Now that Jordin Sparks and Blake Lewis have each released their debut albums, it's time for other American Idol finalists from last season to step up.
Reportedly, Phil Stacey is getting ready to do just that. The Naval officer is currently recording music for his solo CD, as he works with producer Wayne Kirkpatrick.
We can't wait to check it out!
Having already spoke with Jordin Sparks and Melinda Doolittle about the current American Idols Live Tour, TV Guide next sat down with Phil Stacey...
TV Guide: How's the tour going?
Phil Stacey: I'm holding up. Actually, I'm having the time of my life. I just miss my family.
TV Guide: Have your wife and baby been out to visit?
Phil: They were on the road with me until Nashville. Now I haven't seen them for a few weeks. Then we'll meet up with them again in San Diego.
TV Guide: Has your wife sent you photos so you don't miss anything with the baby?
Phil: Yeah. McKayla started crawling while I was here. And when I saw her in Florida, my wife started feeding her solid food and I was like, "What are you doing?" She was like, "It's time, honey. We can do that now."
TV Guide: What are you doing to stay in touch on the road?
Phil: Other than talking on the phone, there's really not a whole lot I can do. I'm about to buy them an Apple computer so we can do iChat and actually see each other when we're not together. But hopefully they'll be with me for most of it from here on out.
TV Guide: What are you enjoying most about being on tour?
Phil: I enjoy being with my friends, Blake, Chris Richardson, Chris Sligh, Sanjaya.... We're all on the bus together and we're having some good times. I really enjoy meeting the people who got us here and saying thank you to some of the more hardcore supporters who not only voted for you, but recruited all of their coworkers and friends to vote for you.
TV Guide: Any funny stories about fans you've met?
Phil: Well, I took Chris Sligh to my house in Jacksonville, Florida, when we were there. On our way to the auditorium â our wives were in the backseat â this car kept catching up with us. We looked over and it was this couple, and the wife was taking pictures of us while we were driving. It was funny.
TV Guide: Have you been playing a lot of Xbox on the tour bus?
Phil: Well, you know, we can't hook the Xbox up to the TV. [Laughs] So we all got our little individual personal PlayStation Portables. But usually, we just sit around and talk and hang out.
TV Guide: What are you snacking on backstage?
Phil: What am I not eating backstage. I've gained like 20 pounds since I've been here and we've only been on the road for two weeks! When we showed up in Arizona, for lunch they had jambalaya. Sometimes it will be Italian food or whatever. Then, of course, there are unhealthy chips that we obliterate before the show even starts. There's lots of bottled water to keep our voices healthy, and lots of Throat Coat.
TV Guide: All Melinda talked about were Pop-Tarts backstage.
Phil: Yeah. We actually went through a couple of shows without having any Pop-Tarts backstage. I was like, "Where's the Pop-Tarts? I need the Pop-Tarts!" I love them. The strawberry ones with frosting and sprinkles? I can't get enough of those. I'm kind of glad when people forget to bring the Pop-Tarts into our room because I will eat them. [Laughs] I'm also eating Snickers and the Reese's cups, and they don't even sponsor us. I just can't stop eating.
TV Guide: Any memorable moments onstage?
Phil: Yeah. I was singing "Into Your Love" with Gina Glocksen. We had just been backstage reading an article in the paper about Haley Scarnato's legs. After the song is over, I was like, "Ladies and gentlemen, Gina Glocksen!" That's when she usually says, "Phil Stacey!" but this time she said, "See, America? I have good legs, too!" and she just walked off the stage. That really made me laugh. Then, the night before last, we were in San Antonio and at the end of our duet, she just stopped singing and started laughing out loud into the microphone.
TV Guide: You've been to so many cities. Have you had a chance to do any sightseeing?
Phil: Not really. I think we've actually been out one time, in Houston. The guys and I basically spent the entire day at Guitar Center, each of us spending a small fortune on gear that we dragged along with us and are going to end up having to send home anyway because we don't have space for it on the bus.
American Idol finalist Phil Stacey says life has been non-stop since making the top ten Cleveland's hometown favorite has came back to resume his career in the navy and talked about how helpful that unit has been.
"They encouraged me to do my audition, they supported me through the whole thing, they're sending me on the tour. My first priority was to get back, and resume my post as a United States sailor," Stacey said.
Of course, Stacey's Idol days aren't over yet. The singer is about to embark on a five-month American Idol tour.
