Dan + Shay on Joining ‘The Voice’ and ‘Strategizing’ to Beat Reba

When The Voice got here calling, it was the proper time for Dan + Shay to affix because the expertise present’s first ever “double chair” coaches.

Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney had celebrated their tenth anniversary as a multi-platinum, Grammy-winning nation duo, however had additionally hit a tough patch. “The final couple of years had been a little bit of a curler coaster,” Smyers says. “We had been going via our personal private battles, rebuilding our relationship –and also you throw in COVID, and it was simply type of a wild time for us.” 

However because the pair labored via their points and got here again from the brink of breaking apart, they had been full of a brand new gratitude. “We’ve modified our perspective from ‘Now we have to do that’ to ‘We get to do that,’ and that it’s superb that there’s any person who’s keen to pay their hard-earned cash to come back see our present or purchase an album or a T-shirt,” Smyers continues. “The Voice got here to us at such an ideal time the place that gratitude is at an all-time excessive.”

The nation duo, who served as mentors in season 20, will make their teaching debut on the present on Monday, Feb. 26, because the twenty fifth season of NBC’s singing competitors begins. They’re joined by returning coaches Reba McEntire, John Legend and Probability the Rapper. 

This marks the primary time that two of the chairs will likely be occupied by nation acts, main the way in which for some heavy competitors for nation contestants between Dan + Shay and McEntire.  

Former coach Blake Shelton by no means overlapped with McEntire and “didn’t need to compete with the queen of nation music. He had it very easy,” jokes Mooney. “I really feel like we now have actually been having to strategize and use our blocks to our benefit. Who doesn’t love Reba McEntire and didn’t hearken to her music and watch her present rising up? That’s stiff competitors. She’s very aggressive.”

Simply as The Voice uncovered Shelton to a a lot larger, mainstream viewers, Dan + Shay are properly conscious that the present may broaden their enchantment. “This can be a huge alternative for us,” Mooney says. “We’ve had some crossover success, however this opens you as much as a wholly totally different viewers. Being on tv each week positively expands the individuals who hearken to your music. We don’t actually know what to anticipate.”

As the primary set of double coaches, Dan + Shay need to share one button as they decide their 14-member workforce within the blind competitors, which has already been filmed. “Once we had been flying out [to L.A.] for the primary time, we seemed over at one another’s like, ‘Ought to we give you some type of technique, like two faucets on the knee is a sure?’ We didn’t understand once they began taping that there’s cameras on you from each angle always, you’re miked up. You possibly can’t actually discuss to one another that a lot. If one among us is actually feeling it, we’ve given one another permission to go forward and smash that button and switch that chair round. However the two chairs, one button [thing] is an attention-grabbing dynamic.”

Seeing contestants so desirous to launch their careers has been a robust reminder of how fortunate the 2 are to have seen their musical goals come true. “Seeing these people who find themselves pouring their hearts and souls out onto that microphone, actually, I can’t think about being of their footwear,” Smyers says. “Loads of these persons are coming from small cities and are singing into the again of any person’s chairs. It’s a reasonably high-pressure, nerve-wracking scenario. It truly is a cool perspective shift to see any person who desires it so badly. I really feel such as you type of lose perspective the place we and loads of our buddies have a seat on the desk. These persons are working to earn their place on the desk.”

Like the opposite judges, Dan + Shay need to juggle the each day calls for of their careers with teaching, and now have to commute from Nashville to Los Angeles weekly.  They proceed to advertise their fifth Warner Music Nashville album, Greater Homes, which got here out in September and debuted at No. 9 on Prime Nation Albums chart. First single “Save Me the Hassle” reached No. 2 on the Nation Airplay chart. Their Heartbreak on the Map area tour, which takes its title from a music on the album, kicks off Feb. 29 in Greenville, S.C.

Spending extra time in Los Angeles has one huge benefit. “I get extra sleep out right here, which is fairly cool,” says Mooney, who has three small boys. Extra critically, he provides, “It’s positively a problem being away from our households. It’s very troublesome. However they’re excited for us.” Legend, who’s Los Angeles-based, brings his children to the studio, and Mooney is hoping his youngsters can be a part of him on some journeys.

Though they aren’t even via their first season, Smyers says they’d like to come back again for extra seasons. “It’s only a actually thrilling, heart-pounding expertise for us as coaches when the lights go down, not realizing what’s about to enter your ears,” he says. “Hopefully they invite us again, as a result of I’m having a bit an excessive amount of enjoyable to provide it up now.”

Mooney even has a suggestion for future seasons: “We’re conspiring with Reba — now that it’s three [country] coaches vs. two [non-country] coaches — to maneuver the present to Nashville,” he says with amusing.