Name: Mitchell Callaway
Age: 25
Category: Over 25s
Audition song: Keith Urban – Tonight I Wanna Cry (Click to watch)
Bootcamp songs: Lonestar – Amazed & Adam Lambert – What Do You Want From Me
Judge House song: Three Doors Down – Here Without You
Musical influences: Garth Brooks, Rascall Flatts, Alan Jackson
Interesting/ unusual fact: I ride horses and motorbikes and broke my neck in three places
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A near-death experience is what inspired Mitchell Callaway to pursue his musical dream. The 25-year-old broke his neck in July 2010 whilst playing rugby league, the serious injury almost paralysing him. “During a tackle, I snapped my neck in three places and nearly died,” he says, “the fractures were a millimetre and a half from my spinal cord. If it had moved any further, I would have been paralysed from the neck down or dead.”
The terrifying chapter forced him to reassess his life. “It made me wake up to myself. I was lying in bed and I couldn’t move. I started thinking about what I wanted to do with my life. I liked to sing but I hadn’t given it a go or tried real hard so here I am.”
The laid-back concreter admits to being a rebel when he was growing up on his family’s farm in Bowraville, on the mid-North Coast of NSW. “When I was younger I didn’t get along with the law and put mum and dad through hell,” he says with regret.
He now wants to redeem himself with music. “I really want to win this show and change my life. Make my family proud of me.” Despite never having performed in public before, Mitchell blew everyone away at auditions with his version of Keith Urban’s ‘Tonight I Want To Cry’. “You have so much raw talent,” judge Natalie Bassingthwaighte said. “This country is going to go wild for you.”
Mitchell grew up listening to country, courtesy of his dad David, who used to sing in a band. “Dad got me up on stage when I was 12 and made me sing a Garth Brooks song,” he recalls. “He was blown away. He’d never heard me sing. Since then, I’ve sang karaoke a few times at the pub. After you have a few beers, you get the courage to get up there. Everyone’s always like, ‘You’ve got to do something with that [voice].’”
A huge fan of American country legends like Brooks, Tim McGraw and Alan Jackson, Mitchell wants to shake up the Australian country scene. “No offence to anyone but country music in Australia is boring,” he says. “It’s bush ballads about horses coming home. You need to throw in a bit of feeling and rock in there.”
Mitchell’s entire body is covered in ink. His passion for tattoos began when he was 17. He had ‘Last Hope’ tattooed on his knuckles when he decided to turn his life around and ‘Follow Nobody’ on his arm “because I’m not a sheep.”
His tough-guy exterior keeps the audience guessing. “I look totally different to what I sing,” he admits, “I’m covered in tattoos so people think I’m going to scream but I sing country songs.”
For someone who’s never had a single singing lesson in his life, time with mentor Natalie has been invaluable. “She’s taught me so much already. I’ve taken everything in and am using it.”
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