Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Gary Carpentier nailed down the very final spot on Season 13 of The Voice. (NBC Photo)

But to say he and the show cut it close in Season 13 would be an understatement.

Gary, 26, of Oswego, N.Y., nabbed the very final spot among the 48 cast members when he enticed Adam Levine to turn his chair with an impassioned cover of Michael Buble’s “Home.”

Gary told his hometown radio station he tried out for the show a couple of years ago, made it deep into the auditions but fell short of earning a spot on the show.

“I think I was too young,” Carpentier told syracuse.com in a separate interview. “I didn’t have enough performing time under my belt. I wasn’t mature enough as a vocalist and a person. I just wasn’t completely ready.”

For a long time, Gary admitted to The Voice, his focus wasn’t on music at all. A pitcher blessed with a 90+ mph fastball, he earned All-Central New York honors in high school and went to college to play baseball, attracting the attention of some Major League scouts in the process.

But Gary also admitted to The Voice that he should have spent more time studying. He wound up dropping out of college. And he switched his focus to music, which wasn’t exactly a stranger.

He’d started singing in choruses back in elementary school and eventually got involved with musical theater as well, once playing Gaston in “Beauty and the Beast.”

And with baseball out of the picture, he began performing three or four nights a week around Oswego, struggling at times to make ends meet. It was during one of those shows that he met his fiancée, Becky, who accompanied him to the blind audition.

Gary’s been working on a debut EP and describes his music as “very ’50s, ’60s oriented, jazz, big swing type stuff. Like Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Nat King Cole. That kind of old school feel but with a modern twist.”

It was Gary’s unique twist on Paula Abdul’s “Straight Up” (check it out below) that landed Gary an initial audition for Season 13.

And when he finally advanced to the big stage in front of the celebrity coaches, he said he didn’t know there was only one spot left.

“I didn’t care if I got a turn or not,” he told the media in a conference call last week. “All I wanted to do was sing. I just wanted to perform and just make sure that if I didn’t get a chair turn, I did my very best. Then I was going to be okay with it.”

Adam turned 30 seconds into his performance, prompting tears from Gary, followed by more at the end of the performance. His fiancée broke down in tears as well. And the video of that performance has now been viewed more than 750,000 times.

“People think my reaction’s fake because it’s on TV,” Gary said in the radio interview. “I’m like, ‘No, this has been seven years worth of a struggle for me (for recognition as a singer).”

Here are Gary’s social media links, followed by a couple of samples of his music.

Instagram
Twitter: @garycarpentier
YouTube
Facebook