Cook makes the most of ‘Idol’ afterglow
Published: March 12, 2009, 12:30 am
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Just over a year ago, David Cook was living in Tulsa, tending bar to pay the bills and playing in a band to keep his musical dream alive. But it was slow going. After a year of playing gigs in bars, he’d sold just 1,000 copies of his first record.
Then he reluctantly tried out for “American Idol.” You know the rest of the story, and Friday, 2,400 people will pack the the Seneca Niagara Events Center in Niagara Falls to hear his music. The big room sold out quickly, says Jillian M. Fiorella, publicity manager for the Seneca Gaming Corp.
Hearing this news by phone on a tour stop in Poughkeepsie Tuesday, Cook sounds extremely pleased and slightly surprised. “Aw, that’s amazing!” he says. “That’s really cool!”
“The Declaration Tour,” which supports his first, self-titled album, started Feb. 13 in Tallahassee, Fla., and “has been going ever since,” he says. Cook, riding the wave of popularity that comes with the exposure provided by “Idol,” plans to keep going “till the wheels fall off,” he says. “I love being out on the road. The idea of waking up in a different city every day and having new stimuli, it’s kind of something that’s always appealed to me.”
And not to mention playing before large crowds of screaming fans — “which always works, and beats the alternative, staying at home and nobody cares,” he says, chuckling slightly.
Cook’s humor is self-deprecating and self-aware. Asked about his tour itinerary, he guesses at the next few stops, then confesses, “I don’t really know what’s happening today, let alone the next three. I’m just lost is all it is.”
That’s lost, literally, but it would be easy to predict that he might also be feeling a little lost by the rocket ride to fame that comes with winning “Idol.”
How is he coping? “I’m processing it in waves,” he says, “and trying to take everything as it comes, and trying not to get bogged down with five years down the line. But right now, it’s great.”
On the intense spotlight, he says, “I’m more unnerved by that than anything, because I don’t feel any different than I did a year and a half ago. I feel like there’s some ancillary things that have certainly changed, but I’m still the same dude I was a year ago. I’ll act like I know what I’m doing, but to be honest, I don’t, really.”
Cook certainly knows what he’s doing on stage, even if he resists efforts to define it.
“I’ve never really been too into the whole genre thing,” Cook says. “I never really looked at it as much of anything other than just my music. I’ve always tried to write from experience or observation, and now I’ve gotten into this pocket of being the kind of writer who likes to write things that evoke emotion.”
Cook says his debut album “is probably the most honest I’ve ever been lyrically, and the most open. The ante was up with this record. Before, it was me doing indie stuff. It took me a year to sell a thousand copies of ‘Analog Heart.’ And now I have this huge platform, so I figure, ‘Screw it, I may as well go for broke.’ So it became almost a challenge to try to be more honest and more open and more just kind of emotionally naked.”
One of the most touching details of Cook’s rise to fame was the struggle of his brother Adam, who was being treated for brain cancer and whose initials Cook embossed on the guitar he used on the show. In concert, Cook plays “Permanent,” which is addressed to Adam, and “A Daily AntheM,” a song whose capitalized letters spell his brother’s name. These days, says Cook, Adam is “plugging right along, and we’ll just wait and see how treatment goes.”
And what about his other brother, Andrew, who asked David to accompany him and provide moral support while Andrew tried out for Idol?
“I still feel like I stole my brother’s thunder,” Cook says. “I still feel like I should pay him back someday. Maybe I’ll get him a dog or something.”
But for now, Cook tries to enjoy every minute of what is shaping up to be a long and successful tour. He says, “My worst day doing this is better than my best day doing anything else.”
Concert Preview
David Cook 8 p. m. Friday Seneca Niagara Events Center
aneville@buffnews.com
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