1 Photo
Jordan Smith, the season nine winner of the popular NBC singing show “The Voice,” will share his musical talent with his East End fans for the first time when he visits the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center on Saturday, April 1. As part of the final leg of his first headlining tour, the 23-year-old singer from Kentucky will perform songs from his 2016 debut album, “Something Beautiful,” as well as songs he sang during his time on “The Voice.”
“I’m really excited to be there,” Mr. Smith said. “I really just want to share myself with the audience. They can definitely expect to learn a lot about me and a lot about my story both through the music and hearing me speak and seeing me on stage.”
Mr. Smith was announced as the winner of season nine on December 15, 2015. Since then, his life has been turned upside down, as he described. In 2016, he released two albums, “Something Beautiful” in March and his Christmas album, “’Tis the Season” in October, and married his fiancée, Kristen Denny, to whom he had proposed on New Year’s Day, two weeks after his win.
“It’s sometimes easier to think about the few things in life that haven’t changed than to think of all the things that have,” Mr. Smith said. “I definitely expected it to be a lot of hard work, but I didn’t expect the hard work to pay off as much as it has. My wife and I are having the absolute best time and it’s fun.”
Although his fans may already be familiar with his performance style by watching him on television, he explained how his live performances differ from what viewers have seen from him before.
“The nature of it is automatically a little different because on ‘The Voice,’ I’m singing one song every week, so I spend an entire week working on a single song and then I get on stage and sing as good and as hard as I can for three minutes and hope for the best,” shared Mr. Smith, who was part of Adam Levine’s team. “But now the competition’s off and I’m able to just share my heart and share the music that I love. I don’t have to worry about being a certain way and there’s no pressure, so I enjoy it so much more.”
From growing up in a small town in Kentucky and later attending Lee University in Tennessee, he never expected to be presented with such an opportunity that would gain him national recognition.
“When I started the show, I had no idea what I was getting myself into and I never imagined that what I did there would be so successful. I watched my blind audition on September 21st, I woke up the next morning and millions of people have seen it already. At this point, 53, 54 million people have seen my blind audition on YouTube,” Mr. Smith said. “It was so surreal to me because just overnight, everything changed. Before that I was a college student working two jobs just trying to pay my way through college and keep my scholarship and make good grades, and overnight it became this thing.”
Pursuing a career in music was something he knew he wanted to do from a young age. He began playing the drums as a child and went on to make music in his church. He decided to make music a hobby, as he didn’t think he would get an opportunity to be successful in this field, but his mother convinced him to do otherwise.
“One day my mom said, ‘Jordan, do you really think you could be happy every day for the rest of your life doing anything else but making music?’ And I ultimately decided the answer was no, so I decided to be a musician,” he said.
In the midst of pursuing a career in music, studying music business in college, he spontaneously auditioned for season eight of the show since it took place in nearby Nashville, Tennessee, but he didn’t make it past the auditions. Then a year later, someone from the show’s casting department unexpectedly contacted him after seeing a video of him singing online. They asked him if he would consider auditioning for the show, unaware that he had previously auditioned, and he gave it a second shot.
During his blind audition, all four judges turned their chairs around for Mr. Smith, which meant that they all wanted him to join their team. Before going into this audition, he said he was set on choosing singer-songwriter Pharrell Williams to be his coach if he was given the choice, but he felt an immediate connection with Maroon 5 lead singer Adam Levine that made him change his mind.
“It ended up being the perfect choice for me. We got along extremely well,” he said. “He was my biggest advocate when it came to being myself. He’s so supportive of who I was and the kind of music I wanted to make. He kind of allowed me to sit in the driver’s seat and he helped me get there.”
Once he finishes his tour in April—his last stop being in Morristown, New Jersey, the day after his WHBPAC show—he said that making new music is the next step for him.
“I definitely think that after this tour, everyone will have new music to look forward to,” he said.
Jordan Smith will perform at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center on Saturday, April 1, at 8 p.m. Tickets start at $39 and can be purchased at whbpac.org or by calling 631-288-1500.
on Mar 21, 2017