August 2012

The most excited part of August was my last minute road trip to Idaho to try out for American Idol!  This year for Idol, they had a small town bus audition tour.  The American Idol tour bus traveled across the country and stopped in 10 small cities to hold auditions.  The first stop was in Idaho Falls.  They announced the date only 2 days before the auditions, so I had to decide really quick if I was actually going to go or not.  I arranged for someone to cover my Saturday shift and I called my friend Jill.  She is a great singer and she mentioned to me once that she's always wanted to try out for Idol. It didn't take much persuading to get her to come with me, so we packed up the next day and drove to Idaho Falls.  It was only about a 6 hour drive, so it wasn't too far.  

We weren't expecting too many people to be there.  Idaho Falls is not a huge city, and the auditions were only announced a couple days before, so I didn't think that many people would even know about it.  Not the case.  We got there and there was a huge line already.  We showed up at 9, and didn't get through the auditions until about 2.  The audition format was weird.  It was outside and they had groups on both sides of the tour bus.  They brought us up in groups of 4 and we each stepped forward and sang one verse of our song, then stepped back.  Jill and I were in the same group with 2 other girls.  One girl was pretty awful. And the other girl was superrrrrr annoying.  She dressed up in a hula shirt with a bow-tie and huge glasses and flip-flops with socks.  She sang a showtune and was super dramatic.  The judges apparently liked it, because they had her sing another song and she sang normal this time.  She was actually pretty good, and she moved on to the next round.  To the other 3 of us they said, "There's some great voices in this group, but we can't take everyone, so takes for trying out, and please come back next year."

 

Obviously, we were a little disappointed, but it was so cool to have the experience.  And every time I sing in front of a bunch of people like that, it gets easier and easier.  I get a little less nervous each time.