Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Blind audition: Michael Sanchez, 25, of San Diego, Calif., auditioned with “Use Me” by Bill Withers. He turned in a solid vocal, but was moments from not making the show when Alicia Keys pushed her button at the last moment, giving him a spot on The Voice as a member of her team. Alicia said she liked his growl and his big voice.

His background: Michael says he gets to play music for a living — six or seven nights a week at restaurants. “I’m the guy in the corner playing piano. But customers are there to eat their food. It’s not really the Michael Sanchez show.” He said it’s been difficult to support his wife and his son with just his music and he’s hoping to be able to perform in a way that allows him to spend more time with his family. He says he doesn’t sound like he looks and fooled the coaches when they turned around. Adam said he felt for sure the singer was a 60-year-old black man.

What the show didn’t show:
* Michael’s been playing piano since he was 5 or 6 years old.
* Growing up, he struggled with a speech impediment. “I’d stutter and mumble. It was not a good situation. So I felt always like a really awkward weird kid,” he said in a conference call with the media.
* Then he started singing and playing piano at school, at a talent show, for instance. “All of the sudden, people were like, ‘Hey, who’s this guy?'” Michael recalled. “Music really helped me find my voice — my confidence in communication.”
* As a piano player at a restaurant, Michael says he winds up performing all sorts of music. “Somebody comes in and they throw down $20 dollars and they go, ‘I want to hear Taylor Swift.’ Okay, well you play Taylor swift. Or they want to hear Michael Jackson, and you play Michael Jackson. So it’s just a great job, and it’s all stuff that I really like.”
* He describes himself as “an old soul” musically with a preference for jazz, R&B / soul and Christian music.
* Michael leads worship at Chapel at Grossmont in La Mesa, Calif., according to his website, and is also involved in other churches in the San Diego area.
* That website also indicates that he’s been working on a debut album of Christian music.
* Since he’s performed everything from country to jazz to rock and roll, Michael said during the conference call that he’s hoping The Voice will help him hone his own sound.
* In a post-audition interview with the AJ Show, Michael said there was a point midway through his blind audition where he thought at least one of the coaches would turn. No one did, so he abandoned his game plan and “just started growling a lot and going to town and really went for it.” It worked, at the last second, thanks to Alicia.
* In the same interview, Michael said he wound up on exactly the team he was hoping for. “You didn’t get to see it, but in all the (pre-audition) interviews, I was saying, ‘I really want to be on Team Alicia.”
* Michael and his wife Maria have a young son named Noah, who’s a budding YouTube star. Don’t believe me? Check out the welcome on Michael’s YouTube channel or the videos Noah has done promoting his dad’s appearance on The Voice.

Keeping up with Michael:
Twitter: @Michael_Sanchez
Facebook
Website
YouTube