With the turn of a chair, everything changed for Rebecca Loebe. Loebe (pronounced “low-bee”) competed on the recently concluded first season of “The Voice,” a singing competition in which the celebrity judges sit with their backs to the contestants and choose their favorite singers in the first round based solely on the person’s voice.
After hearing Loebe’s haunting rendition of Nirvana’s “Come As You Are,” Christina Aguilera was the first celebrity judge to turn her chair around in approval. Adam Levine of Maroon 5 soon followed.
| Onstage |
| Rebecca Loebe |
| Where: Jammin’ Java, 227 Maple Ave. East, Vienna |
| When: 7:30 p.m. Sunday |
| Info: With Jenee Halstead and Sam Friend; $10 in advance, $13 day of; jamminjava.com. |
“Just that simple motion of that chair swinging, regardless of who was sitting in it, changed a huge chunk of my life, and I knew it,” said Loebe, 27, by phone last week. She performs at Jammin’ Java on Sunday.
Loebe then had to choose between Aguilera and Levine and join that judge’s team.
“It was completely surreal,” said Loebe, who eventually sided with Levine. “That’s the best way to describe it. You go from standing there just praying that someone pays any attention to you, to having to choose and eventually reject someone.”
After a duet of Radiohead’s “Creep” with another contestant, Loebe didn’t make it to the following round.
Loebe heard about the show through a casting agent. She’d never tried out for similar shows such as “American Idol,” but had a good feeling about “The Voice.” She thought it would be a worthwhile experience, and had no expectations heading into the audition.
“People email me back a lot quicker,” Loebe laughed when asked how appearing on “The Voice” had changed her life. She added she’s received an outpouring of support.
Loebe was born in Fairfax and spent the first eight years of her live in Arlington before her family moved to Atlanta. After receiving a degree in Music Production and Engineering from Berklee College of Music, she started recording her own material. Her most recent LP is “Mystery Prize,” released in January, 2010.
Loebe jokingly describes her sound as “post-brontosaurus indie folk/crunk.” Her sounds is part folk, part country, all great storytelling and beautiful melodies and harmonies anchored by that voice that drew the attention of Levine and Aguilera.
“Rock people call me folk, folk people call me pop and pop people call me country,” she said. “You can call it whatever you want if you come listen to it.”
