'American Idol’ Tour Comes Full Circle at Hollywood Week Theater

Back in October 2014, Nick Fradiani, Clark Beckham, Jax, Rayvon Owen, and Tyanna Jones stood on the stage of the Orpheum Theatre, with 250 or so other American Idol hopefuls, and went through the wringer of Hollywood Week. (Technically, the Orpheum is in Downtown L.A., not Hollywood, but whatever.) Ten months later, with only the five of them left standing, they returned to the historical venue on Aug. 20 for their Los Angeles stop on the American Idol Live concert tour – and as winner Fradiani tweeted, it was a full-circle moment.

Runner-up Clark Beckham was also in a sentimental mood, remembering how “Jax started twitching” when they first entered the ornate Art Deco auditorium to start the Hollywood Week process, and pointing to a spot in the front rows where he once sat for hours waiting to find out if he’d made it to the next round. “It all happened here,” he marveled incredulously.

Of course, the night was slightly bittersweet, since the long-running American Idol Live tour has been considerably downscaled this year. First of all, only the top five, instead of the usual entire top 10, performed. (Quentin Alexander, Joey Cook: You were especially missed Thursday night.) And the 2,000-seat Orpheum, which was noticeably not even close to sold-out on Thursday, was a far cry from the 18,000-capacity Staples Center just down the street (where the tour used to stop during the series’ heyday, and where standard-bearing Season 1 Idol Kelly Clarkson played to a roaring audience earlier this week). But if the Orpheum’s sparse attendance and stripped-down setting dampened the 2015 Idols’ enthusiasm, they sure didn’t let it show. And at least they had a full band behind them – unlike Season 13’s top 10, who had to awkwardly sing to karaoke-style, pre-recorded backing tracks on every night of last summer’s tour.

In many ways, the intimacy of what Beckham billed this “Up Close and Personal Tour” actually worked in the Idols’ favor. For starters, it allowed them to tell personal tales that they never had the time to share during American Idol’s brutally edited, one-night-a-week schedule this year. (Beckham in particular displayed more personality and humor during this one concert than he did throughout all of Season 14.) It also allowed them to interact with the crowd of diehard fans – like when Jax sat with a lucky little girl on the stage’s edge while covering her old finale-duet partner Steven Tyler’s solo song, “Love Is Your Name”; or when Fradiani took a victory-march lap through the audience while belting his coronation song, “Beautiful Life”; or when former Twitter Save underdog Rayvon Owen belted his own gorgeous, special piano arrangement of Sia’s “Chandelier” with Beckham and Jones.

Other highlights of the night included Jones being a total beast on the mic during Beyoncé’s “Sweet Dreams” (she really should have gotten more solos); Fradiani being an all-American boy on Tom Petty’s “American Girl” and finally getting to do a tune he couldn’t clear on American Idol, Blackstreet’s “No Diggity”; Beckham’s unexpectedly catchy, jazzy, Level 42-esque original song, “I Won’t Give Away Your Love”; and pretty much everything Owen crooned, including Nick Jonas’s “Jealous,” Katy Perry’s “Wide Awake,” and Frank Ocean’s “Thinkin Bout You.“

By the way, Owen was actually the star of the show and the tour’s MVP; many thanks to everyone who Twitter-Saved him on Idol’s results nights this year.

So maybe this downsized tour wasn’t exactly the dream these kids had when they first tried out for Idol, but they made the format seem like an artistic choice, and they made it work, with their impressive musicianship and stellar vocals on full display in a way that would have been lost in an arena or amphitheater. Fans barely even seemed to miss the cheesy step-touch group numbers and literal, screensaver-like Jumbotron graphics of over-the-top tours past.

With talent like this, the top five contestants may all play larger venues in the future… but even if they don’t, they definitely deserved their heroes’ welcome at Thursday’s "homecoming” gig.

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