Girl Named Tom is an American Pop/Folk/Country trio hailing from Pettisville, Ohio, composed of siblings Bekah Grace Liechty, Joshua Liechty and Caleb Liechty. The group made history by becoming the first trio to win NBC’s The Voice during season 21, under the mentorship of Kelly Clarkson.
Known for their angelic sibling harmonies, Girl Named Tom blends influences from folk legends like Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills & Nash with modern pop icons such as Taylor Swift and Harry Styles. The trio’s name has a heartwarming origin rooted in childhood: Joshua and Caleb, hoping for a baby brother, nicknamed their little sister Bekah “Thomas” when she was a baby—a name that stuck and became their band’s unique moniker.
Since winning The Voice the siblings have moved to Nashville and immersed themselves in the songwriting community there. They kicked off 2024 with a creative retreat, reconnecting with their roots and crafting new songs off the grid. In March, they released their heartfelt single ‘Get A Little Lost.' Fans can experience the trio’s signature harmonies live during their holiday tour ‘The Joy of Christmas,' which is happening in the USA right now. We caught up with them from the tour bus to talk all things The Voice, Christmas and look ahead to an exciting 2025.
Thank you for your time today, guys, I know how busy you are out on tour right now.
Bekah: Thanks for having us!
Joshua: We're in Portland, Oregon!
How is the Christmas tour going?
Bekah: Really well! We have about eight shows left. The crowds have been awesome and have been filled with a lot of Christmas spirit which means we're having a blast on stage and in our off-time it's been fun too.
Looking at your Spotify I get the feeling I am talking to three people who are big fans of Christmas – the music, the season, the traditions? Do you have any Christmas traditions that you look forward to each year?
Joshua: There's a book called ‘An Orange for Frankie' written by Patricia Polacco which is a picture book. It's something we read as a family for many years on Christmas Eve and we still read that, that's a really cherished Christmas tradition for the three of us.
I really love your new original Christmas song, ‘Tonight, Is Christmas Eve.' Is it harder writing a Christmas song as opposed to a regular, run-of-the-mill song?
Caleb: That's an interesting question. I think it might be harder in terms of when you are writing normal songs you are trying to create something that has never been said before. In the landscape of Christmas there is a narrower scope of what you can access and say. We are a family band and we do love Christmas and there are themes that come up every day that can be applied to that time of year – we love talking about harmony and peace in our normal shows and that can be applied to Christmas alongside themes like togetherness and family, so we find it comes relatively easy.
Joshua: To nerd out, just for a little bit, Christmas songs can get really ‘chordy.' All the chords are kinda just good-to-go! We like using strange chords in lots of regular writing sessions – people are always telling us just to stick to the basic chords, right? With Christmas, it just opens all the doors to us to experiment a little and have fun!
It's now been three years, this week, since you won The Voice. Does that seem like a long time ago now?
Bekah: In some ways, yes, it does feel like a long time ago and yet in others it feels like it was just yesterday. We had a really cool moment when the show invited us back the year after to perform an original Christmas song during the finale of season 22. That was surreal, to return to the show and to take the stage with our own song. That meant a lot.
What did you learn about yourselves taking part in that competition, do you think?
Joshua: I think our confidence grew so much week to week. We learned to really trust in each other in those critical moments and we learned to arrange music quickly and to a good standard too. Week to week there was such little turnaround time so you needed to be able to react and move on to the next week and the next song, which had a massive impact on our confidence. Every week and every stage we went through the pressure kept rising but our confidence kept rising too!
Caleb: It also taught us that no stage is too large for Girl Named Tom!
I get that. You've performed the whole of your lives in different spaces but nothing like that before. Does that mean you don't get nervous going on stage anymore?
Bekah: (laughing) We get nervous before every show and every stage we perform on! I think that's a sign that we really care about each show and each performance. The Voice did help us realise that we do have what it takes to be able to perform on big shows and that helped us open up for artists like Pentatonix in arenas all over the country. Having each other up there as supports also goes a long way to calming any nerves that might be raging.
Tell me a little about your upbringing. I know that church was an important factor, like it is for a lot of artists from the south and the mid-west. I guess your family was a musical family but your wikipedia page also mentions medical school ambitions too!
