By Adam Graham (The Detroit News)
Siobhan Magnus loves Rob Zombie films. Aaron Kelly is a budding photographer. And Didi Benami brought her yoga DVDs with her on tour this summer.
Prior to Thursday’s “American Idols Live!” concert, I spoke with all 10 “Idols” about their summer tour. But the stuff that wasn’t about the tour seemed more compelling than the particulars of their stage show.
Here’s what the “Idols” had to say about their favorite summer jams, life as an “Idol” and hanging out in Rochester, where they were holed up at the Royal Park Hotel all week while they rehearsed and prepared for the launch of their summer extravaganza.
Andrew Garcia & Lee DeWyze
Andrew and Lee are best buds. They hang out together, they coordinate their outfits (note how both are wearing leather coats) and a lot of times they finish each other’s sentences.
Here’s Andrew on his favorite song of the summer: “I like listening to (Lee’s) ‘Use Somebody.’ It’s amazing. Every time the song comes on, he just kills it.”
Lee: “Thanks, man.”
Andrew: “It gets me pumped up, bro, it gets me pumped up.”
Total bromance, these two.
DeWyze says in interviews he gets asked the “who’s going to replace Simon” question so often he’s started making up answers. His current favorites includd Tony Danza, Joan Rivers and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Then he added this: “Andrew should be the new judge.”
Total bromance, these guys.
Aaron Kelly
Aaron Kelly is polite. So polite that he answered “yes sir” to all my questions, rather than just “yes.” When I told him he didn’t have to treat me like his drill sargeant, he laughed and said, “That’s how I was raised.”
Kelly, who’s been enrolled in something called “cyber school” since 7th grade, is a budding photographer, and with his Canon Rebel XSI he plans on documenting the “Idol” tour this summer for a possible future photo book.
“I think people would be very interested what goes on behind the tour, behind the scenes,” he said. He plans on teaming with Tim Urban for the book, and admits he’s jealous of Urban’s newly purchased Canon 5D Mark II.
Kelly and Urban haven’t pitched the book yet, but are hoping they’ll be able to secure a publishing deal for it.
“Fans always want to know what’s going on. It’s just another step into the lives of the ‘Idols,’ to get to see what’s happening behind the scenes on the tour,” says Kelly, who began dabbling in photography shortly before his stint on the show.
Tim Urban and Katie Stevens*
Urban, he of the Zac Efron haircut, is just as proud of his new camera as Kelly is jealous.
“I’m not gonna say that it’s ridiculously nice, but it kinda is,” he says.
He says he’s learning photography as he goes and is also having fun during downtime on the tour. He and Kelly bummed around Rochester the other day and hung out with a group of skateboarders.
Stevens recently returned to Connecticut where she participated in her high school graduation, and was sort of upstaged at the event by a certain former President.
“Bill Clinton gave an address at our high school graduation,” says Stevens. “He sent us a video because one of the kids in my grade, his dad used to be Secret Service for him.”
Stevens went on to brag about the events at her school’s graduation night party, which included laser tag and inflatable obstacle courses. This is someone who was on “American Idol” and is currently on a nationwide summer tour, and she was impressed by an inflatable obstacle course in her high school gymnasium.
Stevens, by the way, is the only one of the 10 “Idols” who answered a current song when I asked what her favorite summer song was. She answered Katy Perry’s “California Gurls,” but still, at least it’s current. She also said she’s also spinning Eminem’s “Recovery” album, which she actually bought instead of just downloading it. Props.
*Pictured between them is Gary Graff. He clearly wanted to be in the picture, so I put him in the picture.
Michael Lynche
Michael Lynche, who recently discovered he has family in the Detroit area, visited the Motown Museum late Sunday (it was closed, but he did see a Michael Jackson impersonator performing out front) and made his way around downtown Detroit with his cousins.
“We went to Comerica Park and Ford Field, I got to see Canada, we went by Belle Isle — we just drove around, I tried to see some stuff,” he says. That’s his goal this summer, to see more than just the tour buses, hotel rooms and arenas. “It’s gonna be hard, because a lot of places we’re not in that long, but that’s what this is all about.”
Before shows, Big Mike likes listening to “Say Something,” by Timbaland and Drake.
