Girl Named Tom are mourning the loss of their father, Chris Liechty, who passed away following a long battle with terminal cancer.
The Season 21 winners of NBC’s The Voice and fast-rising trio, consisting of siblings Caleb, Joshua and Bekah Liechty, took to social media on Sunday (Jan. 30) to share the sad news.
“Key points: 1. Thank you. 2. We are hurting. 3. We are okay,” the trio captioned the video on Instagram.
The clip, filmed backstage at The Holland Theatre in Bellafontaine, Ohio, features Caleb, Joshua and Bekah expressing their love for their follower’s support during this difficult time.
“We just wanted to come out here and say thank you so much for all of your condolences, sympathy, kindness that you’ve showered us with [through] this whole process,” the trio shared.
“Yeah, we have three shows the weekend after our father passed. You may be wondering, ‘Why we would do that?’ We are too, sort of. But we went to get them out of the way, so we can really throw ourselves into processing his death and planning his memorial service, which is coming up in the next weekend. So, that’s really important to us,” Caleb added.
As their father’s final days were approaching, he requested that they do not cancel any of their shows following his death, however, they did cancel one show on Thursday (Jan. 27) as they admitted, “We couldn’t do it.”
“And he really wanted us to do these shows,” Joshua continued. “He was talking about his death, and he was like, ‘Do not let my death deter you from doing these shows.’ He didn’t get his wish on Thursday night, we canceled one, Sorry dad.”
However, the Team Kelly Clarkson winners made sure to fulfill his final wishes of continuing their live performances following a day of mourning.
“He’ll be with us tonight,” Joshua added. “And so we’re just happy to be able to sing while we’re still here, and sing for him, and for everybody else, too.”
The trio revealed their father’s cancer diagnosis during the Battle Rounds on The Voice, before singing Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman” in his honor.
Shortly after their historic win, the group shared an unfortunate update on their father’s cancer battle, sharing that he was “in horrific pain following yet another surgery.”
Three weeks after their history-making win on NBC’s The Voice, Girl Named Tom made an appearance on the final season of The Ellen DeGeneres Show to chat with the talk show host and perform.
During their appearance on The Ellen Show, they siblings revealed that they got to visit with their cancer-stricken father after being away for several weeks filming the show. “Not even 24 hours after we won The Voice on that stage, we got to be in the hospital room with our Dad, all of our family together and that was very surreal just to share that moment with them,” Bekah shared.
“They were a huge part of getting us through the experience of The Voice, and so to go back and like share love with them in that room was so special,” Caleb added.
Bekah opened up about her father’s reaction to their big win, revealing that his excitement caused quite the stir at the hospital where he was receiving care.
“He said, you know he’s on the East Coast, so, he said he woke up the entire hospital when we won, screaming,” Bekah said. “Everybody’s sleeping, but he was like yes!”
After spending the holidays with family and enjoying some much-needed time off, Girl Named Tom told DeGeneres that they hope to hit the ground running in 2022 with plans to record new music.
“We cannot wait to share music with people, like we won The Voice, we have this platform now that we never could’ve dreamed up, and we’ve been writing… in a little house in South Bend, and we’ve got some great music, and we can’t wait to share it,” Caleb revealed. “It’ll be out next year, and we’ll hopefully tour the country, I don’t know, we’ve got big dreams.”
After the interview, the trio took the stage to perform a cover of James Taylor’s “Carolina in My Mind.”
