Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Wild isn’t necessary the way Angie Keilhauer would have described her music.

But that’s the name of her new EP. You can thank Blake Shelton for that.

After one of Angie’s performances on Season 10 of The Voice, Blake said “There is something very undisciplined about the way you perform… you are wild.”

Angie admits hearing her music described that way seemed strange at first, but says she grew to love the critique from her coach on the show.

And so “Wild” became the name of her new EP. It hit iTunes late last month, making her one of the first Season 10 contestants to release new music.

The EP features seven songs, all written by the singer-songwriter from Marietta, Ga.

“That detail is really important to me because I want people to know they are connecting with the person behind the mic when they hear these words,” Angie told Voice Views.

“I was offered a few indie label deals after coming off the show, but both had picked out very specific songs and genres they wanted me to sing. The money was definitely tempting, but I needed my first full-band studio project to be personal. Not everyone gets a second chance to create an album, and if this is my last one I needed it to be honest. I needed it to be me.”

Of course, that meant self-funding the project. Angie says she did that with money she had saved from touring non-stop for more than two years prior to appearing on The Voice.

“I spent my life savings into this project plus extended some credit, so the day it was released I could barely talk I was so nervous. Literally everything I have went into this thing.”

The hard work paid off. The EP quickly hit the Top 5 on the iTunes singer-songwriter album chart. Then it hit number one on the same chart her native country, El Salvador.

Angie’s response: “I cried,” she admits.

EP might have come quickly, but it certainly doesn’t sound rushed. Highlight’s include the autobiographical “Am I Crazy” (“Am I Crazy / for thinking I could ever be / more than what I am right now”), a lovely ballad called “The Greatest Thing” and a fun rocker called “Born to Drive.”

Angie said she wrote that song about a friend she met while working at a Mustang-only salvage yard before she started doing music full time.

“All he ever cared to do or talk about was driving,” Angie says of that friend. “It was everything to him. He didn’t get along with everyone, but I understood him just fine because his crazy passion for driving was just the same as the one I had for music. I kind of fused our stories together to create this song. It’s probably one of my all-time favorites to play.”

Angie had one of the more interesting backstories of the Season 10 contestants on The Voice. She was born in El Savador and spent the first 11 years of her life there, until her dad decided to move the family because of unrest in the country and because he thought the U.S. would offer more opportunities for his five daughters.

Flash forward a few years and Angie found herself studying engineering at Georgia Tech University — and not necessarily loving it — when she decided she wanted to sing on a cruise ship. That’s exactly what wound up happening. She landed a gig with Carnival Cruise Line, playing four sets a day, six days a week for thousands of people while traveling to tropical locations.

Then came The Voice, where she advanced as far as the knockout round before being eliminated. She calls her stint on the show “the greatest thing that ever happened to me.”

“I had been touring for two and a half years straight before coming on The Voice. At that point every mile started to wear on me; the show could not have come at a better time,” she says. “Overnight, in a one-and-a-half-minute performance, I tripled all of the work I did over 2.5 years (in terms of social media numbers, album sales and music streaming).”

Now Angie’s on the road again, touring to support her new EP. She’s been up and down the East Coast over the past month, and that tour will land her in Harrisburg, Pa., on Sunday, when she’ll perform a 1 p.m. show at the Harrisburg Midtown Arts Center. Tickets are just $10.

More tour dates are coming, Angie says. You can track her through her Facebook page or her website. On Twitter, she is simply @AngieKeilhauer.

Now, here are a couple of those songs off that new EP.