By PETERSON GONZAGA
Front Row Features

HOLLYWOOD—It’s been an uphill battle for many contestants of this season’s blind auditions of NBC’s “The Voice.”

This past Tuesday, some of the contestants making it onto the various teams came together for a press conference to talk about their experience. They included Team Adam’s Grey and Matt Cermanski and Team Blake’s Brandon Chase, Brian Pounds, Team Christina’s Michael Lynch and Team CeeLo’s Lupe Carroll, Shawn Smith and Tamara Chauniece.

Wedding singer Grey’s rendition “Catch My Breath” caught Adam Levine’s ear so he put her on his team. Asked about her prior music experience, Grey said, “I work in Boston. I’m a wedding singer. My performance experience has pretty much just been that, a whole lot of weddings, a lot of unglamorous bars and (not the prettiest side).”

Though she works as a wedding singer, Grey is has an impressive musical education, as she attended the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. But she didn’t feel it was a big advantage for her.

“Berklee is great but I feel like I don’t have any kind of advantage going in just because I’ve had any kind of training like that,” she said. “This is a really scary time. It’s a really exciting time but as a performer. We all have our strengths and we all have the things that we need to work on and I think that it’s kind of an unnatural situation, so we all handle it differently.”

As part of Blake Shelton’s team, Brian Pounds is a guitar-playing country singer. He may have been sweating a bit as it took almost 50 seconds before Shelton hit his button during the show.

However, CeeLo threw a wrench in Blake’s sole chance of claiming Brian on his team as the he also turned his chair around for the country crooner. CeeLo was rooting hard for Pounds to join his team. But Brian chose Blake’s team.

“It’s really interesting because before you went on, people always ask you who you would pick between the artists and things like that. I always said CeeLo and it’s an indescribable feeling when you’re up there and looking at these humungous stars in the face. Blake is an incredibly charming guy and had a lot of really great things to say (about me) and kind of understood me as an artist. It was surreal and it felt right when I chose him.”

There’s no time for these contestants to feel comfortable in their teams as they head into the battle rounds as they perform with their coaches in a do or die duet coming this Monday.