Harms & Kinney win 2018 Talent Show

When Noah Harms and John Kinney took the stage at the KMMR Talent Show last Friday night in Malta, it was the first time the duo had played in front of an audience other than friends and family.

By the time they had stopped playing, the audience cheered their performance and the duo likely made friends of all who applauded the stellar performance.

"We have only been playing together for a couple of months," Harms said during the intermission at the Friday night show. "So, we were a little nervous."

Harms handled the guitar and lead vocals on the night while Kinney played the Cajon (a boxed shaped instrument played with the hands and fingers and sounds like a drum.)

"I always wanted to learn to play drums, but I never got around to it," Kinney said.

The group played two songs - Wicked Game by Chris Isaak and an original song scored by Harms - and were the fourth of eight performers at the show which was once again hosted and emceed by KMMR's Greg Kielb who was backed by Chris Pippin who ran the public-address system for the night. For the past three years, Kielb and KMMR have hosted the Talent Show in place of the long-running Country Showdown the radio station used to host.

The judges - which included Jory Schipman, Katie Smith, and Vince Mace - had their work cut out for them on the evening as the top three acts ($500 for first, $300 for second and $200 for third) were separated by only nine total points (judged on such criteria as performance and originality.) Harms and Kinney's total of 217 earned them the first-place nod; Tova Anderson (winner of the 2018 event and co-champ in 2017 with standup comedian Donavan "Beef" Archambault) took second place honors with 203 points, and third place was awarded to Nate Salsbery with 208 total points.

Anderson sang two tunes on the night; Janice Joplin's Piece of My Heart and Kesha's Praying. Salsbury played the guitar and sang two original songs, the latter of the two he decided to play while singing the first one.

"I see some people in the audience I want to play this for," he said.

Also featured on the night were Codi Donniaquo who sang The River by Garth Brooks, acapella; Whitewater's Jahmiah Huffman LaBrie who wowed the crowd by completing five Rubix Cubes in under three minutes (often doing so while giggling and looking away from the hand-puzzles); Eva Yeadon's I Don't Know My Name by Ed Sheeran; Tant Anderson who rapped Lil Bow Wow's That's My Name (rapping the Snoop Dog part as well); and Saco's Jayden Erickson who played the guitar and sang Taylor Swift's Teardrops on my Guitar.

As for the first-place winners, they had no idea if they would win or not at the intermission but were happy with how their performance came off.

"I was pretty nervous, but it went better than I thought," Harms said. "I was really nervous, and I thought my voice was going to be shaky, but it didn't go too bad. I'm glad I did it and got the monkey of playing in front of people off my back."

Kinney said that he didn't care if they placed at the event or not, but said should they win, the group would likely put any winnings towards more studio equipment. Enjoy the new equipment, gentlemen.