On December 16, 2012, Clay Aiken was performing at the Northern Lights Theater at Potowatomi Bingo Casino in the Milwaukee area.  As part of his Joyful Noise Tour, it was reported that the theater was sold out.

During the successful tour, Clay was getting lots of publicity for his beautiful concerts.  In the Milwaukee area, the Journal Sentinel website has a section called Tap – Tuned In –  The latest news and views about music in Milwaukee and beyond. Three days before the concert, Piet Levy wrote an excellent article about Clay and the tour.  The article was posted on the Tap – Tuned In website.  It is a few years old, but still fun to read.

Clay Aiken’s three favorite Christmas Songs

Besides his appearances on “American Idol” and “Celebrity Apprentice,” (on both of which he famously, and unjustly, came in second place), Clay Aiken has earned a reputation in recent years as a musical Mr. Christmas, thanks to the success of 2004 album “Merry Christmas With Love,” (the fastest-selling Christmas album documented by Nielsen SoundScan), and by performing old holiday standards on several different tours across the country.

“I say sometimes to people that I was born about two decades too late for my musical style,” Aiken told me in a recent phone interview. “Christmas music is timeless…and my voice fits the older-sounding, crooner-type stuff.”

This year’s holiday tour comes to the Northern Lights Theater at Potawatomi Bingo Casino Dec. 16 (local Claymates have already snatched up all the tickets). As he’s done in the past, an orchestra of Milwaukee musicians will provide Aiken with musical backing, and a handful of real-life holiday stories will be shared, including a couple that happened to and will be read by locals.

And of course, there’ll be a lot of Christmas songs. We asked Aiken to name his favorites, and while he says they typically “change from minute to minute and day to day,” he said there were three he loves to perform the most.

1. “Don’t Save it All for Christmas Day” – “I do it at the end of the show every night. The message is so valuable and important. We’re so friendly around the holidays, we get shoes for homeless people and are nicer usually, and then January comes around and we forget about that stuff. That song is about not letting that happen.”

2. “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” — “We change some of the chords and we do a different version of it. I never loved it as a kid, but the producer that did the song for me in ’06, the arrangement of it is spectacular, and I love it for that reason.”

3. “The First Noel” — “It’s the first Christmas song I recorded, for the ‘American Idol’ Christmas album. Again, the producer did a really great job of it. Especially on this tour with the orchestra, its got this really triumphant and incredible brass choir that happens at the end. The brass section just blows the roof off. I love the sound.”

Clay Aiken performs at 8 p.m. Sunday at the Northern Lights Theater, Potawatomi Bingo Casino, 1721 W. Canal St. 

It is nice to see an article that includes a beautiful picture and three videos.  Thank you to Piet Levy.

Did you attend a Joyful Noise 2012 concert?  If so…where?