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Bucky Covington's road to Nashville came down to convincing just one person. He had impressed millions with his talent and charisma on "American Idol," making it to the final eight during the 2006 season, but it was something else that sold him to Sawyer Brown frontman and producer Mark Miller.
"There was a quality in his voice that was honest," says Miller. "I believed him when he sang."
It is a quality that turned Covington's Idol experience into a career. Miller approached him the day after his final appearance on Idol, and their collaboration led the 29-year-old North Carolina singer to a deal on Lyric Street Records and a debut single, "A Different World," that is taking him to the country charts and airwaves.
It is a chain of events that almost didn't happen. Covington was a star on the local club circuit with a day job in his father's auto body shop when he toyed with the idea of a 12-hour drive to an Idol tryout in Memphis. Then, Hurricane Katrina led to cancellation of the event.
"I just let it go after that," says the 6'2" singer, who carried on with club dates and work until his sister-in-law told him of newly scheduled tryouts in nearby Greensboro in October of 2005.
"I thought, 'Now I have to do it,'" he says, "That's just karma." Bolstered from the start by strong support from judges Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul, Covington made it to the upper reaches of the highly competitive talent search.
"Hollywood was really stressful," he says. "I think that during the three tryout dates I probably slept nine hours total in four days, and I was nervous a lot of the time, but Paula just liked my vocal tone from the beginning, and Randy kept saying, 'I like you. I think you've got it.' That really kept me going. I knew there was something they were seeing that I had to keep tapping into."
Bucky's long journey to national attention began in Rockingham, NC, where he and his identical twin Rocky were born. They were raised in Laurinburg after his parents' divorce and mother's remarriage. Drawn early to country music, Covington was a fan of Tim McGraw, George Strait and Travis Tritt, among others. He and his brother began singing to a Christmas-present karaoke machine, but even then Bucky knew enough to keep it in perspective.
"I'm sure everybody who sings a little bit thinks, 'I'd love to do that,' but I always knew the odds of it happening were one in a million," he says, "so it's not something you want to go chasing."
Covington spent much of his time as a teenager on the back of a dirt bike, planning on going to work in his father's business. After graduation, he says, "I started going to a community college and was studying body work until I realized, 'I'm paying somebody to teach me how to do it when I can get paid to learn at my dad's shop.'"
Then, at 19, he got a guitar after hearing an album by Jeff Healey, the Canadian singer/guitarist known for his unusual playing style and his hit "Angel Eyes."
"The minute I heard it," he says, "I pictured myself on the stage playing guitar and singing. It was the best, warmest feeling I've ever had. The music moved me, and it was like someone was saying, 'Hey, this is what you need to be doing.' When I learned he was blind and overcame his challenges, I thought, 'If he can sing and play guitar like that, then I've got to give it a shot.' So I bought an electric guitar."
Consumed with his new passion, he decided "I wanted to put a band together, to see what happened, to see what I sounded like and how a crowd would react."
The kindred spirits he met at first were rockers, and for three years he played with rock bands in the area. Then, he says, "I realized rock just wasn't speaking to me," and he began looking for a country band. He scoured ads on music store bulletin boards and found a band playing "Southern rock, beach and country" looking for a vocalist.
"I loved it," he says. "They had a great female singer and awesome players, and I jumped into it and it was amazing." Southern Thunder got great response everywhere it played, and before long, he says, "Everybody in my home town who listened to country or Southern rock knew who I was." He and the band packed clubs weekend after weekend.
"Before long," he says, "people were coming up to me and saying, 'You need to go to Nashville. You need to do something with this.' I took it all with a grain of salt, but after hearing it so many times in so many clubs I began thinking, 'That's what I need to do. I need to go to Nashville.'"
Meanwhile, he was working for his dad, the third generation in a family business he and his brother would be taking over someday. So when his sister-in-law told him about the American Idol tryouts, he hesitated.
"Rocky and I talked to my dad about auditioning, and he said, 'I really need you at the shop. We'll be short-handed if you leave.' But I asked him, 'What do you think my odds are?' He said, 'I think you stand as good a shot as anybody.' When he said that I knew I had to go. I can't wake up at 40 years old kicking myself in the tail, thinking, 'What if?' So I went."
Confident without being cocky, he passed three levels in Greensboro and went on to Hollywood, rising into the televised part of the competition and into the final 8.
"Every time my turn came," he says, "I would think, 'If you're gonna bring it, bring it now. This is the time to put it on the table. Don't give them a reason to say no.'"
Once his run finally ended, he was faced with the great unknown.
"The most stressful part about the show," he says, "is wondering, 'What do I do next? Is it back to the body shop? Am I going to be playing clubs or am I going to get a shot at something big?' Then the day after I left the show Mark Miller and Ron Harris called me. "
Mark's was one of several calls he got from potential managers and producers.
"It's just funny how a lot of them call you up and just talk to you about the money," he says. "Mark called me up and talked about music--what kind I wanted to make, what I wanted to do."
The music he wanted to make, he told Miller, was "country, with as much rock in it as I can get away with." The two saw eye-to-eye on all of it, and Miller invited him to visit. They hit it off "like I'd known him forever," Covington says, and by the time he left, they had agreed to work together. They began recording and soon had interest from Lyric Street.
In the meantime, he had hit the road with his fellow finalists on the 39-city American Idol tour, taken part in a GAC Country Music Christmas tour, and worked a few dates with Sawyer Brown.
"Watching Mark on stage taught me so much," he says. "Dance. Move. Bring 'em in. Make 'em scream. That's what they came for."
Covington took what he'd learned in all those club gigs to the next level, and he has quickly become one of the most energetic and compelling entertainers in country music. The crowds he's faced since leaving Idol have been over-the-top enthusiastic. He is being careful to leaven that enthusiasm with the believability that so impressed Miller, tying it into his very approach to music.
"Any song that I pick, I have to feel," he says, "because if I can feel it, I can make you feel it."
The combination has cemented his relationship with fans in city after city as he has followed up his Idol success. Now, with the release of his debut single and album, America will get to witness the next step in Bucky Covington's emergence as one of country's most genuine and exciting young performers.
