As you may know, the finals of the fifth annual The Soo's Got Talent went down on Friday, so who claimed the top prizes at Soo Blaster on this night? Your $1,000 first place winner this year is Lime frontwoman Madii Schomogyi, in her third run in this event after her semifinal placement in 2018 and also entering T.S.G.T. in 2019 (apologies for mistakenly saying that she was a finalist in 2018). Fans of Madii's will know that she has developed as a guitarist and songwriter in recent years, including her "Miss Madii" set at Rotaryfest Stage 2 this year, and judges absolutely looked at that along with her obvious vocal talent when assessing the final results! Demoy MacSamuels bettered his third place finish this year by coming in second place, notably making him the highest placed male contestant in two straight years, while Nicolette Rebello came in third place. No word on where Celeste Burton, Robert Nevitt, Kristina Sagrak, and Chloe Tessier placed.
Pictures of the finalists can be seen at this link from their solo and band sets, confirming that Madii and Celeste played guitar for their solo numbers, but none of the finalists played one for their song with Mike Haggith & The Big Finish Band. The Soo's Got Talent got Facebook videos of each finalist with Mike's band, and as I don't know the exact running order, let's look at the podium finishers + one today! Madii covered Cher's "If I Could Turn Back Time" with Mike and crew on Friday, and her vocals are strong here and hit all of the necessary notes! This was good icing on the cake for her run to the title, aided by her songwriting and guitar abilities, so check out this 1980s pop rock cover for yourselves below!
For his full-band T.S.G.T. encore, Demoy covered Savage Garden's "Truly Madly Deeply", which is an unexpected cover choice as far as the Soo goes, but he put good passion and groove into it! In terms of The Big Finish Band, Mike is playing bass here in lieu of Matt Fronzi, though Matt did play on the Cher cover with Madii. Also, for that song, Mike instead did backing vocals and played tambourine (and put his all into it). Yes, guitarist Elly McWatters sat for much of the night, and if it was for a medical reason, hopefully she heals up soon! Check out Demoy's closing song below!
To cap off her third place run, Nicolette covered Halestorm's "I Miss The Misery", which is mildly surprising to hear from a local artist, especially given Lzzy Hale's vocal abilities, but Nicolette holds her own throughout this song, and it's cool seeing something heavy on this scale in the finals again! For this song, Mike played guitar while Elly (standing up) sang backing vocals. Good stuff, so check out Nicolette and Mike's band tackling Halestorm below, and hopefully we hear more from her soon!
I don't know who was fourth place, but let's round things out on a hard rock note with former Big Mistake/Steel Sour frontman Robert Nevitt, who joined his old Re:Born bandmate Brandan Glew (plus Elly, who replaced him in that band) to cover Jelly Roll's "Need A Favour". Not sure that Re:Born would ever have covered a southern rock song like this, but it's a fair contemporary choice, and Rob sings it well! Of the four finals videos shared here, this the only one to feature Mike, Elly, and Chris Nielsen all on guitar simultaneously. Check out this mini-Re:Born reunion below!
That's all for now, but I will cover Celeste, Chloe, and Kristina's videos with Mike & The Big Finish Band in an upcoming post, not to mention Mike's band's intermission set, so look for that and more soon! Thanks everyone!
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