For a few weeks in 2005, Nova Scotia native J.D. Fortune was living in his car in Toronto with his pug, Presley.
Listening to the radio, Fortune, then 31, heard an ad talking about auditions for an upcoming CBS reality television show. The program, Rock Star, saw 15 contestants vie to become the new lead singer for Australian band INXS.
The three-time Grammy nominated band had been looking for a new permanent singer since the 1997 death of Michael Hutchence.
Fortune turned to his dog, who was named after musician Elvis Presley.
“I said to him, ‘I’m going to win this,'” said Fortune. “Something just hit me. It was like a bolt of lightning.”
On the Sept. 20, 2005, episode, Fortune’s proclamation became true.
“All I dreamed about when I was a kid was … performing and being on stage and playing music,” said Fortune.
For a self-described country boy from Pictou County, N.S., who split his childhood between there and Ontario, the win was the culmination of a lifelong dream.
Growing up, Fortune had the cover of an INXS album on his wall, which he’d look at before he went to school. Even then, he felt connected to the band and the singer he idolized.
These days, Fortune is working on a new album and a book, both of which he hopes to release next year. He leads a quiet life in Pictou County, religiously going to the gym each morning and focusing on music. He tours as well, playing INXS songs and solo music.
Next month, he’s heading to Australia for 10 shows. He said shows will be later announced for Canada and the U.S.
Before the television show, Fortune played in other bands and worked a variety of jobs, including driving a tractor-trailer and a brief stint in the Canadian army. CBS’s bio of him also referred to him as an Elvis impersonator.
“I’m about as much of an Elvis impersonator as Jamie Foxx is a Ray Charles impersonator,” said Fortune, who said he performed with some touring companies that played music from the 1950s to the 1970s, where he had to sing some Elvis tunes. This brought him to places including Arizona, Missouri and Nevada.
Thousands of people auditioned for Rock Star: INXS, with Fortune doing his open audition in Toronto. Fortune said he was later flown to Los Angeles and put up in a hotel with around 500 contestants where the competition was whittled down to the 15 people who appeared on the show.
For INXS, besides finding a new singer, the show was an opportunity to advertise their music to existing fans and new ones. The band was hugely popular in the 1980s and 1990s and known for songs such as Original Sin, Need You Tonight and Never Tear Us Apart, but struggled to find its footing after Hutchence’s death.
Fortune said the band got to pick five of the contestants, while the television producers picked the other 10.
“I guess I was in the good-for-TV mix,” he said. “No one was planning on me winning.”
Fortune’s fortune changed on an episode when the show was down to eight contestants. The band had prepped a piece of music that needed lyrics. The contestants were split into teams of four to write lyrics, but the exercise was also meant to show how they worked with others.
Fortune didn’t like the composition his teammates had been working on, so he instead worked on his own.
The consensus was that Fortune’s lyrics were the best.
“I think that’s when the band was like, ‘Oh, where did this guy come from and we should watch him a little more,'” said Fortune.
The song, which Fortune titled Pretty Vegas, started being played regularly on the show. Its chorus, “It ain’t pretty, after the show,” was a nod to a confrontation with some other contestants earlier in the season.
Being on the show was an intense experience.
“The volume is on 10 when you’re in that kind of pressure-cooker situation, when you’re on a reality show where there’s 15 cameras around you following you 24/7, like, everything is heightened,” said Fortune. “Your nerves are heightened, your emotions are heightened.”
Fortune said it would have been good to get some guidance after going through that experience, but after being declared the winner, Fortune entered the studio to record the album Switch with INXS.
Pretty Vegas was the first single off the album, which was released on Nov. 29, 2005, a little over two months after the show wrapped up.
Tour rehearsals took him to Australia where his possessions still consisted of the suitcase he packed when he went to Los Angeles for the show.
“I had no downtime to go out and do shopping or to, you know, think about anything,” said Fortune. “I just got on an airplane and ended up on the other side of the world in a different country with no family around, no friends.”
Fortune was in INXS between 2005 and 2011, playing hundreds of shows around the world and following a gruelling touring schedule. Afterward, Fortune returned to Nova Scotia to get back to his roots and see family and friends.
In 2012, INXS, who had been touring with a different lead singer, called it quits.
Fortune said he still loves singing INXS songs, but especially the ones he helped write, like Pretty Vegas.
“It makes me proud every time I’m on stage singing that because I get to say to the audience I wrote this with INXS,” said Fortune. “And, you know, they go, ‘Yahhhh!!!’ It’s great and that’s very fulfilling.”
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