Entertainment

'American Idol' runner-up slips into musicals while plotting a second pop album

12:02 PM CDT on Monday, July 24, 2006

By MANUEL MENDOZA / The Dallas Morning News

Only 19, Diana DeGarmo is already carving out a nice little career in musical theater. In the past year, the 2004 American Idol runner-up has played Maria in West Side Story, made her Broadway debut in Hairspray and is now touring the country as the title character in Brooklyn: The Musical.

But as much as she's enjoying and learning from the experience, she can't wait to get back to her true love: the recording studio.

Dallas Summer Musicals

Diana DeGarmo in Brooklyn: The Musical

"That's where my heart and soul lies," Ms. DeGarmo says in a phone interview from Houston, where Brooklyn stopped before heading to Fair Park Music Hall for its Dallas Summer Musicals opening Tuesday. "I don't want to become a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none."

Her first album, 2004's Blue Skies, sold less than 200,000 copies, a disappointment by Idol standards. She has plenty to say about what went wrong, including the nightmare of dealing with the recording industry.

"It's very corporate, mainly run by people in suits at the top," she says. "Every record company is now owned by another record company which is owned by another company which is owned by some man who is 10,000 miles away and has no idea what is going on."

The RCA album, part of her Idol contract, was recorded in less than a month.

"The creative process was really tampered with when they tried to go as quickly as they could without making the product as good as it could be," she says. "For the amount of time we were given, I think the songs turned out really, really good. But it wasn't exactly the album I had envisioned. It was a mishmash of different types of songs – Hilary Duff meets Avril Lavigne meets a wannabe Celine Dion. I tried as much as I could to put my own thumbprint on it, but you can only do so much."

Ms. DeGarmo and RCA have parted ways, and she's begun laying the groundwork for a second album. She's writing songs and collaborating "with some people in Atlanta" she won't name. And there have been rumblings from other record companies, she says. The style will be what she calls "rop," pop with a little bit of R&B.

After wrapping up the Brooklyn tour in San Jose, Calif., next month, she plunks down in New York in September for another six-month run as Hairspray's Penny Pingleton. She plans to get more serious about the new record during her time in the Big Apple.

In the meantime, she's having a good time playing Brooklyn, a Parisian singer who travels to her eponymous town in search of fame and her father. The story is a show-within-the-show, performed by a homeless troupe that calls itself City Weeds.

"Everything you see on the stage is something that we as homeless people have found on the street, which makes it very interesting," Ms. DeGarmo says. "It's always fun to see what things might turn into. One moment, it may be one thing, and a couple of minutes later we turn it around and flip it upside down and it's a completely different prop."

Her transition from Idol to musical theater was instantaneous. After touring last summer to support her album, she was asked by the American Musical Theatre of San Jose to audition for Maria. "It was literally the blink of an eye, like one fluid motion. The next thing I knew, my name got dropped in that theater bowl." Tryouts for Hairspray and Brooklyn followed.

She seems oblivious to the generally negative reviews the show has been getting. "It's one of the best scores you can find," she says. "This is definitely the most free musical I've been a part of, but you still have to say your lines, you have to 'stand here, do this, do that exactly then and there,' because if you don't it may mess up someone else."

Now that she's proven herself outside the double-edged sword of American Idol, she loves the idea of musicals as a fallback career.

Ms. DeGarmo, who has a big, soulful voice, comes across mature for a teenager. Born in Birmingham, Ala., and raised in the Atlanta suburb of Snellville, Ga., she's been singing in public since she was a child.

Before she begged her mother to take her to the Idol auditions, she was a Coca-Cola Kid at the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, a finalist on America's Most Talented Kid and Miss Teen Georgia. She also appeared in stage productions of Annie and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

"Growing up, I was a precocious child," she says, referring to herself as "a born ham."

Early on, she memorized Patsy Cline's greatest hits and got a paying gig singing at a bridal show. "I was like, OK, I want $15 – not $10, 'cause that's too low, and not $20, 'cause that's too high."

Away from home so much of the time, Ms. DeGarmo doesn't get to see friends as much as she'd like. They tease her about being "the ghost of Diana."

"My friends my age are going into their second year of college and doing the normal teenage things: hanging out, going to parties, going to the beach. It's OK. I live vicariously through them and they live vicariously through me. ... I enjoy being a little different, and this is the path that I myself have chosen. It's led me in the right direction toward where I want to be, a singer for the people."

E-mail mmendoza@dallasnews.com

Brooklyn the Musical

Opens July 25 and runs through Aug. 6 at Fair Park Music Hall. $11 to $69. Ticketmaster, 214-631-ARTS or www.ticketmaster.com.