Until a few months ago, Tyler Grady of Nazareth wasn’t even the lead singer in his own band.
But on Wednesday, Grady won a spot among the top 24 contestants on the nation’s biggest show, ”American Idol.”
That makes Grady, 20, the only contestant from Lehigh or Northampton County ever to make it this far and, therefore, the first to perform live on ”Idol.”
Grady has positioned himself as this season’s rock singer, and his front-man swagger and penchant for 1970s polyester shirts have given him frequent screen time.
But in a phone call Thursday from California, Grady said his success ”honestly hasn’t sunk in yet.”
”And I am glad for that, because I’m afraid that if I actually realized I’m in the Top 24, I might get nervous before the performance,” Grady said, laughing. ”So I’m just kind of living minute to minute here.”
During the interview, squeezed into his tight ”Idol” schedule, Grady talked about growing up with musician friends in Nazareth, playing bars and clubs in the Lehigh Valley and his best moment yet during his ”American Idol” competitions.
Grady moved to Nazareth with parents Vanessa and Derek when he was 10. His sister, Laken, now 9, was born soon afterward.
He became friends with Travis Hobbie, who played guitar. In middle school, they formed a band with bassist Josh Zullo. Grady played drums. They took the name Wailing Waters.
”Honestly, I had, basically, zero musical experience,” Grady said.
”We were very young and pretty inexperienced, so we just went around and played whatever open mic we could get into, basically,” he said. The band played mostly original songs.
The group’s first ”real” show was at Crocodile Rock Cafe in Allentown with several other bands. Later, they opened there for national acts for which their ’70s rock was a good fit, club manager Tom Taylor said.
”They were ahead of the game since Day 1,” Taylor said.
He said Wailing Waters had the look — performing in suits — as well as musical chops. In 2007, the group competed at Croc Rock against more than 15 acts in a battle of bands. Wailing Waters not only won but was so good that competing musicians voted for them, Taylor said.
The band first played folk-rock, but later transitioned to ’60s- and ’70s-inspired rock.
”All of my favorite front men from bands have basically come out of the ’60s and ’70s,” Grady said. ”I mean, Robert Plant [of Led Zeppelin] is my idol; he has been for years. So vocally, performance-wise, I’ve taken a huge influence from ’60s and ’70s rock and from watching a lot of old concert footage.”
Learning to sing an aria
Kelly Rocchi, choral director at Nazareth Area High School, said she enjoyed having Grady in her class.
”He’s a very, very good singer,” Rocchi said. And ”everything he does on TV is exactly like he was in high school — his arms flailing and the way he moves it’s not something he made up for TV.”
Grady was in concert choir, but waited until his senior year to take her vocal instruction class, which has only 10 students. Rocchi, who is classically trained, wanted to expose Grady to that style of music.
”He wasn’t comfortable with it, but he tried,” she said. ”I kept telling him, ‘Tyler, every kind of different experience you have will make you a better singer.”’
She has a video of him singing an Italian aria, ”Quella Fiamma.”
Teacher Frank Felix said Grady took his music technology course as a senior. He said it was great having Wailing Waters members in the class. ”Since they already were formed and had been playing together for years, they were our example,” he said.
Grady said he and his band mates were obsessed: ”A lot of my life in Nazareth was basically based around band practice, then open mics and gigs and things like that.”
Two failed ‘Idol’ auditions
Grady first auditioned for ”Idol” two years ago in Philadelphia. ”I didn’t even make it past the initial audition, he said.
At a second audition in New York last year, ”I made it past just one round of auditions, just to the first callback, and then I got booted from there.”
During those two years, Grady said, he improved by playing frequent shows with Wailing Waters.
”I really had this feeling that I might be able to get through at some point,” he said. ”So basically, I was just going to keep trying till I got through. I was pretty bent on getting through the Hollywood round.”
He headed to Boston for his third try last summer. ”It actually became sort of a tradition for my mom and I to just go out and audition in different cities,” he said. ”It was just kind of a fun thing.’
At the Boston audition, he won the approval of all four celebrity judges for his sultry rendition of Marvin Gaye‘s ”Let’s Get It On.” The show spotlighted Grady and his two broken wrists — he shattered them when he fell from a tree. The injuries forced him to stop drumming and assume the band’s lead vocalist role last summer.
His band supports his ”Idol” ambitions.
”They know that, obviously, right now I’m not able to play with them,” he said. ”But the overall outcome, if I were to get thrown off the show, the band would benefit from it anyway.”
Grady, who graduated from Nazareth High in 2008, is a sophomore at Temple University. He put his psychology studies on hold when he headed to Hollywood, where more than 100 ”Idol” hopefuls are whittled to 24.
In the five weeks since his audition aired on Fox, ”American Idol” didn’t show any of his other performances for judges until Wednesday. He said he performed Bad Company’s ”Can’t Get Enough”and a group performance of The Temptations’ ”Get Ready.” His final performance, shown Wednesday, was ”Home,” the hit by former ”Idol” competitor Chris Daughtry.
Judge Kara DioGuardi has been particularly supportive of Grady, saying the judges liked his ’70s rocker moves. On Wednesday, she salaciously told him, ”We’d like to see those moves again.” He responded, ”Whatever kind of moves you want, I’ll give you.”
But Grady says his most memorable moment was judge Simon Cowell telling him after the group performance ”that I stand out in a crowd.”
”That really floored me,” Grady said.
Rehearsals for this week’s live show started Friday.
Grady says he’s been doing his normal vocal exercises ”and trying to really analyze my song choice and get that; do the right song, because this could be my only shot to do it right.”
He acknowledged he was inspired by past ”Idol” hard-rock performers such as Daughtry, Constantine Maroulis, Bo Bice and Adam Lambert.
Rolling Stone magazine has noticed, saying in a story on its Web site that Grady ”has attempted to step out as the season’s ‘rocker.”’
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JP, I read all your posts. You have lots of information, and I like your take on things.
Looking forward to hearing more from Tyler!