you looking at on the internet? How are you doing at school?

Telishia: Maybe a lot of lives could have been saved if kids who took their own lives would have been able to talk and tell someone what they were feeling and if they were being bullied.

Tony: Exactly. So, since they’re not telling, I ask, “is anybody bullying you at school, not just you? Is there anybody bullying anybody else at school?  Are you messing with anybody at school? It’s just kind of a conversation. Cause I want to know what’s going on in your life.” Because they’re so much smarter than we were.

Telishia: I know you’ve worked with some amazing people. Is there anyone that you haven’t worked with that you would love to work with?

Tony: There are many that I would like to work with that I have not worked with. It’s kind of hard to pinpoint just one or two.  I didn’t hear this interview, but I got several messages in my DM that there’s a talk show host, Cayman Kelly on satellite radio that interviewed Usher. I heard he asked him that question and Usher said that when he was coming up, he studied me and I thought, wow.  First, I wish I had heard that. But secondly, I thought, wow, you know, here I am, I’m still a student of my game. And the younger generation that came up after me are learning and studying and crafting their voices after mine. That’s amazing. That’s humbling and it doesn’t blow up my ego.

Telishia: What’s currently on your itinerary?

Tony: Well, I shared my story on TV One’s Docu-series “UNSUNG” which airs on Sunday. Wow. It’s opening the season and I think that’s pretty awesome. I think that they must have felt that it was weighty enough to carry as the season opener. That’s a big deal for me. And I didn’t tell my whole story.  I’m going to be honest with you because I realized during that show, I was really giving my story away for free. I gave, parts of the story, the other part of the story will be in a memoir or something.

Telishia: Do you have any film projects or stage projects in the works?

Tony: Well, not coming up. I mean I did recently star in the film “Martin Malcolm and Me.”  I played Malcolm X. That’s currently on the Tubi Network and Amazon prime. I played in another movie, “Cycle,” which is about, the cycle of domestic violence. I think it’s an interesting film. It shines a light on domestic violence.

Telishia: Share one of the most memorable moments on your entertainment journey.

Tony: One of them was in South Africa with Roberta Flack and playing at the south African Sun Splash Jazz Festival where there are over a hundred thousand people in the audience watching. That was kind of mind-blowing. It was just such an incredibly large crowd that was so loud.  I was knocked off my center a little bit when I walked out there and saw those people, but it was one of the best shows. It was great.

Telishia: You attended a High school for Performing arts, would you say that helped prepare you to be a great singer and well-rounded entertainer?

Tony: It was the thing that prepared me for what I’m doing. It was like if you ever saw the show, Fame and Debbie Allen when said  “You want fame, well, fame cost and right here is where you start paying with your sweat,” That’s what it was. You know, we put a lot of hours into practicing our craft and building a strong work ethic and getting it done, being able to make changes right as the curtain is about to go up on the opening night, and getting a change from the director. You can’t freak out. You just take note, make the change and keep on going. So learning how to do that gave me the ability to be able to operate on a dime like that. Those things are very important in entertainment. I mean, especially me being from the theater industry, things change in a moment, and you got to get with it. Can’t argue with the director that’s the best way to lose your job.

“Take note, make the change, and keep it moving.”

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