American Idol/Austin, TX

Many of you have been asking about my trip to Austin, TX and my American Idol audition so I decided to blog about it :)

I flew from Salt Lake City into Austin with a lay over in Denver, and took my first taxi from the airport to the North Austin Plaza (it felt wrong to get in the back seat of a car with a male driver that I didn't know at 1am...but he was a talker and I learned all about the years he spent as a bouncer in a bar before he got into the taxi business lol. It was strangely fun to travel by myself...is that weird? I loved being in the airport by myself because I kind of like people watching. And I had lots of time to sit and think and write in my journal. Nowhere I needed to be.

My good friend Mandy Cooper drove down from Dallas to stay with me and go to the audition with me. It was great catching up with her! Her husband, Geoff, came to stay for a few days with us as well and it was great meeting him.

The Audition:
Monday the 9th we went to the Frank Erwin Center and registered for the audition. Some people arrived there at 3am to stand in line! We got there at 9am and walked right up to the counter to get our wristbands and tickets. So our timing was perfect! We had come prepared to wait in line all day but it took, literally, 5 minutes.

We spent Tuesday shopping and having a grand time.

Wednesday the 11th we took our time getting there because we wanted to miss the crowd and were not interested in standing in line (especially because we already had our seat assigned to us). Some people, we found out, had arrived at 11pm the night BEFORE the audition, which was a completely ridiculous thing to do. We got there at 8am and walked right into the building, and right to our seats. No lines. We had fabulous seats, right in the middle, close to the front. They started the process about 10 minutes after we arrived, so again, fabulous timing!

Ryan Seacrest was there and they spent some time filming the crowd...they would tell us to all scream and throw our hands in the air and flash our cameras while they filmed. Then they instructed us to shout phrases in unison like, "Everything's hotter in Texas!", etc. They pulled a couple of people from the crowd who were dressed like cowboys and moved them to the front near the camera.

After they filmed us for a while, they set up 10 booths in the middle of the auditorium. At each booth were 2 judges. They called down one section of the auditorium at a time and lined us up. 4 people lined up in front of each booth at a time. Each of the 4 people sang 10-30 seconds of a song. Then after everyone sang, they would tell you if you made it or not. Then you would exit the auditorium through a "winners" door or a "non winners" door which exited the building.

While waiting in my seat to audition I went in the hall to use the bathroom and...oh my goodness...it was a crazy mess of singing and fixing hair in the hallway. I don't know how anyone even heard themselves singing, it was so loud.

There were several people who wore 'crazy' costumes. And every single one of them made it through the "winner" door lol. There were a lot of very very talented people there so it was really fun to hear all of them sing.

While sitting and waiting to audition I debated with my friend, Mandy, whether I should sing "I can't make you love me" by Bonnie Rait or "Feeling good" by Michael Buble. So I was practicing them for her. While singing "Feeling good" a guy turned to me and said, "That was sexy" haha. So I decided to go with that one.

I did not get to walk through the "winners" door :) But like I said, I don't feel bad about it at all because there were so many talented people there and not all of them made it through. It was a really fun experience though! And I am very glad I did it.

I met a guy at my hotel who did make it through so look for him on tv! His name is Cory Levoy.

I got to spend an extra day in Austin though and did lots of cool stuff: Ate at an outdoor Indian restaurant called the "G'raj Mahal", shopped at some awesome vintage stores and a great music store where I bought two new cds by "Warpaint" and "The XX", saw the movie "Flipped" (quite possibly a new favorite), and watched all the bats come out from under the bridge at dusk.

Anyway...it was a great trip! It made me want to travel more.

Here is a video of one of the new bands that I've discovered: The XX. This song is called Basic Space.