Southeast High grad’s time on NBC’s ‘The Voice’ has ended, but his music career continues
A Wichita native and Southeast High School graduate who made it onto this year’s season of “The Voice” on NBC has been eliminated from the show during its “Battle Rounds.”
But that’s okay, he said. He had fun — and he hopes that his appearance on the show will lead to more musical opportunities.
It’s already led to one. Harvey, who moved to Norman, Oklahoma, from Wichita in 2020, will perform at The Brickyard in Wichita’s Old Town on Friday, April 26. He’ll be there with his full band, he said.
“I’ve definitely enjoyed the response...” Harvey said of his brief time on the televised singing competition. “People have reached out from Colorado, from Santa Fe, New Mexico. There are other indigenous Native artists out there who I really want to connect with.”
Harvey, who graduated from Southeast High School in 2016 and who is Ponca and Pawnee, first appeared on “The Voice” two weeks ago, when the show aired his “blind auditions.” Harvey performed Bob Dylan’s “Girl from the North Country” while accompanying himself on the guitar.
On “The Voice,” celebrity judges have their backs to the singers as they begin performing, and if they like what they hear, they turn their chairs around, signifying they’re interested in adding the singer to their team. When Harvey started to sing, judges Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney of the act Dan + Shay turned their chairs around, as did Chance the Rapper.
Harvey was then able to choose which team he joined, and he picked Dan + Shay.
He next appeared on the show for Tuesday’s Battle Round, where he was required to sing a duet with a fellow team member. Only one would continue forward to the next round.
Harvey was paired with 17-year-old singer Anya True, and the pair — after being coached by Dan + Shay — harmonized their way through John Mayer’s “Half of My Heart.”
The celebrity judges chose True to move forward, meaning that Harvey’s time in the show ended. But he was still praised by the judges.
“You know what you want to sound like. You know who you want to be,” Smyers said to Harvey at the end of the performance. “I think you really stepped up and made it your own.”
Harvey said he wasn’t too disappointed by the elimination. He’s not a competitive person, he said, and he felt good about what he did with his time on the show.
“We got up there and gave a hell of a performance,” he said. “I’m really proud of us for it.”
Harvey’s performances on “The Voice” actually were filmed over the summer in Los Angeles, he said. And he didn’t audition for “The Voice.” In fact, producers found him after seeing his TikTok and Instagram pages and reached out to him, asking him if he was interested in competing.
Harvey, who also is a songwriter, has long wanted a career in music and says he got serious about performing around the time he graduated from high school. When he lived in Wichita, he would frequently perform at bars like Mort’s and The Artichoke. For a couple of years, he was the guitar player for the well-known Wichita band Annie Up.
During the pandemic, he decided to move to the Oklahoma City area, where he has family, to expand his musical circle.
He’s found regular music work there, too, and performs not only on his own but with a couple of local bands. One of them is a cover band called Biscuits and Groovy, which plays every Thursday night at a bar on The University of Oklahoma campus called The Deli. Harvey’s day job is at Oklahoma City’s First Americans Museum, where he works in guest services.
“The Voice” hasn’t been Harvey’s only brush with the big time.
After attending an open casting call in 2021, he was chosen for a small role in the Oscar-nominated Martin Scorsese film “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Harvey was cast as Charlie Whitehorn, an Osage man who was killed for his oil money. Though it wasn’t a speaking role, his part in the movie was memorable: His character was shot near an oil pump and left for dead.
Though he enjoyed acting — and getting to meet Scorsese and actor Jesse Plemons — he’d still choose music over acting, Harvey said.
“I definitely want to find an audience that allows me the opportunity to make the music I want to make,” he said. “There’s compromise in there. It comes with any career. But I want to keep myself at this level of making music and putting it out there and having an audience that wants to come hear it live.”
This story was originally published March 26, 2024 at 9:58 PM.
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