Casey James
Casey, who was feeling slightly under the weather this week (he was sipping hot tea during our interview), was pleasantly surprised by his trip to the Motor City.
“I like the weather, I like the air,” he said. “The trees, the land, everything’s really pretty, which I was not expecting. I’d never been here, so I was expecting a lot of concrete, fences that were beat up, and it’s not like that at all. I was really happy, I’ve been enjoying myself so far.”
If he wasn’t on the “Idol” tour this summer he’d still be playing music, just not on the scale he is now.
“It would be for 15 people that were getting drunk, looking for a woman or a man, and they don’t care whether it’s me or someone else,” he says. “For the most part, it’s like that, and I’ve been doing that for 11 years.”
His current summer jam? “A current track?” He’s mystified. “Are there new songs that aren’t hip-hop? I Have no idea what’s going on in music.”
At least he didn’t answer “California Gurls.”
Didi Benami
“Idol’s” 10th place finisher recently watched her first — and likely her last — Rob Zombie film.
“Siobhan had me watch ‘House of 1,000 Corpses’ the other night and I was freaking out,” she says. But she made it all the way through, though she did so at her own peril. “I couldn’t go to sleep. It was disgusting.”
More her speed are the yoga DVDs she brought on tour with her, which she calls “really good and relaxing.” I’ll take her word for it.
Didi has an L.A. hippie vibe about her, and at one point actually said the following: “To be able to move somebody with what you write is what I find the meaning of music to be now. I want to move people with music, that’s my goal.”
In other words, she’s got slightly different listening habits than Katie Stevens.
Siobhan Magnus
Siobhan Magnus is probably the only “Idol” to date who can speak at length about horror movie special effects whiz Wayne Toth, has a fond appreciation for the work of bizarro filmmaker David Lynch and admits to reading Fangoria magazine.
In other words, she totally rules.
“I think horror film is the ultimate encapsulation of art,” she says. “Because you’ve got the music they put to it, the acting, the makeup, the set design and then the story, and the ability to make the viewers’ emotions change so drastically.”
In one breath Magnus is talking about the brilliance of “Twin Peaks” — she watched the series all the way through and even read “The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer,” a “Twin Peaks” accompaniement which came out the same year she was born — and in the next she’s talking about how much she loves Hanson’s new album. Hanson!
She also credits the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Karen O as a huge inspiration. Of all the “Idols,” she sounds like she’s the most fun to party with.
Crystal Bowersox
Crystal Bowersox is not a fan of weak handshakes. She likes a firm, steady grip, and tells fans as much if they greet her with a limp grasp.
Being that the tour’s Auburn Hills launch was so close to her home in Toledo, she was able to go home this week. The best part?
“Starting my car,” she says. “My car hasn’t been started since January. And when I got into my car, it was kind of messy still. Everything was just the way I left it, which was kind of freakishly weird. There was some paperwork from ‘Idol” in the backseat, and some Cheerios on teh floor from my boy, the whole bit. And of course it didn’t start right away.”
Bowersox is working on her debut album, but doesn’t want to compromise its quality in order to meet the Thanksgiving release date that typically greets new “Idol” product.
“There’s a little bit of pressure on me to get it out before Christmas, but to me if it’s not done it’s not done,” she says. “I want it to be the best possible thing to represent me and who I am as a person and an artist, and if it’s not perfect I don’t wanna release it. I’m going to work really hard to get it out before Christmas, but we’ll see.”
Bowersox was also ecstatic about her new grill, and was proudly flashing her new teeth. A dentist in LA recently fixed her smile by filling the gap that was there during her run on the show.
And yes, she used to get teased for her name. “In elementary school, kids used to be like, ‘Crystal bows to her socks!'” she says. “I’m like, ‘What does that even mean?'”
via The Detroit News
For all but DeWyze and Bowersox, who have already signed recording contracts, the tour will also be an audition of sorts, both for “Idol” parent company 19 Entertainment, who have an option on all the performers until late summer, and for other potential labels. James, who was slated to duet with Lynche during the Idols Live! show, reported that “it’s looking like Sony Nashville is going to work with me,” while Garcia said he’d be using his Macbook to work on his material.