A Key to Idol Success: Go Country

Brian Melo was last year's Canadian Idol. But two of his Top 10 competitors are now popping up on our music radar. And they're country.

For a show that seems to focus on pop/rock genres and artists, up-and-coming country stars are starting to make quite the impression. Maybe Carrie Underwood's success south of the border helped. Actually, quite a few American Idol alums have hit the country charts. And now Canada is seeing the same trend.

Now, Jaydee Bixby, who came in second last year, and Tara Oram, who placed sixth, are also proving with new projects out this month that although country singers are far from the majority on Canadian Idol, they are among the mighty.

"I like to think Tara and I kind of broke a lot of ground for country music on the show and maybe made it available for more people to think, `Hey, maybe I can try doing it,'" Bixby said by phone last week as his new album, Cowboys and Cadillacs, hit shelves.

Indeed, Bixby, a flaxen-haired 17-year-old from Drumheller, Alta., did break new ground as he charmed viewers with his mature voice, cowboy attire and Elvis covers to become the first country artist to place as high as second on the CTV show.

The pool of twanging talent among last year's Idol contestants prompted Ron Kitchener – manager of big country acts in Canada and the U.S. – to pay serious attention to the show for the first time and eventually take on Oram of Hare Bay, Nfld., as his first Idol artist, and his first female one, in a management capacity.

"Early on, it wasn't that I wasn't a fan of Idol, I just probably didn't give it the respect that I probably do now," said Kitchener at a recent party for Oram's engaging new reality TV show, The Tara Diaries, debuting this Sunday on CMT."

Jaydee believes that his Idol exposure helped introduced country to a whole new demographic:

"I've heard people say, `Ever since I've seen the show and stuff, I never liked country music before, but it's pretty cool now seeing somebody who's my age doing it,'" said Bixby, who was teased in high school for liking country and is now touring the country, has a deal with HRM Records and is touting his own genre of rockabilly that he calls "Rock-a-Bixby."

Read the Toronto Star article here.
What about you? Will you be following the country careers of Tara and Jaydee? And does genre matter?

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A Key to Idol Success: Go Country

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