Idol Chatter & Voice Views

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We met Trenyce way back on season two of American Idol, when she finished in fifth place.

Most folks probably forget that on the night she was eliminated, the other person in the bottom two was none other than Ruben Studdard.

Ruben, of course, went on to become the season two Idol, narrowly defeating Clay Aiken for that title.

As for Trenyce, she’s been pretty busy since Idol as well, taking part in stage productions and a number of Idol-related activities.

Over the holiday, she was involved in a touring American Idol Christmas show. She’s currently performing on the “Ballroom With a Twist” tour. You can hear a little about both in the audio portion of the interview above.

And on Sunday night, she and Ruben will likely see one another again, at the 52nd annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles.

A year ago, they played two of the lead roles in the 30th anniversary tour of “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” which made a stop at the Strand here in York. Sunday night, the cast CD from that production is up for the Grammy for Best Musical Show Album.

Trenyce, 29, a Memphis native who now lives in L.A., said the nomination was unexpected.

“Ruben called me. Then he called Patrice (Covington). Then he called Frenchie (Davis). We all just kind of like yelled for the first five minutes on the phone,” she recalled. “We were just really stunned. It was a pleasant surprise, a great way to end the year.”

So, folks, reintroduce yourself to Trenyce, who talked to Idol Chatter last week about “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” her career since Idol and her hopes for the future.

Idol Chatter: How did you land the role in Ain’t Misbehavin’?

Trenyce: “I’d heard Ruben was going to be doing the show, and my management of course saw the audition come across the desk and said, ‘We really think you should do this.’ But I couldn’t get to New York in order to audition so I sent in a tape.

“I heard that the tape just sat there for a couple of days. And they were still auditioning other people and they weren’t finding what they wanted. Someone remembered that I was supposed to send a tape in, and they called my management and they said, ‘Yeah, it’s been there for a few days now.’

“They watched the tape and (director) Richard (Maltby, Jr.) was like, ‘She’s perfect. She’s just what we were looking for. And also, it would be nice to reunite all of these Idols together. Since they’ve already sung together, it should be pretty easy.’ And it was. It was a great reunion.”

Chatter: Now, for those who aren’t familiar with the show, explain your role.

Trenyce: “First of all, in Ain’t Misbehavin’ all the characters use their real names. There’s five characters and it’s all about the (Harlem) renaissance era. And Fats Waller was a composer of this era, and he basically was the highest paid and most sought after composer of his time, as far as black composers go.

“He was allowed into the white clubs, so he wrote the songs especially for them. A lot of them also spoke to his real life and his ‘excessiveness’ as he called it. This play is basically playing homage to his music, to his life and to that era.

“The whole thing about Ain’t Misbehavin’ is that we are actually misbehaving the entire show. You never see the same couple each time. It will be me and Ruben. Then it will be Patrice and Ruben. Then it will be Frenchie and Ruben. Then it will be me and David (Jennings). Then it will Frenchie and David. It’s all about reading between the lines of the music and saying, ‘I want love and I need love and I want to be in love, but I also want him or I also want her and I also want them.'”

Chatter: Is there a particular number in that play you enjoyed the most?

Trenyce: “I really enjoy each number for something different. But I think the number that is probably the most precious is ‘Black and Blue.’ It’s the first time you see us all sitting still. And we’re sitting still as a portrait. And we’re just belting.

“It’s the first time you see us all on the stage at the same time. No movement and the energy is just coming all from our voices. A lot of people would come to us after the show and say, ‘That is the most chilling moment of the entire show. I cried. I thought of what my parents were going through during that era.’ You hear all sorts of great feedback.”

Chatter: If you had a choice, what direction would your career take from this point on?

Trenyce: “If I had a choice, I would love to do real music. Now I feel like pop and rap have kind of taken over everything, and you don’t really get to see people as chanteuses any longer. You don’t get gowns as far as their music goes. Usually when you see people dress up, it’s to pay homage to Patti LaBelle or Aretha Franklin or Whitney Houston or Mariah Carey or Celine Dion.

“But you don’t really have an artist out right now that’s doing that particular thing. I would love to be the person that brings that essence back to the music world. I kind of want to do the whole Barbra Streisand thing.”

Chatter: Are there plans for an album at some point?

Trenyce: “Yes there is. I’m actually working out the details about that right at this moment. It was something that came across my desk at the end of the year and it was a really great surprise. Right after the Grammy (nomination), I got a lot of calls and people are like, ‘Wow, you don’t even have an album yet. And you’re already getting a Grammy.’

“And I’m like, ‘Yeah, well we’re nominated, which is always great to say.’ So yes, I’ve gotten a lot of offers since then and we’re working on all the details right now. So, hopefully, probably sometime this year or the beginning of next year, we’ll have an album out.”

Chatter: Now you do have four songs up on MySpace. Are those potential album songs?

Trenyce: “No. I don’t think I want to do those. I do still perform those songs lives when I do tours and clubs and all of that. So I do have a fan base that knows the songs. But I think I want to do a completely different direction. I would love to merge Barbra, Whitney and Diana Ross all together in an album.”

Chatter: Why just one name? Why do you go by just Trenyce?

Trenyce: “I’ve heard a lot of rumors. ‘Oh, she thinks she’s the next Madonna. Or the next Beyonce. Or whatever.’ A long time ago, my mother actually, she’s the one who said I should go by Trenyce. It’s actually my middle name. I read somewhere, ‘She made the name up.’ No, I didn’t make the name up. It’s my middle name. We didn’t think my last name (Cobbins) really sounded like a singer, so we just dropped it.”

Chatter: In one of the Idol interviews, you admitted your mother wasn’t very happy when you dropped out of college to pursue music. How does she feel now?

Trenyce: “She thinks it’s the one time she’s glad I didn’t listen. She’s very proud of me. She tells me all the time. It wasn’t that she didn’t want me to do it. I didn’t take it that way either.

“It’s just that when you come from a small town and your parents have had to work their entire lives and they still feel they weren’t able to give you the world, they just want you to have the best. They want you to be able to say you’re living comfortably and they don’t want you to go through the hardships they did in order to survive.

“She already knew that the industry was going to be a tough one and that I would hear way more no’s than yeses. And it wasn’t that she didn’t believe in my talent, it’s just that the business can be pretty cruel. So she just didn’t want that for me.

“Like I told her, ‘This is what I want to do. I understand there are going to be a lot of no’s. But I also understand there’s so much room for yeses. And so for everything to be consistently going in such a positive direction, we talk every day and she always tells me how proud she is of my endurance and my persistance in doing what I love.”

Now, if you want to hear those four Trenyce songs on MySpace, go here. You can also follow her on this http://www.myspace.com/officialtrenyce”>MySpace page, Facebook and on Twitter (@trenyce).

For more on Ballroom With a Twist, go here.

The cast album for “Ain’t Misbehavin'” is available for download most places you normally get your music, including iTunes ($12.99 for 25 tracks).

Be sure to follow along with Idol Chatter Sunday night during the Grammys. I’ll be blogging live, following the Idols and posting all the photos I can find, of the Idols and the non-Idols.

Editor’s Note: This interview is copyrighted. Feel free to link to it. Feel free to use a snippet of it and link to it. Do not rip off the entire interview. The photos are used with the permission of the artist for this blog and this blog alone.