Washington Examiner Article

Music - Aiken for the holidays
By Brian Truitt
Examiner Staff Writer
Published: Monday, December 12, 2005 9:58 PM EST

"American Idol" Clay Aiken appears at DAR Constitution Hall with his new holiday show tonight. RCA Records photo
During the past year and a half, Clay Aiken has turned Christmas into an ongoing holiday season that keeps on giving. Good thing the Southern "American Idol" runner-up likes the season so much.

To wit: Aiken began recording "Merry Christmas with Love," the best-selling holiday album of last year, in May 2004. Five months later, the North Carolina native was recording a Christmas TV special and rehearsing for his holiday tour, which lasted through the end of the year. In January 2005, Aiken hatched the idea for his current seasonal tour, rounding up actors, singers and dancers over the next few months and waiting until October to start rehearsals.

"This was a late start to Christmas really, if you think about it, for me," Aiken says. "But it's the thing that I look forward to all year. I get really excited about the Christmas tour. It's my favorite part of the year.

"How many people say they love Christmas so much they wish they could have it all year? And I actually did it."

Last year's traditional orchestra tour inspired this year's new-fangled one. The first half of the 2004 shows featured secular Christmas music while during the second act, he would sing the sacred songs ("The First Noel," "O Holy Night," etc.) with each followed by a reading from the Christmas story by a local child from the area.

Aiken liked that aspect so much, being able to bring all of the songs together, he wondered if he could do the same with the secular tunes. He sat down, outlined some text to go in-between the songs, and a simple storyline turned into a full-on scripted play with touring actors and dancers, with the company using community theater groups where they play.

"It's turned into quite the big theatrical production, which works really well to try and convey that whole Christmas spirit to you," Aiken says.

He and the other two singers don't have speaking roles but they play guardian angels for the main character, a woman who's lost the Christmas spirit. To help her get it back, Aiken and company provide her with opportunities to allow her to flash back to past moments a la "A Christmas Carol," pausing action as well as moving it along.



"We really are the soundtrack to the show," says Aiken, who's finishing work on his second CD next month for a spring release. "As she talks about remembering something, we'll push her offstage and bring the flashback up and sing to it and whatnot."

He's been thinking a lot about doling out the yuletide cheer, but he's also smart when planning it. The tour stops in his hometown of Raleigh, N.C, on Dec. 22, where he'll have four days off to spend with his family.

Aiken has never missed a Christmas with his loved ones, and the first holiday he's ever not been with them was this past Thanksgiving, when Aiken couldn't change the tour itinerary in time.

"I've gotten used to not being home very much, whether it be a holiday or not," he says, laughing. "You get used to that. But at the same time, you have a really great group of people on the road - some of them have been with us for two years - and we kinda have become family with them.

"We know each other so well and we've become a family and that's how we spent Thanksgiving this year: We were in Louisville, Kentucky, we had a Thanksgiving dinner catered at the hotel and we all stayed together and ate together. It was almost as good as your family. In some ways just as, because there's less bickering."

btruitt@dcexaminer.com