Jon Peter Lewis, Our Own ‘Idol’ Finalist, Gives Us the Details on His New Album
By Shellie Branco, The Bakersfield Californian
Jul. 16–When the “American Idol” machine spits you out, at least you’ve learned a bit about marketing.
Jon Peter Lewis, 2004 “Idol” finalist and former Taft resident, originally wrote “Song for Christopher Columbus” as a joke.
“I already did a Christmas song, I gotta find another holiday,” he kids.
Then it evolved into something introspective, a lament about innocence lost. His gentler Columbus regrets the part he played in the destruction of the New World: “Sometimes I wish I’d never found, found out the world was round.” It’s a hit at shows.
Lewis is an easygoing guy and certainly wouldn’t want the heavy subject matter to spoil your Columbus Day hijinks. He’d wreck pinatas of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria with glee.
The single is available with pre-orders of his pensive sophomore album, “Break the Silence,” in stores Tuesday.
Lewis, baptized JPL by fans, graduated from Taft Union High School and lives in Los Angeles. His parents are still in Bakersfield. He’s not sure when he’ll return for a local show, but he looks forward to it.
He recently wrapped up a series of shows at The Rrazz Room in San Francisco with fellow “Idol” alums, including Anwar Robinson, LaKisha Jones, Gina Glocksen, Constantine Maroulis and others.
Lewis spent the years following “Idol” working on his songwriting. Many of the tracks on his latest effort, which follows the 2006 “Stories From Hollywood,” are based on relationship drama. “Tonight” recalls a peculiar post-break-up glow.
“We ended up spending some time together after that fact and it was a really beautiful moment,” he says. “I didn’t care about the past. I don’t know anything about the future, but right now it’s a beautiful moment.”
“Columbus” evokes the turning point when he realized his childhood was over.
“I remember in that moment realizing that people do such terrible things to each other every day,” he says. “I remember having that moment, thinking, ‘Man, sometimes I wish I didn’t know anything’ and I was just kinda like ignorance is bliss.”
The following is more from our phone chat with Lewis.
Did you worry you’d lose your younger fan base as they grew up and “Idol” moved on?
I don’t think I was very focused on whether I was gonna be losing fans when coming out of the show. I was focused on making music and writing songs more than anything else. I knew that I needed to capitalize on some things, but I didn’t have a strong sense of whether my fan base was fickle or not.
I still get a lot of those girls who then were 14. They’re now like 18, 19 and I play a lot of colleges now and a lot of them are like, ‘Oh, my gosh, you’re my favorite on the show and I cried when you left!’ I get that a lot. (Laughs) And it’s interesting, but so it’s kinda like a lot of those little girls are a lot more grown up now. It gives me a bit more freedom to do music that isn’t necessarily the Jonas Brothers.
How did you educate yourself in songwriting?
I first started just writing. I’d listen to The Beatles and I’d listen to a lot of my favorite artists when I started writing. I think they just wrote really fun and clever songs and their songs spoke to me. I guess that’s always inspired me to write, listening to a great song. I feel connected somehow to something bigger than myself. That inspires me to want to write as well. … I started to work with a lot of different songwriters and I learned a lot along the way through trial and error.
Why did you cover Bob Dylan’s “Make You Feel My Love”?
I did a lot of growing up in Cheyenne, Wyo. My dad was in the military, so I was living in Cheyenne before living in Taft. Basically, I was surrounded by a lot of country music and jam band music. There’s a lot of that out in Cheyenne and I was definitely connected with the country side back then.
I was really a huge Garth Brooks fan. I remember I used to listen to it over and over again and I would imagine myself singing it all the time when I was younger. When (producer) Don Grierson brought that to my attention, that song, he said, “Well, what do you think of that song?” I immediately said I love that song. I had become familiar with the Bob Dylan version, also, but I had always been a fan of that song.
You have a contest where you’re going to write a song for a fan.
We’ll wait and see what comes to me. When I get the name … I’m not sure yet. I’m not exactly sure how I’m gonna do that. I don’t want to plan too much in advance on how that’s gonna happen. If the name is a good name to be in a song, then it might end up in the song. It might just be something for that person. It might be a song written in honor of that person or dedicated to that person.
It would be unfortunate if you got a Helga.
It could be Anglo-Saxon. We could throw in a little accordion and we could make it a beer-drinking song.
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