Meet Braiden Sunshine of The Voice Season 9

The Voice

September 26, 2015 By Mark Franklin 0

His audition: Braiden Sunshine, 15, of Lyme, Ct., auditioned with “The Mountains Win Again” by Blues Traveler. He prompted last-minute chair turns from Pharrell Williams and Gwen Stefani. Gwen reminded Braiden that she performed in a band at a young age. Braiden joined Team Gwen.

His background: He assures us that Sunshine is his real name, not a stage name. He says he’s been singing since he can remember. At age 9, he was singing at a church service when some guys approached him and said they were getting a band together. And so he became the youngest member of Silver Hammer, a band he’s been performing with for about six years. “We’ve done everything from weddings to restaurants to concert venues,” Braiden says. Unfortunately, the band doesn’t get to perform together very often anymore because most of the guys are off at college. “But I’ve got to keep doing this,” Braiden says. “I’m not going to stop. This kind of opportunity (The Voice) could help change my life.” He’s the youngest Season 9 contestant and says he was emboldened by how well Sawyer Fredericks did in Season 8.

What the show didn’t show: We heard about Silver Hammer on The Voice. But it’s just one of at least three musical projects this high school freshman is involved with. He even has a website (link below) designed to help “make sense of my musical madness.” He describes Silver Hammer as a classic rock cover band and says one of their biggest performances was at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in D.C. on Nov. 11, 2011. But the members of Silver Hammer were also writing original music and had a producer interested in working with them. So they started recording as Madison Red and released a pair of albums, the first in 2012 and the second in December. Both bands include the same members – Braiden’s sister Sierra, plus Ian, Duncan and Aidan Maxwell, Nolan Smyth and Tom Bora, according to the website.

But, as we heard on the show, many of the band members are off to college. “Suddenly, (I) had no one to play with during the school year,” Braiden writes on his website. “To cure this totally unacceptable situation, I got together with some friends from school and together we formed Stone Creek.” That group includes Colin McGrath, Jacob Graham and Noah Rumm and plays classic rock. Braiden sings and plays rhythm guitar. Oh, and he performs acoustically with Laura Spineti as Braiden and Laura. Altogether, The Voice website says Braiden has played more than 300 shows. And it doesn’t take a math whiz to figure out that he was in a recording studio at a very young age. Along the way, he was named 2014’s Most Promising Male Vocalist of the Year for age 13-16 in the new country category by the North American Country Music Association International (NACMAI), according to his Facebook page.

Braiden’s advice to anyone thinking about auditioning for The Voice: Just do it. “My mother didn’t even tell me we were going to an open call because she knew that if I knew, we wouldn’t be going — I wouldn’t want to do it,” he says of his initial audition for The Voice. “We actually just showed up at the open call audio and she said ‘You’re doing this.’ I’m like ‘all right.’ And look at where we are now.”

For links to more bios of Season 9 artists on The Voice, head here.

On iTunes: Madison Red’s 2014 album “Middle Ground” is available on iTunes. Their self-titled debut album is available on Bandcamp.

Update:
Battle round: Defeated Lyndsey Elm, singing “No One is to Blame.”
Knockout round: He performed “Feeling Good” and defeated Ellie Lawrence. The song hit #63 on the iTunes Top 200.
Live playoffs: He performed “Everything I Own.” The song hit number 62 on iTunes, 11th best among 24 songs from the live playoffs. He was voted into the Top 12 for Team Gwen.
Top 12: He performed “Renegade” and was voted into the Top 11. The song hit number 75 on the iTunes Top 200 (worst of the night), but number 1 on the rock singles chart.
Top 11: He sang the 1980s hit “True.” The song hit number 63 on the iTunes Top 200. Only one song did worse on the charts, but Braiden was voted into the Top 10.
Top 10: He performed “Radioactive,” which landed at 113 on the iTunes Top 200, the worst performance of the night. But he won the instant save to earn a spot in the Top 9 when he performed “Harder to Breathe” on results night.
Top 9: He sang “Amazing Grace.” The song landed at number seven on the iTunes Top 200, sixth best of the night. But Braiden failed to finish in the Top 6 in fan voting and was eliminated from the show.