Interview with Hartford Courant

The Hartford Courant interviewed Clay this week. Clay plays the Chevrolet Center in Wallingford, CT on Saturday night.

For Clay Aiken, Life After 'Idol' Has Been Joyful

December 8, 2005
By AMY ELLIS, Courant Staff Writer Your holiday wishes have come true. Clay Aiken, runner-up to Ruben Studdard in "American Idol 2," is back in town.

Aiken brings his "Joyful Noise 2005" tour to the Chevrolet Theatre in Wallingford Saturday night.

"Joyful Noise 2005" is the sequel to Aiken's first holiday tour and will feature songs from his "Merry Christmas with Love" CD. The concert includes several songs Clay recorded for the album that didn't appear on the CD as well as new arrangements for some traditional favorites.

We talked to Aiken by phone this week from Boston:

Q: You're doing something a little different this year on tour: a series of vignettes with a running storyline, which you wrote?

A: We actually played Wallingford last year and we had a show that was just music with an orchestra. The second half with the religious songs, we tried to connect them together with some local school children reading passages from the Christmas story. As I watched that part I thought, you know it would be great if we could figure out a way to link together the non-religious songs too, with the story, and try to make them have some purpose, some meaning, some story to them ... I was going to do an outline and hand it off to somebody else and let them write out a script and it turned out that if you want something done right you do it yourself.

Q: So how's it going? Are you happy with the way it's come out?

A: It's a lot of work but we've pulled it off. We had a really great director come in and really made it work really well; we've got some dancers who kind of provide flashbacks for us and really pulled it all together into a very, professionally done, produced show.

Q: I'm sure you've been asked this question a million times, but what's your favorite holiday song to sing?

A: I get it asked all the time, my favorite kind of changes. My favorite Christmas song of all has always been "O Come, O Come, Emanuel" and I didn't get to put that on the Christmas album; this year for the tour we decided to do it. And so I think that's probably my favorite. ... Since I didn't put it on the album I haven't worn it out for myself yet.

Q: Does your family have any special holiday traditions that you do every year?

A: You know, not really as far as strange, creative holiday traditions. We don't really do anything different. We always get together as a family, the whole extended family comes together at my grandparents' house and that's nice because often times it's the only time I get to see some cousins throughout the year. It will be a little different because my brother just got back from Iraq; he's stationed at Camp Lejeune. He'll be home for the holiday but a lot of his friends who are Marines with him probably won't be able to make it home, so he'll bring them home with him. And we'll have some people who are from the tour who aren't able to make it back home or who aren't going home for Christmas ...so we're going to have an extremely extended family for Christmas with us.

Q: You're working on a new album. Are you planning on doing any collaborations with anyone? Any duets?

A: We started before the tour, we stopped before the tour and we get back in the studio some time around January. ... I'd love to sing with somebody else. I'd love to put a duet on the album. We've just got to find the right person to do it with.

Q: Any artists come to mind?

A: Well there's definitely people who I think are talented and I would love to sing with. ... I think there are people like Faith Hill and Martina McBride who are extremely talented.

Q: Well you didn't win "American Idol" but you've had a lot of success since the show. What do you think your greatest accomplishment has been so far?

A: It's hard to say. I could say a few things like, you know, 'We had an album,' 'We had a Christmas tour' and so on and so forth. Honestly for me, I think probably the biggest accomplishment has been being able to go and do things working with the [Bubel/Aiken] foundation that I've set up.