“It’s not the be all and end all, and we’re not looking at it as our one break, but it’s not often that you get the chance to get on a stage and sing to a couple of million people. It’s been such a positive experience and we really want that to continue.”
Say what you like about reality TV or the ever present talent show format, one thing that can't be taken away from Channel 9's recent juggernaut The Voice is its widespread popularity. The concept employed three judges (Keith Urban, Joel Madden and Australia's biggest Arcade Fire fan, Delta Goodrem), who sat with their backs to erstwhile contestants and hoped to be woo'd purely by the voices that they could hear, not the image they couldn't see. The eventual winner, Karise Eden was the product of a hard luck story for the ages, but two of the shows more surprising success stories arose from a much more organic place. Mahalia Barnes and Prinnie Stevens had both been working the Sydney circuits for years, and had garnered an extremely respectable level of notoriety in Australia and overseas. Barnes, a blood member of Jimi's dynasty, has performed extensively with her band The Soul Mates and Stevens has shared stages with the likes of Stevie Wonder and John Legend. So the question remains; what prompted these two unique voices to put it all on the line and enter a televised singing competition?
“We sort of decided together,” Barnes explains. “There was a whole bunch of us who went in that were friends, and we all talked about it. Knowing that you were going there together was really reassuring. We'd researched the show and we were really impressed by the way they encouraged you to be your own artist - and that support is still actually there. We knew it'd be raising the bar and that the calibre of singer would be pretty high but I suppose we just thought that it would be much less shameful to go out to someone you respected, as opposed to a whole bunch of people who had never done it before.”
These were prophetic words, as that is exactly what happened. As the competition progressed, judge Madden decided that he'd pit the two girls against each other in a what was billed as a “sing off” (Stevens won). Maybe he was trying to put them off their game, but unsurprisingly the two took the challenge with consummate professionalism. “We have so much respect for what each other does, so when they put us against each other it wasn't a negative thing at all,” Stevens says. “We just said to each other 'Okay if they're going to make us do this, we have to make the best out of it'.”
After the dust had settled on The Voice and the winners had been decided, it seemed the revelation that Stevens and Barnes had worked together so well was just too much to ignore. All it took a subtle suggestion from Universal boss George Ash and the girls were off to the studio to record Come Together, a collection of their favourite tunes from the likes of Aretha Franklin, The Supremes, Barnes' uncle Diesel and even Beyonce. To Barnes, much like everything else she does, it was just another opportunity to showcase the music she loved. “We just sat down in front of iTunes and picked out these songs that we loved,” she details. “We didn't really care if they were duets or whatever - as long as we thought they were great songs. The whole thing is really about us having a great time.”
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“I guess the thing with being on a show like The Voice, is that we'd already done so much work on our own, so we were ready to take any opportunity we could get,” she continues. “It's not the be all and end all, and we're not looking at it as our one break, but it's not often that you get the chance to get on a stage and sing to a couple of million people. It's been such a positive experience and we really want that to continue.”
Mahalia Barnes & Prinnie Stevens will be playing the following shows:
Thursday 8 November - Wests, Newcastle NSW
Friday 9 November - Waves, Wollongong NSW
Saturday 10 November - The Hi-Fi, Sydney NSW
Sunday 11 November - The Abbey, Canberra ACT
Wednesday 21 November - Regent Theatre, Ballarat VIC
Thursday 22 November - Lighthouse Theatre, Warrnambool VIC
Friday 23 November - Sir Robert Helpmann Theatre, Mt Gambier VIC
Thursday 29 November - Redlands Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane QLD
Friday 30 November - Twin Towns, Tweed Heads QLD
Sunday 2 December - The Brewery, Byron Bay NSW