He gets close-up views of fame, football and Fourth fireworks

For singers, July 4 at the Capitol can be imposing.
There they are, live on PBS, belting to the multitudes – estimated at 300,000 or more. Faith Hill was once startled by even the afternoon rehearsal crowd.
“It never gets old,” said Charles Esten (shown here), who will sing “Let Freedom Ring” this year (8 p.m., rerunning at 9:30), as fireworks flare. “You always feel the energy.”
He should be used to this. Esten – who was good-guy Deacon in the “Nashville” series and bad-guy Ward in “Outer Banks” – has sung at lots of sports events. He’s learned, he says, to can relax a tad.
“You can be in the moment a little more” and appreciate it, he said. That compares to the first time, “when it’s over and you say, ‘Oh, that really happened.’”
This year’s “A Capitol Fourth” will again ripple with musical variety. One moment has classical star Renee Fleming, another has Adrienne Warren’s tribute to Tina Turner, whom she played on Broadway. Others include Babyface, Chicago, Belinda Carlisle, Boyz II Men and more.
That collides with NBC’s coverage from New York (8 p.m., plus highlights at 10), with Bebe Rexha, Ja Rule, Jelly Roll, Ashanti, Lainey Wilson and LL Cool J.
It’s the 43rd year for “Capitol Fourth” … and Esten, 57, has seen some of the early ones. He was 9 when his parents divorced and he moved with his mom from Pittsburgh to a D.C. suburb. He recalls the Bicentennial fuss, a Beach Boys concert and the ultimate experience – watching the fireworks on a boat owned by his maternal uncle, who had a boat-rental business.
Life was full of adventures on both sides of his family. His dad had moved to an apartment tower overlooking the Pittsburgh Steelers’ stadium. As an insurance-business partner with Steeler star Ray Mansfield, he would take his son to the locker room.
“It was my first glimpse of fame,” Esten recalls. “I didn’t know they were future Hall-of-Famers …. To me, they were just Andy (Russell) and Terry (Bradshaw). Then we’d walk outside and there’d be a crowd waiting to see them.”
Esten would later experience borrowed fame – two-and-a-half years in London, starring in the Buddy Holly musical. “I was so taken by the the audience’s reaction. I knew their love was for him and his music,” all created in a brief burst, before Holly’s death in a plane crash. “It was so sad that I got to sing ‘That’ll Be the Day’ more often than he did.”
His own fame crept in slowly, mostly from doing improv comedy on “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” It was a workable life, he said, with plenty of time for paternal joy (coaching all three of his daughters’ first soccer teams) and pain (when his youngest, Addie, was diagnosed with leukemia at 2).
She survived and thrived in soccer. “She was on a very good club (in Los Angeles),” he said. “Then dad (Esten) comes home and says, ‘We’re moving to Nashville.’ It could have been terrible.”
It wasn’t, because his wife hurried ahead and prepared the move. On the day Addie arrived, she tried out for a soccer club. A few years later it (and Addie) had a national championship.
Esten could focus on “Nashville.” It ran six seasons and put him on the charts with some duets. (He’s been recording lately, with singles “One Good Move,” about his wife, and “In a Bar Somewhere.”)
He also set up a drive that has raised more than $2 million for leukemia research. That was his charity on a celebrity edition of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”
The show was a natural for Esten, who also had a three-day run on “Sale of the Century” in his pre-celebrity days. “I have a very wide breadth of knowledge that’s about a half-inch deep.”
As he neared the half-million mark, he was ready to bail out. “I realized it wasn’t my money to lose.”
But the question was what the license plate said on the cover of the Beatles’ “Abbey Road” album. Charles Esten knows such things; leukemia-research had an extra $500,000.