Cape Breton musician Evan Turnbull auditioned during the season premiere of “Canada’s Got Talent” Tuesday night and his performance had a surprising twist.
Evan drove 25 hours to Ontario for the audition and performed the song “My Maria” by American country music duo Brooks & Dunn.
The 19-year-old and his twin brother Aaron have been performing in the Glace Bay, N.S., area as a duo for the past few years while also working at Tim Hortons.
Judges Howie Mandel, Lilly Singh, Trish Stratus and Kardinal Offishall seemed a bit skeptical of Evan’s audition at first.
“You’ve only been doing this two years,” said Mandel. “What do you want out of this?”
“I’d like to make this my career,” Evan answered.
“All right, good luck,” Mandel replied before Evan started singing and playing guitar.
Then, his twin Aaron began singing from a spot in the audience before joining him on stage.
The brothers blew the audience away, with many shocked faces and clapping hands.
“That’s exactly what ‘Canada’s Got Talent’ is all about. Not only fantastic talent, fantastic surprises,” Mandel said.
“We thought we were getting coffee — we got a double-double!”
“I think ‘The Turnbull Brothers’ is going to be a name that people are going to be talking about,” added judge Trish Stratus. “Well done.”
All four judges voted “yes” to send the twins to the next round of the competition.
“We were in shock more than anything, to be honest, we didn’t realize we’d get that good of a response from them,” Aaron said.
The Turnbull brothers say keeping Aaron’s secret was tough.
“It was really hard,” he said.
“I keep on catching myself saying ‘we’ and ‘us’ instead of ‘I,’” Evan added.
The pair didn’t apply to “Canada’s Got Talent” as a duo.
“We just both put in a different video on their website, not even sure if we’d get in or not and we auditioned separately and they wanted us together,” Aaron said.
The brothers’ friends, family and fans gathered at the Main Event Beverage Bar in Glace Bay Tuesday night to watch their audition.
“Oh, the place was boomin’,” Evan said.
“And the amount of support that we’ve got just in the past 24 hours, the amount of text messages we’ve been receiving of support from everybody – it’s been a dream,” added Aaron.
This season of “Canada’s Got Talent” features 82 acts from across the country, but Evan and Aaron are the only Nova Scotians.
“We were shocked when we found that out,” said Evan.
Two New Brunswickers — dancer David NT Annan and musician Anica — will also be featured this season.