Pguy thinks the world of Clay Aiken(see HALL OF SHAME post for all the details). But another Top 12 contestant during Clay's AI tour of duty was Rickey Smith, who didn't exactly have the same amount of success that Mr. Aiken has had:
By Andrew McGinn, Special for USA TODAY
From Grammys and gold records to college and day jobs, life after American Idol is a mix of the ordinary and the entertaining. For USA TODAY, Andrew McGinn catches up each week with a former finalist:
On a recent Friday night, Rickey Smith had to interrupt a phone interview to go sing Happy Birthday. Again.
As the only American Idol finalist working at Coach's Bricktown, a sports bar in Oklahoma City, it comes with the territory.
But depending on who's celebrating, it's an occupational hazard for the guy who once compared his style of R&B to the creamy sounds of Brian McKnight.
"I don't want to sing Happy Birthday all tenderly to a grown man," Smith says. "It's as embarrassing to him as it is to me."
Hey, it's a job. A necessary evil.
For Smith, the job tending bar back home has been just that in the five years since his dreams were shaken, and stirred, in Los Angeles.
"I wasn't ready to accept the fact that I had to come back and give up music," says Smith, who turns 29 Saturday. "I've made peace with it, but it's still frustrating."
The Season 2 finalist, who finished eighth, stuck around L.A. for a couple of years to launch a music career. "I almost had an album. I had some good people around me," he says.
Then, like a twister on the Plains, reality tore the corrugated roof right off his plans. Finding himself strapped for cash, he had to move back to Oklahoma. He's still trying to think positive.
"Oklahoma's home anyway," he says. "I'm a country boy."
He ended up taking the songs he recorded in L.A. and selling them on a disc locally. He has recorded three new songs for a second CD.
And though he can make everything behind the bar (his specialty is a martini that "tastes like an Almond Joy"), Smith wants to be making music.
Conflicted between resuming his music studies at Oklahoma City Community College or returning to California, he's leaning toward L.A. "I'm going to give it one more try," he says.
But as a place to collect his thoughts, and his money, Oklahoma hasn't been so bad. Sooners like their Idols.
"Anywhere I go," Smith says, "they tell me I'm still a celebrity. I appreciate that."
_____________________________________________________________________
