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McLoughlin, 25, is performing with two other “Voice” contestants, Leila Broussard and Charlie Rey, as openers, as well as Drigo, another new artist.
“Everyone who’s playing with me is really talented and great, and it will be fun for me to play a show with a full band for the first time since ‘The Voice,’” McLoughlin said.
While on "The Voice," McLoughlin got the chance to rehearse with judges Adam Levine of Maroon 5 and country star Blake Shelton, and with singer Mary J. Blige. Their response to his music, he said, validated the path he is on.
It was invaluable to get “that vote of confidence that isn’t just a friend or a family member," but from actual Grammy winners, McLoughlin said.
After winning over the television audience in September with his rendition of the classic Cat Stevens song “Wild World,” McLoughlin was eliminated in the show’s "knockout rounds” in October.
“One thing I’ve learned in my experience in the music industry is that if you can do something different than what other people are doing, and still make it applicable, it will work a lot better from a marketing point of view,” he said.
McLoughlin, a graduate of Rippowam Cisqua School in Bedford and Colgate University, said he did the show to gain more listeners to his music. After he left New York University’s Steinhardt School of Music Management to focus on his own music, he created a YouTube channel for mashups and original songs that ended up attracting thousands of hits.
Currently, his activities include pitching demos that he wrote with the team that penned the hit “Airplanes” for rapper B.O.B. to other major label artists, he said.
In addition, McLoughlin said, label representatives and bloggers have been “flipping out” about his new side project, an electronic duo. He described their sound as “if you were to take the ‘Lord of the Rings’ music and then make it a pop song with a big, catchy Gotye-type vocal and then have big breakdowns after the choruses of sort of electronic synth stuff.”
When the time comes, McLoughlin said, he plans to make good use of the industry contacts he made on “The Voice.”
“Hopefully, I’ll try to send [my work] to Adam [Levine] and see what he thinks of it,” he said.
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