And he hopes to fulfill his dream to record an own album this year.
"I think, I write and sign honest music, music that I feel in my heart, and, I think, if you pick a Phil Stacey CD up, it'll probably be in the country music section," he noted.
Phil is grateful for all the support he's received from his many fans in the Tennessee area, especially at Lee University, where he graduated just a few years ago.
"Everywhere we go now, people want to stop us, they want to talk to us, and it just means the world, it means there was a connection made between that person and ourselves. It's just been really cool, because, we feel like we have just a huge amount of new friends."
As American Idolâs top ten gear up to hit the road for the summer concert tour, Phil Stacey waited to find out if his commanding Naval officers would give him the OK to pack his bags.
Now, a few short weeks after his elimination, Us Magazine has learned that the U.S. Navy has cleared the 29-year-old father of two to sing this summer.
Staceyâs approval comes on the heels of his May 2 elimination, after which the sixth place finisher remained steadfast in his dedication and obligation to serve.
âMy primary responsibility is to the United States Navy,â he explained the day after his ouster. âThe possibility exists that theyâll need me for a mission. If thatâs the case, Iâm committed to following through with my commitment to the Navy.â
Reached for comment last week, Bob Anderson, the Director of the Navy Office of Information, told Us that â[the Navy] can sometimes make exceptions for it and find somebody else to do those jobs.â However, he reasons, âYou sign a contract to do a job for a certain amount of time and youâre expected to do that job.â
Todayâs announcement is no doubt a relief for the Florida performer, who, while remaining dedicated to his duty, said it would âbreak [his] heartâ if he could not tour.
â[The Navy] has been 100% flexible with me with American Idol, and theyâve been gems â a huge support base for me,â Stacey says.
The American Idols Live! nationwide concert tour kicks off July 6 in Sunrise, Fla.
Phil Stacey may be gone from the American Idol stage - but that doesn't mean he can't chime in on the singer who will remain on there the longest.
"I think that the four people that are left have individual strengths that set them each apart," Stacey told reporters during a Thursday conference call. "I think Blake is most likely to be the most original contestant ever on American Idol. He just blew it out this week with Bon Jovi. It was incredible.
Melinda Doolittle is possibly the greatest singer I've ever heard on the show. Lakisha sings with so much passion, that it's hard to listen to her and not get chills. And Jordin has got a range that lasts for days, and her upper notes just have so much power behind them. Honestly, I think it's anybody's ball game at this point. I'm going to be really looking forward to seeing how it goes from here on out."
With all the different choices Idol finalists are faced with on a weekly basis - from song choice and musical arrangements to wardrobe - Stacey said the best decision he made during his run was something that he hopes was visible in each of his performances.
"I think my best decision was to go into it with a positive outlook and be happy, and understand how blessed I was to be there to begin with," he said. "I think that a lot of people started liking me more as a person when they saw that I was truly grateful just to be there because being in the bottom three several weeks in a row, could be considered hard on a person. But my outlook was that 103,000 people auditioned for this, and I was so blessed to be there, that anytime that I got cut, I was just fortunate to be there."
One of the reasons Stacey was able to focus on his demeanor during the competition is because he never really worried about what to do with his hair.
"I think it worked for me because it was unique," said Stacey, who is bald and sometimes sported a hat during his performances. "It wasn't something that anybody else had this particular season. If I was on last year and it was between me and [Idol 5 finalist] Chris Daughtry being the bald guy, I don't know that it would have gone so well for me. But it worked for me this year because nobody else shaved their heads."
Having made it as far as he did in the competition, Stacey said "inevitably" his Idol journey would have come to an end had he stuck around any longer, so he looked at the positive aspects of his elimination because he knows what's waiting for him at home.
"I wanted to win, but there is a taste of goodness in the midst of this. I've had a good past few weeks, so I was able to go out on a high note," he said. "I'm excited about spending more time with my family. I miss my [two daughters] really bad."
The U.S. Navy has given its country six presidents â five of them in a row, from Kennedy through Carter â but even the guardian of the worldâs oceans fell short of producing an American Idol Wednesday night.
Musician 3rd class Phil Stacey, a chrome-domed crooner stationed with the Navy Band in Jacksonville, Fla., learned viewers hadnât given him enough votes to advance to the next round of competition, meaning that his appearance on Wednesdayâs episode was his last in the regular contest.
