Blake Lewis - Audio Day Dream (2007)

Audio Day Dream by Blake Lewis

Biography
Blake Colin Lewis (born July 21, 1981) is an American singer-songwriter and beatboxer who was the runner-up to Jordin Sparks on the sixth season of American Idol.
Lewis was born in Redmond, Washington to Dallas and Dinah Lewis. Dinah is a former rocker who still sings and plays guitar. He is an only child and is of Welsh, German and Irish descent. He attended Kenmore Junior High and later Inglemoor High School in Kenmore, Washington.

In high school, Lewis participated in many high school state competitions. He also took part in numerous musicals, as well as comedy and rap videos with his friends. In many of these videos, for instance, “The Chuck Norris Rap“, “The Harry Potter Rap” and “The Snakes On a Plane Rap“, he portrayed his alter ego, Jimmie Walker Blue, the character he introduced during the semi-final round of American Idol.

Lewis started beatboxing at seventeen. He picked up this talent purely by ear, listening to CDs of beatboxing, after he was inspired by Matthew Selby, a former member of the Los Angeles-based a cappella group M-Pact, of which fellow American Idol semi-finalist Rudy Cárdenas was a member.

Aside from singing and beatboxing, Lewis plays the guitar, keyboard, drums and has written many songs such as “She Loves the Way“, “Emotional Waterfalls“, “Dumpty Humpty” and “Jealousy“. He describes himself as an improv musician and often uses devices such as loop pedals and the Kaoss Pad to layer beatboxing, instruments, vocals and effects to create a song live on stage.

Being a member of the a cappella group KickShaw for four years after graduating from high school in 1998, Lewis worked with the group on a 10-track album titled Put It In the Microphone but he quit the group in 2002 to become a solo musician going by the stage name Bshorty, which was basically inspired by the nicknames of the members of 311 and “aggressive inline-skate videos during the 1990s”, “doing drum and bass shows, and conscious hip hop shows, singer-songwriter stuff, and electronica and hip hop”.

He made connections with various musicians by performing regularly in many venues in Seattle such as Nectar Lounge in Fremont, SeaMonster Lounge, Lo-Fi Performance Gallery, Jet Deck in Everett (now in Mill Creek) and hosted shows like The Digital Lounge shows at ToST. Before Idol, he was working on a solo album with a number of tracks finished.

Though he initially found American Idol unappealing, Lewis auditioned for it in Seattle with “Crazy” by Seal and an off-screen rendition of “Sunday Morning” by Maroon 5. Introducing himself as the local beatboxing champion in the audition, Lewis beatboxed along with his teammates, including Chris Sligh, Rudy Cárdenas and Tom Lowe, to “How Deep Is Your Love” by Bee Gees in the Hollywood’s Week. The memorable performance received a standing ovation from the audience and Paula Abdul, who commented “that brought down the house”. In an early episode of the United Kingdom edition of American Idol, Lewis recalled his first solo performance in the Hollywood’s Week was “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone” by The Temptations. When later he sang it in front of the other finalists, Phil Stacey felt that it was the best performance he has seen from Lewis.

Lewis ended up the last male contestant standing; the judges had predicted Lewis’ “front runner” status early in the competition. Cowell further confirmed that Lewis was the front runner of male contestants on American Idol. Lewis, upon entering the top 2 on May 16, 2007, he thus became the first ever contestant from the Northwestern United States (specifically, Washington) to compete in the finale.

After the finale of Idol, Blake Lewis has made several appearances on television shows. He performed Maroon 5’s “She Will Be Loved” on The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet (combined with a snippet of U2’s “With or Without You”), The Today Show, Live with Regis and Kelly and The Early Show. In the episode of The View on June 14, 2007, he sang “Somewhere Only We Know” by Keane. Lewis had also appeared on Total Request Live, The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet with the winner of Idol, Jordin Sparks and Larry King Live with contestants who made into the top ten of American Idol. On July 4, 2007, Lewis performed “God Bless America” and “America the Beautiful” on Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular with Sparks and Melinda Doolittle.

Upon his record deal with Arista Records/19 Recordings which was announced officially on August 24, 2007, A.D.D. (Audio Day Dream), Lewis’s “electro-funk-soul-pop” first studio album, was released on December 4, 2007. In fact, the singer has been recording his album in the studio “for all night long” since June 18. “Break Anotha“, the first single from A.D.D., was released to radio on October 30, 2007 and on iTunes Music Store on November 13.

Break Anotha

Audio Day Dream album tracklists are:

01
Silence Is Golden… (Intro)
02
Break Anotha
03
Gots To Get Her (Inspired by “Puttin’ On The Ritz”)
04
Know My Name
05
How Many Words
06
Surrender
07
Hate 2 Love Her
08
Without You
09
Here’s My Hello
10
What’cha Got 2 Lose?
11
She’s Makin’ Me Lose It
12
Bshorty Grabs Mic!
13
End Of The World
14
1000 Miles
15
I Got U
16
..I Choose Noise (Outro)

Buy the CD album Audio Day Dream

Full Mp3 Downloads Audio Day Dream

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Alternative, Beat Box, Hip-hop, Pop, Rap. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.