AMERICAN IDOL STARS SPRING BREAK TOUR!

Ameridan Idol stars = great media. Here's what the Detroit News wrote. "It's my favorite show of all time, and it's great to see stars on TV in person." Click here for coverage in theshouthern.com. Here's what Lancasteronline had to say.

American Idol Stars in rehearsal.

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Melinda Doolittle’s debut album, Coming Back to You, recalls the magic and luster of R&B’s classic artists with the lush instrumentation and supple production style of today’s pop-soul renaissance. Unveiling a timeless collection of songs tailored around a voice The New York Times has hailed as one of the most ‘phenomenally gifted’ in years, Coming Back To You’s 13 songs reach back and propel you forward, sublimely blending old-school musical values with an on-the-block emotional currency that only Melinda Doolittle can deliver.  Featuring production by Grammy-nominated producer Mike Mangini and recorded with top caliber musicians from the American musical epicenters of Nashville and New York City, Coming Back to You soars as a soul-baring tour de force with the singer transforming these lively soul, jazz, pop and R&B stylings into an evocative and affectionate treasure trove.

Melinda knew how to ‘bring it’ from an early age.  Humble but blessed with keen performing instincts, she recalls teachers telling her she had charisma even before she could actually fulfill the musical promise others had seen in her. 

“I was tone deaf all the way up until 7^th grade,” she remembers.  “The chorus teacher would invite me to sing because I looked like I knew what I was doing.  They’d tell me to stand in the middle and just mouth the words.  ‘Don’t you dare sing out loud!’”  For Melinda – who was influenced by her early love for Gospel music – it was all about “hanging in there,” she says.  “I loved music so much; I would pray that I got better.”   

Her dedication was never in doubt.  Raised in St. Louis, MO and Tulsa, OK, Melinda studied music at Belmont University in the storied music citadel of Nashville.  She would eventually perfect her craft as a back-up singer for stars such as Michael McDonald, Aaron Neville, CeCe Winans and Gospel group Anointed, slowly building the necessary vocal confidence to tackle the challenges that lie ahead.  “I watched these artists and they instilled in me what to do in front of a live audience and taught me so much about what it takes to be a singer.  I look back on all of this as preparation for where I’m at now,” she says. 

But nothing could have braced her for the wild roller coaster ride of “American Idol.”  Melinda became a household name as a finalist on the popular show’s sixth season, garnering millions of votes every week.  Plucked from obscurity on her very first audition, she stood out as something special right from the start.  “I went with 3 other friends.  I didn’t even want to go,” she says.  “16,000 people showed up.  I thought it was hopeless.  We got there at 4:45 in the morning and didn’t audition until 12 hours later.” She and her 3 friends sang together.  Only she was chosen.  “I still to this day have no idea how that happened.  I’m just very grateful.”

Her gratitude shines through on the exuberant Coming Back to You. Released on Hi Fi Recordings, Melinda’s enthusiasm for the material was transformed by the singer’s early love of R&B standards (her father was a drummer and let her bask in his vintage record collection).  “I approached every session with this sense of joy and felt as if we were doing them live,” says Melinda. Enjoying the creative environment fostered by the imprint’s founder, John Hecker, incredibly, she laid down 9 songs in the first 5 days of recording. 

“So many of these songs evoke strong memories.  Mike and I had a feel for every song.  I also wanted to embellish them with a sense of where I’m at now.  I wanted to capture that storytelling feel - over -for music I grew up on but also convey that sense of timelessness which inspired me to step up to the material in the first place.”  Melinda says she was also attracted to ‘the drama of the songs’ on Coming Back to You.  “The songs are so powerful because they bring you back to a time when a singer wasn’t afraid to inhabit the song emotionally,” she says.  “One of the things I love about the retro-soul movement is the then-and-now relationship between the eras.  The songs create these universal moods that are layered with this very present kind of signature feel.” 

Such invigorated reworkings can be found on the girl-group styled scorcher and first single, “It’s Your Love.”  The song glistens with both a punchy immortality and a contemporary re-booting, with Melinda doubling up on background vocals as evocative Lenny Kravitz drummer Cindy Blackman added her up-to-the-minute textures to the skins.

