Brad Paisley’s show at the Xfinity Center in Mansfield on Saturday featured an atypical supporting act: two Boston police officers, singing “God Bless America.’’
“For me, it just felt like I belonged there, like I had prepared for this. It was so exciting,’’ officer Kim Tavares said in an interview Sunday evening.
Alongside officer Stephen McNulty, Tavares gained fame earlier this summer with an in-cruiser “Cop Pool Karaoke’’ on-camera rendition of the song. They recorded it for July 4 and released it on the Boston police website, she said. Within days, the video went viral, and they performed on NBC’s “Today’’ show in late July. After seeing the video, Paisley extended an offer to the officers to join him at the concert.
The officers, who work in media relations at the department, are excited about their newfound fame. Recently, Tavares said, they went to Washington, D.C., to film a commercial to advertise the October opening of the National Law Enforcement Museum. “We both have our own individual styles, but we’re getting more recognition together,’’ she said.
Paisley posted a video of the officers singing to his official Twitter account, praising them for their sound.
“Invited them to sing here in MA tonight . . . and Wow!’’ he wrote in the tweet.
The two officers both write their own music, have performed professionally, and have sung the national anthem separately at department events. At a time when the relationship between police and the public can be fraught, they said they appreciated an opportunity to interact with the public out of uniform.
“If we brought a little bit of positivity to people, if we humanized police officers to people, then that’s fantastic,’’ McNulty said in an interview Sunday evening.
He learned to sing from his Irish grandmother, who was trained in Italian opera, and has been singing most of his life. He said he sang as a boy soprano in his church choir in West Roxbury, attended the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and lived full time as a musician for many years. Later in life, he became an officer.
“My voice, it’s a gift. It’s the only thing I was given and it’s the only thing I have to give away,’’ said McNulty, a third-generation officer with the Boston police.
Tavares’s work on the force has informed much of her music. After four people, including a toddler, were murdered in Mattapan one night in 2010, she was inspired to write a song called “I Know You’ve Seen It,’’ which expressed her pain at the brutality of the crime.
“We trust the smiles of strangers but how are we to know, will they cause us danger, should we stay or should we go?’’ she sang, her voice ringing clear over pictures of children and American flags.
Her music is important to her happiness and her work as an officer, she said, because it helps her understand what she sees on the job. “We’re all someone’s child,’’ she said, describing her process with this piece. “How do we live in a city and nobody sees anything?’’
Tavares hopes to become more involved in her music and start getting her own work out into the public sphere. Her appearance with Paisley only further confirmed her desire to be a musician, she said.
“I could do that every day because I know it brings happiness and it brings people together,’’ she said. “It was an out-of-body experience.’’
Amelia Nierenberg can be reached at amelia.nierenberg @globe.com. Sean Smyth can be reached at sean.smyth @globe.com.
