BOORT’S Elias Lanyon may be about to have the 21st birthday few country boys could ever dream of.
All he has to do is survive this weekend’s first round of knockouts on The Voice and his next appearance on the show will be October 20 – just three days before his birthday.
Sitting on the mower on the family farm this week, after his stunning success in his battle round against teammate Tia Barnes, Elias is still shaking his head about the whole experience.
He entered the singing competition back in 2023, and in December that year a film crew made the trip to Boort to get some shots of him on farm for potential use in the 2024 show – although he had still not received the official call.
“Fortunately it was harvest when they came, so there was plenty going on and plenty for them to film,” Elias says.
“But it was a little while later, this year, that I got the call to attend the blind auditions,” he adds.
To get that far, apart from his entry submission, which included two videos, Elias spent time in Melbourne at pre-auditions for the show’s producers.
And if nothing else, he has learnt very quickly the music business is very tough.
He says he has already made some very strong connections with a lot of the other contestants, and one minute you are all celebrating together and the next minute it’s all tears as half of them are gone.
“It has been so cool meeting all these musos, I’ve now got a network of people around the country I could never have imagined, it’s unbelievable,” Elias says.
“Then, like we did on Sunday, you are up against your own team, and someone has to go – incredibly bittersweet,” he confesses.
“I know when all this is over I will keep up with a lot of these people but in some ways it’s very hard on new friendships if you succeed and they don’t.”
In the knockout stage Elias will still go up against another mate from Team Miller-Heidke but they both get to do a complete song as part of that showdown – and there is no safety net of a save from here on in. You lose, you’re out.
Even if that happens, Elias says he wouldn’t change anything.
He reckons getting to meet and interact with the four judges, to see how a show like this is put together, to even have wardrobe fussing over how you dress, and to meet all the other wannabes has been something he could have never imagined.
But just to prove this country boy is human, he has recently had to cancel a couple of local gigs because he copped a dose of the flu and then laryngitis.
Hardly conducive to belting out a few tunes in the Boort pub, or any other pub for that matter.
His voice is still recovering now and sounds even raspier on the phone than his earthy delivery of Sting’s Fields of Gold last Sunday.
Although it doesn’t matter right now. The only stage Elias is likely to have for singing in the next few weeks and months will be on the mower and then the header.