The singer’s undeniable talent and versatility as a vocalist consistently shine through on the new CD, with the album’s extraordinary range of songs ringing true in a myriad of musical crescendos; from the classic rhythms of “It’s Your Love” and “Coming Back to You,” to the stripped-down-funk-and-blues of two Robert Johnson classics, “Dust My Broom” and “Walkin’ Blues,” to a smoldering pair of Sammy Cahn penned ballads: the Doris Day 1956 heart-wrencher, “I’ll Never Stop Loving You,” and the Hall of Fame songwriter’s meditative 1961 Sara Vaughan hit, “Wonder Why,” which is perfectly rendered in Melinda’s impeccably nuanced delivery.  “I’m thrilled to be singing songs backed by live instruments that paint a picture for the listener,” says Melinda.  “I have always loved The Gladys Knights, the Tina Turners, the Sara Vaughans – singers who knew how to find the emotional heart of a song and tell a story.  Singers who knew how to lay it in the pocket and bring it home.” Imbued with a knack for searching out challenges that nurture her personal and musical growth, she cites the remake of Johnny Mathis’ classic, “The Best of Everything,” as one of the treasures on the new album that is particularly close to her heart. “Mike and I wanted to give all the songs a magical sort of currency,” she says.  “But we really brought an entirely new perspective to that one. I absolutely had a blast singing it and loved working with Mike to transform it into this bluesy ballad.”  She also cites “Wonder Why,” the album’s smoky closer.  “I loved the ‘feel’ of that song.  It’s a great moment for me to find songs where I can be so intimate with the audience.”

Melinda’s passion for detail isn’t exclusively devoted to the recording side of her career.  She has fostered numerous hands-on charitable endeavors, including raising money and awareness for an organization called Malaria No More, which has set a goal “for eradicating malaria in our lifetime.”  She has traveled to Africa with First Lady Laura Bush (and has been a welcome guest of the White House), and is involved in The Boys & Girls Club of America and a community driven children’s organization called The League.  The latter organization empowers students to organize projects directly in their own communities, combining service, learning, and friendly ‘co-petition’ to shine a light on school students and the many ways they can positively affect their own neighborhoods.  “I love working with that organization because we go directly into the schools and try to inspire kids to learn about character building and what they can do to help nurture their own communities,” she says. 

"Country Week was the first one that had anything to do with my background," he says. "It was my chance to sing music I could really relate to, that drew on who I am and what I'd grown up around."

His knockout performance of Keith Urban's "Where The Blacktop Ends" impressed even the normally critical Simon Cowell, who acknowledged that the Kentucky-born singer had at last displayed his true identity in convincing style. That night, a national audience got a close-up look at a singer who had truly hit his stride.

What America hadn't seen was the unlikely circumstance that had given this Navy veteran and committed family man the opportunity to turn dreams and hard work into a career that had been a lifetime in the making.

"A very dear friend asked me to be his best man," says Phil. "I was very honored and I said yes, but as it got closer, I had Navy duty that conflicted with the date and there was no way I could change it. Joking, he said, 'The only way I'll forgive you is if you audition for American Idol this year.'"

His friend's belief in his talent--something shared by many people throughout his life--helped convince Phil to give it a shot, something he would not have done otherwise. Navy duty also kept him from the nearest audition, in Birmingham, and while he was at the next one, in Memphis, his wife Kendra gave birth to their second daughter, McKayla, two weeks early.

"It was a coincidence," he says, "but it's something everybody remembered me by." Missing his daughter's birth became an affectionate reference point for everyone from casual fans to Oprah Winfrey, who asked him about it on her show.

Phil’s path toward American Idol and his country music career began in a childhood molded by two equally strong influences. The first was the ministry, which had shaped both sides of his family for generations. Both his grandfathers were pastors and he watched his father devote his life to ministry, pastoring churches in Kentucky, Ohio and Kansas. The other was music. His father started out playing trumpet and keyboard professionally, later leaving secular music behind when he dedicated his life to ministry. Phil grew up singing in church, learning first from his mother, who had a major influence on Phil, as well as from his brother and sister.

Growing up in a pastor’s home, most of the music the family listened to at home was Southern and Contemporary gospel.  "The exception," he says, "was when my parents would bring in a country record and it would usually be a heritage thing, playing something by artists like Hank Williams Sr." The combination gave Phil an early, lifelong love of country and gospel that would be supplemented later by the pop and rock influences he picked up later in life. He wrote his first songs at age 6 and continued to cultivate his passion for writing and performing music throughout childhood.

