By Chip Chandler — Digital Content Producer
Making the cut for the first season of The Voice gave singer Rebecca Loebe more than just a career boost. It gave her strength.
"Initially, in the months and year after I was on it, there was some immediate and tangible impact," said Loebe, citing increased followers on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
She wrote a few new songs inspired by her experience during the first season of the NBC reality competition, in which she advanced to the Battle Round on Adam Levine's team and landed on the iTunes Top 10 for her unusual cover of Nirvana's "Come As You Are."
She also landed a new manager, a new booking agent and a broader reach in touring — including regular stops in Amarillo, where she'll return for a 7:30 p.m. Saturday show at The Chalice Abbey, 2717 Stanley Drive, as part of High Plains Public Radio's Living Room Concerts series. Doors open at 7 p.m.; suggested donation is $15.
But Loebe said The Voice's greatest impact was internal.
"The biggest takeaway I got from it was that the experience was so intimidating and frightening," she said.
Wait a second, she's going somewhere with this.
"It's hard to describe how scary it was. I knew there wasn't any actual consequences, that if a chair didn't turn around, I wouldn't be drawn down into the flames," she said. "But it was so scary and so intimidating.
"Since then, every show I have done has been really fun."
(See, I told you she was going somewhere with it.)
"I never had any major issues with stage fright, but I felt like the final (barrier) came down between me and the audience, and I feel like I sing without fear of judgment because I have been in a position where I was being judged while I was singing," she said. "It was the biggest takeaway and the least tangible. ... You can't count what it did for me on an emotional, cellular level."
Loebe had been touring for about five years before auditioning on The Voice, and the Atlanta native and Austin transplant has racked up another five years since the show.
Traveling the country has given the singer-songwriter a fairly unique perspective on the state of the union, even in these contentious times.
"People are fundamentally wonderful. That is a huge gift the road brings to me," she said. "I see this wide swath of people, and I think it is so wonderful to be reminded that people are so wonderful — 99.9999999 percent of people are working hard to make the world a better place.
"Yeah, there are bad people who want to do bad things, and they get more air time," she continued, "but they are a very small minority."
Chip Chandler is a digital content producer for Panhandle PBS. He can be contacted at Chip.Chandler@actx.edu, at @chipchandler1 on Twitter and at www.facebook.com/chipchandlerwriter on Facebook.
