Who is Carlos Rising? Wilmington singer talks 'The Voice' appearance, upcoming local gigs

The morning after Wilmington singer and songwriter Carlos Rising appeared on NBC's musical competition show "The Voice," he woke up to some 248 messages. And that was only the texts, some of them from high school friends Rising, 28, hadn't talked to in years.

"It took me four hours just to get through the Instagram messages," Rising said with an incredulous, high-wattage smile.

It was Thursday, less than 48 hours since the show had aired, and the singer was sitting in the living room of the home near Monkey Junction he shares with his wife, Anouk, who popped in to say hi before heading into the other room for a virtual work meeting.

It has been hectic for Rising since he made his first appearance on "The Voice" March 7, impressing the show's celebrity "coaches" and winding up on the squad of country star Blake Shelton, who has said the popular show's current season will be his last.

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So far, winning the favor of well-known musicians like Shelton and fellow "Voice" coaches Kelly Clarkson and Chance the Rapper, as well as performing for a TV and online audience of millions, has been an experience Rising calls "surreal." For the past year or two, he and his Wilmington trio, Holy Heat, the band he shares with drummer Christian Black and bassist Jonathan D'Amico, have been mostly playing gigs to small crowds at such Port City venues as End of Days Distillery, Edward Teach Brewing and The Starling Wine and Whiskey Bar.

"The Voice" continues with episodes March 13 and 14 on NBC, with episodes available for streaming on Peacock the day after they air.

How heavily featured Rising will be on the show remains to be seen, but "I know that they'll put me in here and there in the next couple of weeks," Rising said. "They'll do some fun little B-roll stuff of me interacting with the coaches or with the other contestants, that kind of thing."

Holy Heat will also perform on St. Patrick's Day at End of Days, which Rising said is the first Wilmington venue his band ever played, and he's got a May 20 gig at intimate Castle Street listening room Live At Ted's.

To hear Rising tell it, he almost didn't even audition for "The Voice" at all. He grew up watching the show with family but hadn't seen it in a few years. Still, his wife and his father kept prodding him to do a virtual audition, and last year he finally did.

"I was like, 'You know what, just to get you off my back. I'll do this,'" he said. "And I didn't think I was gonna get far. I've never really considered myself a vocalist. I've always considered myself a musician first and a vocalist second."

Still, he said, "I've always had this dream of being a full-time singer and songwriter," and grew up listening to the music of such artists as James Taylor, Eric Clapton, Jack Johnson and John Mayer. "I would assume they would consider themselves songwriters and guitarists first and vocalists second. So I've always considered myself in the same realm."

Then came the call he wasn't expecting, the one where the producers of "The Voice" asked him to come out to Los Angeles to film the show.

"I was like, 'Oh my gosh, this is real,'" Rising said. "I wasn't expecting this."

When it came time for him to pick a song to play on the show, Rising chose Clapton's "Change the World."

"That song has been with me ever since I was born," he said. "My parents used to play it all the time. And that's one of the reasons I'm such a Clapton fanatic, because I grew up with it ... It also had the connection with my wife, just because I was dedicating it to her."

As comfortable as he was with the song, though, before he walked out on stage "I was incredibly nervous," Rising said.

"It wasn't necessarily the stage or the lights or the crowd," he said, it was more "the fact that all of this work has led up to this moment of just getting a chair turn. That was the only thing I was worried about."

When Shelton turned around less than 10 seconds after Rising began singing, "It felt like I blacked out in that moment," he said. "OK, I finally got there. Then I had to kind of like bring myself back and go, 'Hey, you're still singing a song.'"

Rising into Wilmington

Rising's father was a pastor in church growing up and the family moved around a lot, living briefly in Wilmington, where Rising's grandfather was a pastor in the '90s. Rising got his start singing during church services and learned the bass, eventually graduating to guitar.

He went to high school and college in Tennessee, graduating from Lee University, a private Christian school. After college he moved around, meeting Anouk, his wife of five years, in Germany and living in Greensboro and Atlanta. He and Anouk were living in Seattle when the pandemic struck. When they both got laid off on the same day, they moved back to Tennessee with Rising's parents for a while and eventually wound up in Wilmington.

He's got aunts and cousins here (including his bandmate, Christian Black), and "I wanted (Anouk) to meet them and take her to the beach and she just fell in love with the place. And when it came to choosing our next spot we said, 'Let's do Wilmington,'" Rising said. "I claim North Carolina as my home."

On "The Voice," Anouk spoke emotionally about how much she loves her husband and loves to hear him sing, and "It just meant so much to me that she was able to just be that vulnerable in front of, not only like the camera and the producers, but in front of America," Rising said.

The couple attends Port City Community Church in Wilmington and Rising makes his living as a full-time musician, playing solo and band gigs, teaching lessons and helping with his cousin's Schoolhouse Studios.

When he's gigging, "There are times where I'm background music and it's paying the bills," Rising said. "And some of the other times that we play it's the opposite, where you get that crowd who's just totally invested in what you're doing. And they come up to you and say, 'Hey, the song you sang was awesome.'"

Rising's song "Peacemaker," the only one he's got on Spotify, has a smooth, soulful vibe, with Rising's sweet voice recalling the tones of Leon Bridges and occasionally soaring into the higher registers alongside lyrics that dovetail with his Christian faith.

Rising said he's spent a lot of his downtime on "The Voice" writing new material, and "one thing I am looking forward to is doing more collaborations with musicians and kind of getting the Wilmington music scene in the forefront of North Carolina."

"One of the reasons why me and my wife stayed (in Wilmington) is because of the community," he said. "I'm looking forward to, when all is said and done, to start playing music again here under my own name and really bringing everybody else along for the ride."

WANT TO WATCH?

"The Voice" airs 8 p.m. Mondays and 9 p.m. Tuesdays on NBC. You can stream each episode on Peacock the day after it airs.

WANT TO GO?

• Who: Carlos Rising and Holy Heat

• When: 6:30 p.m. March 17

• Where: End of Days Distillery, Wilmington

• Info: Free to attend.

• Details: CarlosRising.com. The band also plays May 20 at Live At Ted's on Castle Street.

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Wilmington singer Caros Rising talks about competing on NBC The Voice