Stacey will almost certainly reappear at some point on a future Idol, and is expected to tour with the summer-concert version of the show. The franchise recycles its alumni in inspirational sessions for new contestants, and invariably takes credit for âdiscoveringâ any and all its castoffs who make good elsewhere in the entertainment game.
And what a way to go â Stacey promised on Tuesdayâs episode that he would go out in a blaze of glory when he sang Jon Bon Joviâs 1990 solo single, âBlaze of Glory.â Judges Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul both ranked the song among the sailorâs best performances, and there was nary a dry eye in the Idol studio as he reprised it Wednesday; he put his arm around two uniformed sailors in the audience and kissed his wife, Kendra.
A farewell video showed Stacey with his baby daughter McKayla, whose birth he missed to be on Idol. His whole bid to succeed on the show, he said, was for his two daughters.
By reaching the top six, Stacey did better than the overwhelming majority of âAmerican Idolâ aspirants. He auditioned with tens of thousands of other hopefuls in October, and wasnât even this seasonâs only Navy performer to draw screen time. The first, Jarrod Fowler, a 28-year-old intelligence specialist second class aboard the carrier Ronald Reagan, was a musical amateur who performed in uniform and was made the subject of a special video package along with his ship. But Fowler was cut before the seasonâs live voter-elimination episodes started, and Stacey stayed alive for 11 of them.
Staceyâs American Idol career began as a debt to a buddy.
Staceyâs mother, Andrell, a nurse in Smyrna, Tenn., told The (Nashville) Tennessean on April 11 that Stacey had agreed to sing at his friendâs wedding, but that when he couldnât make it, the friend told Stacey the only way he could make good was by auditioning for American Idol in Memphis, which he did.
The rest is history.
With Sanjaya Malakar eliminated from American Idol, the folks at Votefortheworst.com had to come up with a new contestant to support.
The site, which asks for visitors to intentionally vote for a bad Idol singer, has named a certain bald soprano as its new poster boy.
"We love you even if you can't be exposed to direct light," the site says about Phil Stacey.
Kinda mean ... but kinda funny, too.
Move over Taylor Hicks, there's a new kid in town â and he has ties to Smyrna.
Phil Stacey, the son of Gary and Adrell Stacey of Smyrna, recently earned one of the coveted top 24 positions on season six of American Idol.
He'll take the stage against 11 other finalists tonight in an effort to win viewers' support en route to possible musical stardom. The show has already launched the careers of Hicks, who was last year's winner, Fantasia, Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken, among others.
"We've been excited about this all along," said Gary Stacey, who is pastor of Hendersonville Church of God. "One hundred and some thousand kids tried out and he ended up in the top 24. This has been an absolutely amazing journey."
Getting to this point hasn't been easy for the one-time Smyrna resident.
A sailor in the Navy, and he and his family are stationed in Jacksonville, Fla. Four months ago when Phil decided to try out for Idol he left his pregnant wife to make the trip. Because his wife, Kendra, wasn't due to deliver the couple's second daughter for three more weeks, Phil thought he had plenty of time to fly to Memphis, try out for the show, then make it home.
He was wrong.
After his plane landed in Memphis, his wife went into labor. Four hours later, he had a new daughter.
Phil's mother, Adrell, a nurse at StoneCrest Medical Center in Smyrna, takes issue with the way her son has been portrayed throughout this situation, and wants to set the record straight.
"I want people to know he didn't leave Kendra in labor," she explained. "The way they showed it on television made it look like that's exactly what he did. I actually flew to Florida to stay with Kendra while Phil was trying out.
"We spent that day shopping and having lunch on the beach. I told her that since I'm a nurse, tell me if she goes into labor. At about midnight she walked in and said she had been in labor for an hour. The baby came four hours later, and I got to cut the umbilical cord.
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Who says American Idol is too mean?
Producers of the show recently came up with a way to help an Oklahoma Navy officer who faced a missed tryout because his wife gave birth to their second child.
Petty Officer 3rd Class Phil Stacey of Shawnee persuaded producers in Memphis to let him audition early so he could return to Jacksonville and be with his wife, Kendra, and their new daughter.
In return, American Idol did ask for Stacey had to arrange to videotape their reunion.
Stacey's father-in-law - Mark McIntosh of Shawnee - says the producers like the taped reunion enough that they plan to use it on the show. Look for it this evening.
