Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Naomi Gillies, the Lancaster Catholic High School grad who made it all the way to the top 42 on American Idol, said Friday she wouldn’t rule out another try at the show.

But between now and then, she wants to discover herself as a musician.

“When I left Hollywood Week and people were asking, ‘If you don’t make it, do you think you’ll go back?’ I said, ‘Absolutely not. Never. I could never go through that again.’ It was so stressful,”  Naomi said.

“But at the same time, I got so far and so close, and I know with a couple more years and working on the things they told me to work on … I know that I could actually make the top 24.  So it’s very tempting.”

“I think I’ll just have to move on and do my own thing for a while and, if it comes back to that, the option’s definitely not out.”

Naomi, 22, is a performance and music business major at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.  She’ll graduate in May.

She says she’s also learning the guitar, so she can write her own music.

And she has other plans beyond continuing to sing with a wedding band known as K2.

“I kind of want to start my own band,” she said.  “I think that’s an experience I’ve been lacking, me leading my own band, doing my own thing, singing at bars. The typical stuff you need to go through to get experience and to be a well-versed musician.”

Then there’s the little matter of genre.  Naomi says she grew up singing country music.

She went to Berklee, sang a little country and everyone liked it, so she kept singing country.

“Then, about a year ago, I kind of realized,  ‘This is not what I want to do.’  I’m more into rockish (music), singer-songwriter pop as well.

“I don’t know if you know the band Grace Potter and the Nocturnals?   I’m kind of obsessed with that sort of thing right now.  It’s like classic rock, but more modern.  That’s how I would describe it, with the singer-songwriter aspect as well.   That’s kind of what I want to go for.”

As for Idol, Naomi thinks Jen Hirsh and Elise Testone will do very well.

“Joshua Ledet is one of my favorite singers I’ve ever heard,” she added.  “I think he has an amazing voice.  I don’t have a prediction on how well he’ll do though.”

Editor’s Note:  I’ll post more from my interview with Naomi Gillies later on.  Since we didn’t get to hear much from her on Idol, I’ve embedded a video below.  You can watch three other pre-Idol videos by heading here.  She also has a number of songs on her MySpace page.

Singing “Paris (Ooh La La)”