By PETER LARSEN
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
Casey James sits on a stool on stage, an acoustic guitar slung around his neck as the other nine singers in the Top 10 from this season’s “American Idol” gather like disciples in a semi-circle before him.
“And Jesus said!” James intones in mock seriousness, his Blond Jesus looks and the biblical tableau prompting laughter from everyone in the Burbank soundstage on this morning.
James strums the strings and all 10 begin to sing a song you won’t find in your hymnbook anytime soon — Kelly Clarkson’s “My Life Would Suck Without You,” done in a multi-harmony version la “Glee” — and the annual Idol press day hits full stride.
This is how it works: Every season after the show ends and rehearsals for the nationwide tour are underway, the media get a morning with the Top 10. TV crews go first, then the print and online crowd.
The Idols sing a group number — the Kelly Clarkson hit this year, Journey’s ubiquitous “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” last year — to give everyone a sample of what’s to come on the 51-city tour that kicks off July 1 in Michigan and reaches Honda Center in Anaheim on August 17.
And then for the next few hours the Top 10 make their way around the room for brief chats with the assembled media, though on this day, before they left the stage James jumped into the Violent Femmes’ “Blister In The Sun” and those in the Top 10 who knew the words joined in for a bit of unrehearsed fun.
Chat with CRYSTAL AND DIDI
“For me, I have nice clothes and I know how to put on makeup and walk in heels,” says Crystal Bowersox, this year’s runner-up, on how the show has changed her life.
“Idol” is like charm school we suggest and she laughs and says, “I don’t know how my manners are, but at least I look good.”
Even so, she’s still one of the most down-to-earth contestants to make it this far. She’s still got the dreadlocks and braids and feathers in her hair. Still wears ragged jeans that look like they earned their holes the old-fashioned way instead of the $300 jeans way.
Bowersox says she hasn’t been home to Ohio since January, other than a highly scheduled Idol finalist visit, but is happily making her way through the “Idol” whirlwind and taking care of her toddler Tony, too.
“I do it the way any parent does it,” she says of how she balances her Idol work with parenting. “You sacrifice time with him, but it’s all for the greater good. And right now I’m setting (him up) for life.
Didi Benami finished 10th, just barely making the tour, so for her the summer looms as a second chance to show fans what she can do. She’ll only get two songs to do so, though, one of which she revealed would be “Terrified,” a tune written by “Idol” judge Kara DioGuardi.
“I’m opening the show,” says Benami, whose biggest pre-Idol performance was singing the National Anthem before a University of Tennessee women’s volleyball game when she was in high school. “I’m excited, but I’m also a little bit terrified, no pun intended.”
Bowersox, who’s played live everywhere from the House of Blues in Chicago to an English music festival, said she’s completely comfortable and ready for the road.
“It’s going to be amazing,” she says. “The whole show in the studio was only a few hundred people, and the night of the finale (with thousands more in the live audience), the energy was so different. I think the more people the better.”
Check out MSNBC.com to read more about the other idols.
