Goshen College rallies around Girl Named Tom as the trio shines on 'The Voice'

NBC's "The Voice" can be an emotional roller coaster for both its contestants and its fans.

Each week, the participants in the singing contest face elimination, and usually the final cuts are announced at the end of the show. In the final minutes, the studio audience and the home viewers watch the singers squirm, waiting to hear the news.

Fortunately for the South Bend-based vocal trio Girl Named Tom, there was no such anxiety on Tuesday night's live broadcast.

Girl Named Tom was the first act that host Carson Daly announced as safe from elimination. It was less than three minutes into the episode. The siblings, Caleb, Joshua and Bekah Liechty, could relax for the rest of the night. They knew they would still be alive for the next round.

The blind audition:South Bend band Girl Named Tom nails 'The Voice' audition. Work with Kelly Clarkson next.

"Getting the news early on was very valuable for our mental health," Caleb told The Tribune by telephone the next morning from Los Angeles. "Everyone up there is a dear friend of ours at this point, so it was still a stressful hour, watching them having to wait for the results."

The Liechtys grew up in the small town of Pettisville, Ohio, so South Bend can't quite claim them as hometown heroes. The South Bend area, however, certainly counts as their most recent headquarters.

Caleb and Joshua are both graduates of Goshen College, and all three siblings moved to South Bend in November 2020. It allowed Joshua to be closer to his girlfriend, who is an Indiana University medical student in South Bend.

The move served a broader purpose, though. The three of them did some invaluable wood-shedding as they waited out the COVID-19 pandemic in a peaceful and safe environment.

"We were seeking a place where we could just work on music and hunker down for the winter," Joshua said. "We set up a little kitchen studio and made demos."

They also auditioned for "The Voice."

The show is structured around four superstar judges, who select their favorites from the blind auditions and then form teams. This season's panel consists of Kelly Clarkson, Ariana Grande, John Legend and Blake Shelton.

For the blind audition, the judges have their backs turned to the performers at the beginning of the song and press a button to flip the chair around if they want to select the act for their team.

Girl Named Tom sang Crosby, Stills & Nash's "Helplessly Hoping" and garnered a rare response. All four judges turned around. That meant the trio got to pick the judge, rather than vice versa. The Liechtys went with Clarkson.

College days in Goshen

Among the first to congratulate the trio on Tuesday night was Goshen College music professor Scott Hochstetler. A mentor of both brothers, they still text back and forth.

"He's a great man, and it was such a privilege to work with him," Joshua said. "He's stayed a steady companion on our journey with music post-college."

"They've hit the big time, but they still write back, so that feels good," Hochstetler said last week.

At Goshen, Hochstetler was their choir director and vocal coach. Both brothers were on a pre-med track at the Mennonite college, but both minored in music, with Joshua focusing on voice and Caleb the piano.

"In my 13 years at Goshen, Josh and Caleb are probably the kindest students I've ever had," Hochstetler said. "They're both athletes, too. They're just good at everything — Renaissance men."

The siblings, who grew up singing in the Mennonite church, returned on Oct. 1 to Goshen College for a performance at Sauder Concert Hall, as they were starting to gain attention and advance on "The Voice."

The college's Facebook page has reminded its followers that every viewer can vote up to 10 times for contestants on "The Voice," and there have been on- and off-campus watch parties to rally behind the now-famous grads.

Caleb is now 26 and Joshua is 24. Bekah celebrated her 21st birthday on the same day that Girl Named Tom squared off in its victorious battle round versus fellow contestant Kinsey Rose. Bekah was accepted to Goshen College two years ago but has deferred both years.

"Who knows if she'll ever end up here? Initially, she was thinking pre-med, but at this point, there's no way she wouldn't be a music major," Hochstetler said. "Besides, 'The Voice' is her education right now. It's what she wants to do, and she's doing it."

In these final rounds, the winner will need to display more than just vocal acrobatics. All three siblings play multiple instruments and understand music on a deep level, which Hochstetler says is crucial to the bigger picture.

"They've been steeped in music-making from an early age. As kids, they were home-schooled, so they had time to practice their craft, and they've been singing together for ages. That can only happen by having lots of time together at home," Hochstetler said. "There's a bond there, and that's why it sounds so good."

Coaching from Kelly Clarkson

On Monday's episode, Clarkson coached Girl Named Tom through an arrangement of Kansas' "Dust in the Wind." She talked them out of a big finish and recommended that they shift their focus to nailing the intricacies of the song's spooky middle section instead.

Their eventual performance of it was a knockout with both the audience and the panel. Legend said it was "haunting."

"Kelly really understands our style and what works for our voices, both individually and blended together," Bekah said. "She gets us. She also has such a clear vision of the song — what the song is asking for. She has such a sense of what can turn into a beautiful moment on the show."

"In the past rounds, we brought in the songs almost ready to go," Caleb said. "Kelly didn't need to provide much creative input. With 'Dust in the Wind', we'd only just started working on it, so there was a lot of room for her to come in and help shape the arrangement."

The show's "battle" rounds are highly competitive, but there are also episodes that feature each team singing together for fun, with no votes or eliminations on the line.

Tuesday's show featured Team Kelly surprising Legend by singing one of his songs, "U Move, I Move." The Liechtys are fans of Legend, but that song was released in mid-2020, and they hadn't had a chance to check it out yet.

"We didn't know that song. None of us had ever heard it," Joshua said. "Now we love it, partly because it was a perfect choice. There aren't a lot of songs that work well with seven people singing together."

By the time Girl Named Tom was performing the song live alongside Clarkson and their fellow competitors, no one could have guessed that they hadn't known it or that rehearsals had been minimal.

"It's been fascinating to be on the inside of these processes, seeing how quickly the arrangements come together," Joshua said. "Kelly does this all the time — learning a song in a day or two and then singing it live on national television. It's been a great experience for us to start to do that, to have that kind of pressure at this point in our careers."

'Clearly, America is in love with them'

"The Voice" makes some of the performances available for downloading after the broadcasts, and when Hochstetler downloaded Girl Named Tom's version of "Dust in the Wind" from iTunes, he was delighted to see that they had cracked the Top 10 in singles downloads. 

"There they were — smack dab in the middle of all these well-known pop artists," Hochstetler said.

By Friday, the track had dropped to number 35, still not a bad showing between songs by multi-platinum acts Taylor Swift (No 34) and Chris Stapleton (No. 36).

Girl Named Tom was the only artist from "The Voice" that even cracked the Top 100, which bodes well for future voting on the show. The Liechtys appear to be genuine frontrunners. 

Over the show's first 20 seasons, most of the performers have been solo acts. A few duos and trios make the initial cut each year, but a group has never once taken the top prize.

"Historically, groups don't do well on the show, so this might be a first," Hochstetler said. "Clearly, America is in love with them and the coaches love them, too. I don't see how they don't make it to the finale."

Their future on the show, however, remains as uncertain as Bekah's matriculation status at Goshen College.

At this stage of the competition, the singers no longer even get full autonomy in choosing their own repertoire.

On the morning of their interview with The Tribune, the siblings' next task was to venture off to the studio to meet with Clarkson and begin work on their next performance. They had not yet been told what the song would be.

They would find out when they showed up to rehearse it. Everyone else will find out Monday night on NBC. 

On TV

"The Voice" airs at 8 p.m. Mondays and Tuesdays on NBC.