Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Jaron Strom landed a spot on Team Blake Shelton for The Voice Season 14. (NBC Photo)

His background: Jaron says he’s a web designer by day, a performer by night. “I come off as this southern relaxed dude, but then I get on stage and show an energy you don’t see when you meet me.” He sings with a band locally and released two singles, followed by a full album this year. jaron performs mostly at bars and clubs, sometimes for hundreds of people, sometimes just 10, he tells The Voice. In college, he was a cheerleader, doing handstands and flips, so he’s merged that into his music. His granddad introduced him to Motown music. Now Jaron is a big fan as well.

What the show didn’t show:

* Jaron describes himself as a North Carolina born-and-raised pop-soul artist who grew up in Selby, N.C., and now resides in Charlotte.

* According to his website bio, he’s been a self-sustaining artist for the past 10 years and aspires to bridge “the gap between pop and soul.”

* Jaron says he was attending school for graphic design when he discovered his gift for writing and singing, which started in a dorm room then led to coffee shops and small stages.

* He released a seven-track album last summer called “Feelz” that featured the singles “Freedom” and “Truth.” The latter is especially good and I’ve embedded the music video below. For the music video for “Freedom,” head here.

* He is also the featured vocalist on a pair of 2016 hip-hop singles, “Anywhere” by KM and “This Letter’s For You” by Jordan Copas.

* Jaron also fronts a band called “Minutes and Years” that blends hip-hop, pop and rock and also includes Shawn Prynce, Lew Watson, Elliott Langford and Tom Rogers. The band released an EP called “Round and Round” in 2016 and a single called “Off the Ground” last summer.

* Jaron told Voice Views “my solo music sounds a little bit different from the band’s, but both of these efforts are with the intent to really make an impact and be noticed in the music world regardless of which path takes off.”

* Head to his YouTube channel and you can watch Jaron cover DNCE’s “Cake By the Ocean” at halftime of a Charlotte Hornets basketball game. Filmed last March, he called it his biggest performance to date, in front of a crowd of nearly 20,000.

On joining Team Blake: “So initially in the process, I thought to myself, how cool would it be to make Adam Levine‘s team, given that we have a similar tone in our voice as well as a similar genre of music. But the more I started to think about things with my southern roots and laid-back personality, I realized Blake would also be an amazing coach and mentor that I could connect with very well. I think in the end it worked out perfectly with me being on Blake’s team.”

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