{"id":18419,"date":"2017-09-21T12:24:11","date_gmt":"2017-09-21T16:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=18419"},"modified":"2017-09-21T12:24:11","modified_gmt":"2017-09-21T16:24:11","slug":"barrie-student-takes-the-hoedown-showdown-crown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/barrie-student-takes-the-hoedown-showdown-crown\/","title":{"rendered":"Barrie student takes the Hoedown Showdown crown"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

16-year-old John Anderson was a tough act to follow.
\nThe Grade 11 student from Barrie was the first finalist to take the stage Friday night in the Hoedown Showdown competition, where 10 finalists from across Ontario vied for the crown of Canada\u2019s next country star.
\nNine more singers took on the challenge, but his renditions of Keith Urban\u2019s \u201cYou Look Good in My Shirt\u201d and Tim McGraw\u2019s \u201cLive Like Your Were Dying\u201d were enough to seal the deal and Anderson returned to class on Monday with plenty to talk about.
\n\u201cI am still just shocked that it happened,\u201d said Anderson whose win secured him a grand prize valued of $20,000, including $2,500 cash, a Yamaha guitar and case, two fill days of recording at Metalworks Studios and the \u201cultimate artist package\u201d featuring professional management, coaching, styling and song-writing led by industry professionals.
\n\u201cIt has been a really big rush,\u201d he continued, absorbing his win. \u201cIt was a long journey to get here. I came into the competition last year and didn\u2019t even place. A big part of it was me overthinking things, but coming back I had tried to relax a little bit more and tried to give it my best.\u201d
\nA watershed moment occurred for Anderson in the Mentorship Week leading up to the finals, which kicked off the two-day Wild, Wild West Hoedown, hosted by Magna International, and was followed by headliners Chad Brownlee that evening and, the following night, by Tom Cochrane with Red Rider.
\nThe Mentors took him out of his comfort zone and parted him from his guitar, an instrument he describes as something of a \u201csecurity blanket.\u201d
\n\u201cThey told me to do a song and I didn\u2019t really know the guitar work too well, so the first time we ran through it I just sang it without playing a guitar,\u201d Anderson explained. \u201cTom (Cross of Metalworks) said, \u2018I actually like that. You\u2019re not going to use your guitar for this one.\u2019 I hadn\u2019t done that yet, so I said we\u2019d try it and it ended up working in the end.
\n\u201cI always feel like it is my safety blanket and I would always be able to hide behind my guitar. It is just a mental thing and I really don\u2019t know what to do with my hands.\u2019
\nNevertheless, it did the trick has only bolstered his determination to pursue a professional singing career
\n\u201cMy goal is to tour and be known as a musician and known as a writer,\u201d he said. \u201cThat would be an amazing dream come true.\u201d
\nSecuring second place in the Hoedown Showdown this year was Cameron von Criegern of Peterborough. Rounding out the top three was a tie \u2013 a first in Showdown history \u2013 between Lauren Renee Vandervecht of Sharon and Schomberg\u2019s own Zoe Jayne.
\n17-year-old Jayne wowed the judges with two selections from the Kacey Musgraves songbook, \u201cFollow Your Arrow\u201d and \u201cSomebody to Love,\u201d performances which event host Beverley Mahood dubbed, \u201cauthentic, real and captivating.\u201d
\n\u201cWe love you,\u201d said Beverley. \u201cKeep doing what you do because you are so, so good.\u201d
\nWhile he did not place in the Top 3, Top 10 finalist Patrick James Clark of Mulmur was, in the words of Ms. Mahood, \u201cmost improved overall\u201d with his performances of Thomas Rhett\u2019s \u201cT-Shirt\u201d and \u201cSomebody\u2019s Heartbreak\u201d by Hunter Hayes.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

16-year-old John Anderson was a tough act to follow.
\nThe Grade 11 student from Barrie was the first finalist to take the stage Friday night in the Hoedown Showdown competition, where 10 finalists from across Ontario vied for the crown of Canada\u2019s next country star.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":18392,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/2017-09-21-06.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-4N5","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-15 10:21:24","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}