Caleb: The three of us, for one reason or another, mostly via family influences, all believed that we would make good doctors. We kinda chose that as a potential career path quite early on in our lives, especially Bekah, who would tell people when she was as young as seven years old that she was going to be a paediatrician! (laughing) She stuck with that for a long time and we all thought that we were going to be doctors someday! Our studies had paused for a moment and it was our mom that suggested we take a hiatus and have a little fun singing together and that was how this whole ‘Girl Named Tom' thing started!
What were the initial reactions like when you told your friends and family that you were going to form a band?
Joshua: There was pretty immediate support.
Caleb: I will say that we should have been more embarrassed. I was 25 at the time and had just been accepted into medical school. (laughing) I should have been more embarrassed that I was saying no to that rather than hopping into a mini-van with my two little siblings just because my mom told me to do it! (laughing) It felt such a right thing to do, though, to begin this journey of joy and adventure. There was a good amount of courage needed to take that leap, for sure, which I'm proud that we all did.
You remind a little bit of The Band Perry in terms of your dynamic. Your last single ‘Get a Little Lost' gives me Little Big Town vibes. What artists did you listen to growing up that have helped to shape your sound?
Bekah: Thanks for saying that, I take both of those as a compliment. We listened to whole range of music growing up.
Joshua: Fleetwood Mac, Simon & Garfunkel, Crosby, Stills & Nash – all three of those artists were important to us.
Bekah: We also listened to a lot of classical music, our mom always loved to listen to that whilst our dad was a big U2 fan. Josh used to love the Jackson Five – he would often wake me up at 5 or 6am in the morning singing the Jackson Five at the top of his lungs – our poor parents! (laughing)
Caleb: It was a very broad spectrum of music. We also had some international influence too – there were several summers in a row where we would go spend three weeks singing with an international community that would come to a town near to where we were. We'd play drums together, learn songs from other countries and I think that eclectic mix of music has really led us to a place where we can't decide what genre we are – we are our own thing and that's fun, we like it like that.
Since winning The Voice you've released some Christmas music. ‘What a View' came out in 2023 and ‘Get a Little Lost' this year but you haven't released a lot of content – is that because you've been writing, figuring out who you are and what your sound is? I know your father passed away in that period, and my deepest condolences on that, but is that what you've been doing in the past couple of years – figuring out who you are?
Joshua: Exactly! Yeah. We've spent a lot of time brainstorming what it is that the three of us bring to the table naturally as ourselves and as musicians. We've also spent a lot of time thinking about the best way to express ourselves in a way that reaches as many people as we possibly can. It's been a challenge but we've had terrific support from the label, who believe in what we are trying to do, and that means we have some really exciting music coming down the line in the future. We've been working with a producer for the last 6 months or so who really gets us and believes in us and has helped us focus in on who we are and what we can bring. We're so excited!
Caleb: We haven't put out much music yet but there has been a lot going on behind closed doors! We've been working on the building blocks so that we can build this thing into something of real value and worth.
Next year is going to be a really big year for you guys then?
All three: Yes!!!!
Caleb: After The Voice we were touring a hundred shows a year, which was big in its own way, but now we are going to scale back on the touring a little and focus a bit more on releasing music and building the future of the band in a different way.
You moved to Nashville after The Voice. Obviously the song writing community there is huge. Did you suffer from imposter syndrome after moving there because everyone is so talented in that town!?
Bekah: Yes! oh my goodness. Everyone you talk to is related in some way to the music industry! It's been very humbling to live there. We grew up in a small town of about 400 people and most people who did music there were connected to schools or churches, right? So to see how Nashville works and how it thrives is so cool. Every writing session we go to in Nashville we bring two notebooks: one to write the songs in and one to make notes about how to write a song! We can feel ourselves growing a lot with every single write.
Did you have to learn how to co-write once you arrived in Nashville?
Bekah: Yes! It was such a new experience for us. We'd obviously only written together previously and we have our own style and ways of doing things. To have another voice in the room has really been helpful to us. Because we are siblings and because we are so close, sometimes we might write about things that might not make sense or be as relatable to other people as they are to us. A different, objective voice helps us to balance out what we want to say.
Are you moving towards a bigger body of work in 2025, like a full album, or will you be releasing a series of singles do you think?
Caleb: The way we think about it….. we're always moving towards a bigger body of work. From the label's perspective, they like taking it single by single right now so we're going to work with each other to come up with a compromise! (laughing) In our heads everything we do is aimed at releasing a bigger body of work.
Check out Girl Named Tom right here and keep an eye out for them in 2025 as they begin to release more and more music.
