Idol Chatter & Voice Views

His audition: Chance Pena, 15, Tyler, Texas, auditioned with Ed Sheeran’s “I See Fire.” Adam Levine turned around midway through the performance, but was the only coach to do so. Adam praised the emotion in his performance.

His background: Chance says his parents have owned and operated physical fitness gyms for more than 15 years. He considered getting involved in the family business, but says his parents encourage him to pursue his passion for music. Chance says he didn’t start singing until age 11. Now a sophomore in high school, he performs six to eight shows a month, but usually only in front of a few dozen people. Since he doesn’t have a driver’s license yet, his dad serves as his “roadie.”

What the show didn’t show: Chance picked up his first guitar when he was 18 months old, according to his website bio, which adds “it was a miniature mock up of a full-size guitar, but it had six strings and made noise. “Even when I was like 3 years old, I would grab my dad’s full size acoustic guitar and put it on my lap and do what I could with it,” Chance said in a conference call with the media.

Pretty soon, the noise transitioned into music. And at the tender age of 8, Chance received an electric guitar as a gift.
And by age 11 or 12, he says he decided music was what he wanted to do for a career. “And, honestly, I’ve never really had a Plan B because for me if you have a Plan B it means you really don’t believe in yourself.” He describes himself as an indie folk artist, and the music he plays is a mix of covers and originals.

He has lots of music posted to his SoundCloud page. Chance says his influences include The Lumineers, Blind Pilot, Hudson Taylor and Mumford and Sons. Chance talked to ETwired.com about the songwriting process. “The best songwriting advice I’ve ever gotten was ‘don’t second-guess yourself,’” he says in an interview you can check out here. “(I) used to. I’d just throw my song away if I was writing and didn’t like it. Now I try to work on it until it looks and sounds the way I want it.” You can check out a couple of Chance Pena originals below.

I’ll be posting profile blogs on every singer who lands a spot on Season 9 of The Voice. For links to the others, head here. Keep checking back. There are many more to come.

On iTunes: Just his performances from The Voice.

Update:
Battle round: Lost to the duo of Andi & Alex, singing “Wherever You Will Go.” But he was stolen by Blake Shelton. The song hit #16 on the iTunes’s singles chart, the best of the battle round.
Knockout round: He sang “Demons” by Imagine Dragons, but lost to Ivonne Acero.
Top 24: Adam invited him back to perform in the Top 24 show. He sang “Barton Hollow” and hit number 80 on the iTunes Top 200. He was eliminated when Amy Vachal and Jordan Smith were voted into the finals and Shelby Brown got the Team Adam save.

Keeping up with Chance:
Website
Facebook
YouTube
Twitter: @Chance_Pena

Buried in Stone (original)

Sickness (original)

Battles (cover)

Blind audition: “I See Fire”