"I Just Want to Be Myself Out There": One Local Young Guitarist is Seeing His Dream Come True After Going Viral for a Performance
We live in a time where one video can change someone's life, and that's exactly what happened to one local teenager just a couple of weeks ago.
Union-Endicott High School Junior Eamonn Hubert has never been shy of the spotlight and expressing his love for music, beginning his guitar career and performing with his dad, Doug Hubert, and his band since he was six years old.
"I don't remember ever being scared of the crowd because my dad was right there," Hubert said. "So I was like, you know, it's it's a show. I know what I'm doing."
During that same time, Hubert discovered a musical super power that could help push his dream even further... perfect pitch.
If you aren't familiar with what perfect pitch is, it is the ability to identify a musical note correctly upon hearing it.
"It started when I my, my air conditioner was on and I was like, hey, mom, that's a flat rate out of it was," Hubert said. "She's like, the piano matches the pitch that he's he's saying."
"My wife and I always joke, Boy, wouldn't it be funny if he turned into a musician, you know?," Eamonn's dad Doug Huber said. "Then it just happened. And he very quickly just exploded."
Throughout the years of performing with his son, Doug Hubert says Eamonn's growth as a musician has been incredible and credits the way his son interacts with crowds.
"I've seen him grow as a musician, grows an entertainer is becoming, you know, become much more comfortable with the crowd and sort of interacting with the crowd," Doug Hubert said.
However, Eamonn's life would change on the night of January 17, 2025, when he was prepping to play the National Anthem before a Union-Endicott home basketball game against Johnson City.
Hubert told Fox 40 he went into the performance thinking, "I'm going to show up, rock the house, and then enjoy an awesome game." After his performance, Hubert received a standing ovation from the packed crowd and proceeded to enjoy the game.
However, little did he know he would be going viral during that time and later on. The young guitarist's performance so far has garnered over 1.2 million views on Fox 40's Instagram page and over 57,000 views on Eck's Facebook post.
"I was looking through, you know, my comments and I was like all these random strangers are like, this is really cool," Hubert said. "That's an awesome, awesome way to spend 4 hours on Instagram just looking through."
Eck called shooting the performance a "stroke of luck", as the Union-Endicott vs. Johnson City game was his second game of the night and he arrived two minutes before Hubert took the stage. But the Fox 40 Weekend Sports Director credits on woman associated with Union-Endicott for the video.
"She just said, Hey, this kid over here is about to play the national anthem on guitar. That'd be really cool if you got some video of it," Eck said. "I thought, Let's get that as a great establish shot for our highlights."
That stroke of luck might've been destiny for Eck and Hubert. Since Hubert's performance was posted to social media on January 17, the Union-Endicott Junior has received numerous offers from across the country, including performing the National Anthem at a Big Tech Conference in Washington D.C. in March and being contacted by baseball team "The Savannah Bananas".
"I just want to be myself out there. And if I'm making songs and where can an and projects and the whole world doesn't know my name, that's okay with me," Hubert said.
Hubert released his album "Can't Get the Words Out" in November 2024 and is available for streaming on all platforms.
Fox 40 first met Eamonn when he was nine years old in 2017, when he finding his groove as a guitarist. You can check out Fox 40's original story with Hubert from July 2017 below.