Idol Chatter & Voice Views

His audition: Caeland Garner, 31, of Coleridge, N.C., auditioned with “Dancing in the Moonlight” by King Harvest. Showing off nice range, Caeland enticed chair turns from Blake Shelton and Jennifer Hudson midway through the performance. Blake complimented Caeland on his unique vocals and said he sounds like a singer-songwriter from the 1970s. Caeland decided to join Team Blake.

His background: Growing up, he and his family would play music for hours, he recalls. He taught himself to play dobro and would up being a backing musician for several artists. That led to making the acquaintance of former The Voice finalist Red Marlow. Red convinced him to move to Nashville to do music. And he’s done so, with the support of his family.

On picking Team Blake: “Being here in Nashville I’ve never met Blake. But he’s always been kind of an inspiration to me musically because he’s got the career that I have been striving for and sacrificed everything in my life to get. So I just went with my heart and chose Blake.”

What the show didn’t show:

* One of Caeland’s first jobs as a musician came when he was in college, playing dobro and singing tenor as a backing musician for Red.

* Red also played a major role in Caeland’s decision to audition for the show, and his selection of Blake as coach. “I remember the day I called him,” Caeland said. “I was like, ‘Man, I have a chance to go out to L.A. to audition for the TV show The Voice. And he said, ‘Stop right there. Caeland Garner if you don’t do this we ain’t friends no more.'”

* And when he was momentarily considering going with Jennifer as coach, he imagined Red’s reaction. Blake coached Red to the finals of Season 13. Said Caeland: “At the end of the day, I couldn’t look at Red in the next room and go, well, Red’s over there and if I choose Jennifer he’s going to be, like, ‘You big dummy.’ So I just went with my heart and chose Blake.”

* Caeland moved to Nashville in 2008. And he’s been busy releasing music this year, including a pair of three-song mix tapes filled with originals and a series of covers. Among the originals, be sure to check out the superb “Dreamcatcher” and the addictive “Welcome to a Small Town.”

* The most recent release was his version of The Eagles “Seven Bridges Road,” released in June. You can check out all of the covers on his YouTube channel as well. You can check out another of Caeland’s originals — “The Struggle Is Real” — below. It’s about the struggles of being a strongwriter.

* In a 2015 interview with his hometown newspaper, Caeland said his father was a musician, and he started following in his footsteps as a child, performing bluegrass music and taking piano and organ lessons.

* It was while attending St. Andrews Presbyterian College that he decided he wanted to pursue a career in music, though at one point that meant living in a camper for four years to make ends meet.

* At the time of the interview, Caeland was part of a duo called Carolina with Chris Harris and preparing for a show on the bluegrass stage at the North Carolina State Fair.

* He also spent time opening on tour with Canadian country artist Johnny Reid and wrote a duet called “Baby, I Know It” for Reid and Carolyn Dawn Johnson. That song reached number three on the country music charts in Canada and earned Caeland a songwriter of the year nomination.

His social media links:
Instagram
Twitter: @Caelandsings
Facebook
YouTube