Homegrown Harmony

11/1/2023 12AM

From left, Ohio natives Caleb, Bekah and Joshua Liechty were the first group to win a season of "The Voice."

Sibling vocal trio Girl Named Tom rises
from rural Ohio to national fame

 

By Scott Hall

 

Pettisville is an unincorporated community in northwestern Ohio, somewhere in the plains between Fort Wayne and Toledo. If you call that an unlikely launch pad for a chart-topping music career, the members of Girl Named Tom would almost certainly agree.

 

Nonetheless, Bekah, Caleb and Joshua Liechty – Mennonite kids whose father was a third-generation farm equipment dealer – sprang from those rural roots to become the first group ever to win a season of NBC’s The Voice. Guided by coach Kelly Clarkson in the fall of 2021, they stunned judges and audiences repeatedly with their seamless sibling harmonies on songs like Fleetwood Mac’s “The Chain” and the Crosby, Stills & Nash ballad “Helplessly Hoping.” At one point during the season, four of their independent recordings made the iTunes Top 10 simultaneously.

 

Since then, the three have been writing songs and touring, singing at the Indy 500, opening for Pentatonix on a 22-date holiday arena tour, and signing with Republic Records for an eight-song release, One More Christmas, which topped the iTunes album chart a year ago. Now, with a new single out and more on the way, they are hitting the road on a One More Christmas Tour, which stops at the Palladium on Dec. 2.

 

(If you’re wondering, the band’s name is a family in-joke, referring to bygone days when Joshua liked to call his baby sister “Thomas.” And for what it’s worth, the brothers are graduates of Goshen College, where Bekah has been named an honorary alumna.)

 

How these 20-somethings reached this point is a charming story, which they shared by phone recently from a tour stop in Wichita. Not surprisingly, the key figures include their mother, who first suggested they form a group, and their father, who died of cancer last year, just weeks after their triumph on The Voice.

 

Bekah: Our dream was not to be musicians, because we didn't see many people who were living that dream. Our dad was in a rock band when he was in high school, and they cut a record and they toured a little bit, but then he went back to Ohio to carry on the family business. … We like to think that we're honoring him by making music and sharing it with people.

 

Caleb: We didn't perform together in any real way until 2019. We grew up listening to music, and we all took music lessons, and we were really invested in music as a hobby individually, but never got together until a cousin asked us to sing at his wedding ... Our mom, believe it or not, suggested, “Why don't you guys take a gap year from your education? Life goes so fast. Why don't you make a band? Have you ever thought about that?” So we thought about it for a little bit and then just decided to push off school for a year, and we haven't looked back. We assumed it would just be a one-year fun family project, but we found such purpose and joy in making music together that before the year was up, we were like, “Oh, wait, we want to do this forever.”

 

Joshua: That first year, we visited 30-some states and played almost 70 shows, all self-managed and anywhere that would take us. We played backyards and churches, wineries, breweries, anywhere, and sometimes it was just like 10 people that we'd be singing to, but so many people were like, “You guys really have a have a gift here that you're giving,” and so that encouraged us to keep doing it.

 

When the pandemic brought their minivan tour to a halt, the group holed up in South Bend, recorded some of their best cover tunes and continued to build a following on YouTube. Then they heard that The Voice was auditioning contestants online.

 

Joshua: It was much more enticing to me to not have to go and stand in a line for eight hours to get your audition or whatever. So we just sang for 45 seconds in front of a computer screen, like a little Zoom call, except we couldn’t see the people on the other end.

 

Bekah: We kept making it further and further in interviews and thought, wow, we might make it to Hollywood. And sure enough, they invited us out there, and it was amazing to us that the music we were performing on our 2019 tour was the same music that caught fire on the Voice stage. … We learned a lot about our artistry, how to arrange songs quickly, because we had to arrange week to week, new songs, and that's harder to do when you're three people than if you're one person. People would say, “It's not The Voices, it's The Voice,” and they think that being a trio is unfair, but it's pretty hard to arrange music like that.

 

So what about this tour and what lies ahead?

 

Bekah: We love writing Christmas music. I thought all the Christmas music had been written, but no, it hasn't! And it’s just wonderful to sing those songs. And of course we had to write a song about losing our dad and how tough that is around the holidays for people who have lost a loved one. That's what our title track “One More Christmas” is – we want “one more Christmas with you.” And that's a very meaningful song for many, and so that's the headline of this tour.

 

Caleb: We really fell in love with these songs last year on tour, and since they're Christmas songs, we haven't gotten to sing them since. So we can't wait to revisit them this year. … and we love mixing in the covers that we're known for, and of course, we'll do holiday classics that everybody loves, but our own take on them.

 

Bekah: We’re just loving the adventure. Our whole mission statement as a band is to bring more harmony to the world, and any opportunity to do that, we are so grateful for. And it’s amazing how many people come out to shows and how many people want to be a part of that harmony. It's humbling to us. We’re very thankful.