Your time has finally come, Barrett Baber fans.
If you've been holding your breath while watching the Marion native and Fayetteville resident tiptoe through the minefield that is NBC's The Voice, the live shows have arrived and Baber is among the top 20 finalists.
The survivors duke it out beginning with Night 1 of the live playoffs at 7 p.m. Monday. It'll fill two hours.
Two more hours follow on Night 2 at 7 p.m. Tuesday, with the hour-long results show at 7 p.m. Wednesday.
The blind auditions, battle rounds and knockout rounds from months ago are now behind him and Baber can concentrate on impressing America and not just his team captain.
Baber looks to me as if he stands a good chance of going far. Don't be fooled. The premise of The Voice is that the judges/mentors pick their team members sight unseen based solely on their voices, but the later rounds allow them to winnow their teams based on the total package, not just the singing ability.
Baber might just be the total package this season. He can sing. He's good-looking. He's humble. He's a family guy. He has a tattoo of Arkansas on his forearm and he has the requisite tale of overcoming tragedy or adversity that seems to have become a key element in the human drama of this sort of talent competition.
Baber began his current journey during the blind auditions, where his performance was impressive enough to get all four judges -- Blake Shelton, Adam Levine, Gwen Stefani and Pharrell Williams -- to turn their chairs around.
Not surprisingly, country artist Baber picked country superstar Shelton as his mentor. A gushing Shelton compared Baber's performance to Garth Brooks and said, "The way you perform on stage, we've never seen [anything like it]."
Of course we have. But that sort of hyperbole flows easily in the early stages every season. It's only after a contestant makes it to the live rounds -- where America gets to vote -- that the praise really counts.
The son of a Baptist preacher, the 35-year-old Baber grew up singing in church in Marion, received a music scholarship to Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia and, at 19, survived the June 1, 1999, Little Rock crash of American Airlines Flight 1420 that killed 11 people.
Twenty-four members of the Ouachita Singers were on board the plane and Baber helped save the lives of a flight attendant and three others before escaping the wreckage.
Baber left OBU before graduating and headed to Nashville, Tenn., to give music a chance. In fall 2002, Baber tried out for Season 2 of American Idol, making it through to the top 48 and the third round of Hollywood Week before being cut.
He returned to Arkansas to complete his education at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, where he met his wife, Sarah.
After working in advertising in Little Rock and Fayetteville, Baber began teaching debate and forensics at Fayetteville High School in 2012.
In a 2013 interview with the Democrat-Gazette's Sean Clancy, Baber remembered American Idol, saying, "I'm surprised I did as well as I did ... you learn that there are a lot of really talented singers. It's really intimidating."
Baber also didn't focus on his back story during his Idol time.
"I was self-conscious about it and I didn't really like telling people," he said. "I didn't keep it a secret, but I didn't highlight the fact that I'd been in an airplane crash."
That was then and this is now. Baber is a far more seasoned, more polished singer/songwriter today and will have plenty of folks cheering him on besides Sarah and their two small children, son Brooks and daughter Elliot.
• Baking finale. Season 2 comes to a tasty end on The Great British Baking Show at 6 p.m. today on AETN. In the finale, the chefs make picnic pies packed with fillings that form a creative design; a dozen pretzels; and a three-tiered wedding cake.
• Pageant returns. The Miss Universe Pageant has found a new home. The beauty contest will air at 6 p.m. Dec. 20 on Fox from the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino in Las Vegas.
Instead of NBC, this year's Miss USA Pageant aired in July on the barely watched Reelz network. That's because there was a big stink after Donald Trump called Mexican immigrants "rapists" in June. NBC dumped the pageant and severed ties with Trump, who sold the pageants to WME/IMG.
• Riding not walking. Norman Reedus, who plays crossbow-toting Daryl Dixon on AMC's The Walking Dead, will star in a new AMC reality show that will take viewers on a journey exploring motorcycle culture.
Ride With Norman Reedus will debut in 2016 as six one-hour episodes. In them, Reedus and a biking buddy set off from a different city each week and stop at custom bike shops, tattoo parlors, collectors' warehouses or a roadside diner.
The TV Column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday.
Email:
mstorey@arkansasonline.com
Style on 11/08/2015