Naco1776

Hoping to hear more from country boy
By Carrie Steinweg

To those who are not "American Idol" fans, you’ll have to forgive me as I marvel at some of the show’s young talent. I wrote a few weeks ago about some of my favorites, and tonight the show is down to the last 12 contestants.

Obviously there are oodles of good singers who haven’t made it this far. Some made it to all the way to Hollywood, but I thought they should have gone farther. One of them was Drew Poppelreiter.

Poppelreiter, 19, works on his family farm and got some airtime during the audition when he was shown operating a tractor and talking about his family with one arm propped on a hay bale. Since I like country music, I thought it was refreshing to see a good country singer move on in the competition. He went to Hollywood but got cut from the last 50.

Since I love to hear about people’s lives, I interviewed him to get the scoop on what he’s been doing since the show. “I’m just trying to work on new material and get stuff pitched to the labels,” he said. He’s getting some recording offers and sorting through them to take the best route.

When he was cut from the show, Poppelreiter politely shook hands with each judge, thanked them for the opportunity and commented that at least one good thing would come out of it n he wouldn’t miss turkey season. That line also opened some opportunities for him. He has a couple appearances lined up at hunting shows in Wisconsin and Texas. “I’m trying to be a pro hunter and get music going at the same time and both are looking good right now,” he said.

The southern gentlemen you see seems to be who he genuinely is. During our conversation every sentence ended with “Yes, ma’am.” And when I mentioned his good manners, he responded with “I’d get a whoopin’ if I didn’t.”

He made many friends on the show he has kept in touch with, and he plans to do shows with some of them. Many of the shows that he’s been doing are for charities.

I visited his MySpace page and loved the song "Fields of Tupelo." It turns out it was Poppelreiter’s first stab at songwriting and was about his family’s farm. He lives five minutes north of Elvis’ birthplace of Tupelo. He also wrote other songs on that page, some of which he recorded at age 14. Take a listen to his music at myspace.com. Click on music and enter "Drew Poppelreiter" as the keyword.

Hoping to hear more from country boy / nwi.com