Phil played gigs and entered contests, first with his siblings as The Stacey Trio and then on his own, winning a state-level competition in Kansas, where his family lived while he was in junior high and high school. He knew during that period that he wanted to make a career of music, often to the detriment of his other grades. His uncle, renowned artist Mitchell Tolle, encouraged him and told him that anything other than the goal or the vision would pull him away, "so I made a decision that I wasn't going to let anything else get in the way."

His parents' one stipulation was that he get his diploma, and so he was forced to say no when a Nashville-based manager with major clout approached him while he was still in high school. When he did get his diploma, though, his first priority was to find a way to develop a career in music, but most importantly to find himself.

"High School was not a good environment for me to be in," he says. "Basically, I was going downhill fast, so on the day I graduated I moved away to live with my brother."

His brother was attending Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee. Phil didn’t think college was a way to reach his dreams of a music career, but he thought the experience of trying out for the school's highly respected Lee Singers, which his father had also been part of, would be a good one.

"If I was going to have any career in music," he says, "I was going to have to audition for something somewhere, and the Lee Singers were famous to me."

Then, the unexpected happened.

"I made the group and I was shocked," he says. "I thought, 'I'd better register for classes!' I took out loans and went to college basically to be in the choir."

He took a job in a recording studio to help with bills and to keep his focus on music, learning to produce independent projects, something he still enjoys. "I could really be a tech guy," he says, "but I knew I had to write and sing, to share my own music with the world."

During his time in college, Phil not only fine-tuned his music skills but was exposed to and began appreciating a variety of musical styles, learning to infuse these sounds into this country and gospel roots.

After a freshman-year trip to China with the Lee Singers, he returned to Kansas for the summer and met the best friend of his friend's girlfriend. "Her name was Kendra, and I went home that night and told my dad I was going to marry her," he says. Five months later, in December 1998, he did just that. Kendra also enrolled at Lee and became a supportive and stabilizing influence in Phil’s life.

"There were a couple of times in the middle of the college experience when I almost dropped out to become involved in the music industry," Phil says, "but Kendra stopped me. She said, 'I married you when you were a college student and I'm going to be married to a college graduate.’” She was the driving force that led him to finish college and earn his diploma.

After graduating college the couple moved to Denver, where he spent time as a music minister, but he began to wonder about his ultimate direction.

"I thought about getting a master's degree in education so I could teach music," he says, "but it wasn't where my passion was. My passion was in performing."

Then, September 11, 2001, galvanized the country.

"I wanted to support the effort against terror," he says simply. "I was always proud of my dad, who was a veteran and fought in Vietnam." His brother told him he might be able to use his musical talents in the military, which sealed the deal.

He was in boot camp when she had their first child--yes, he missed that birth too--and after basic training they moved to Virginia, and then to Jacksonville, Florida, where he is remembered both as a musician and as a minister.

While stationed in Jacksonville, FL as lead singer of the Navy Band Southeast, he drew on his extensive musical repertoire, performing music by Garth Brooks, George Strait, Tim McGraw, Stevie Wonder, Sting, Marvin Gaye, James Taylor and Paul McCartney, a rounding out of tastes that served him well when he finally hit Idol. Then, with Country Week, it all came full circle.

"Randy said, 'Dude, you're gonna have a big career in country,' and that was the night even Simon agreed," he says. "The next week I got to do a Garth Brooks song, and they were really positive again. I said, 'Thank God, because this is me. I'm finally getting to do something I love to do.'"

After the 55-city Idol tour wrapped in September 2007 and the completion of his 4-year commitment to the U.S. Navy, Phil received his honorable discharge and immediately re-enlisted in the Naval Reserves.

With the Navy’s full support of his musical career, Phil moved his family to Nashville, TN and began working with the same management company that had initially expressed interest in him in high school. Phil then signed with Lyric Street Records and began working on his debut CD with producer Wayne Kirkpatrick, whose work with Little Big Town, among others, he admired.

"He comes from the same kind of place that I do," says Phil. "Some of his work reminds me of our family reunions, where we all grab our instruments and just start singing. Wayne makes great, organic music."

The music they recorded will give listeners a look at a man who comes into his own with a hard-won maturity and self-knowledge.

"I know what I stand for," he says. “My life revolves around my family and my music. I love being active in my church and I was proud during Idol to represent the Navy and just kind of be a unifying factor for Americans."

He is, as you might expect, a man doing music for more than selfish reasons.

"I feel my job as a singer," he says, "is part of my job as a human being. I'm supposed to be touching other people's lives, doing the best I can to be a positive force in the world."

And there is no doubt that as an artist and as a person, he will be a great addition to the music world.