Interview from Idol Chatter!

David Archuleta takes My Kind of Christmas nationwide

"I love Christmas music more than anything else," says David Archuleta. "That's why I'm doing the Christmas tour again."

The former American Idol singer, who'll turn 21 three days after Christmas, kicks off his My Kind of Christmas Tour Thursday in Westbury, N.Y. The 13-date tour also will take David to Pennsylvania, Idaho, Utah and California before wrapping up Dec. 21 in Beaver Creek, Colo.

"My favorite tour I've done so far was the last Christmas tour I did," David says. "On that tour, I kept one side of the show pop songs, and then the other side was Christmas music, but I wanted to keep it sacred and reverent. This time, I want to have a little more fun."

The tour got its name from a fan's suggestion, playing off My Kind of Perfect, a track from David's album The Other Side of Down. But once David had the name, he and a friend decided to write a new song using the title, and he'll be singing My Kind of Christmas at the shows.

"It was just spur of the moment, but I ended up really liking how it turned out, explaining what Christmas means to me," he says. "What is my kind of Christmas? That's what we describe. It'll be exciting to share an original Christmas song with the fans."

David released a holiday album, Christmas From the Heart, in 2009. This year, he's a featured performer on the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's Glad Christmas Tidings. That album, recorded live last year at Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah, showcases David on six songs, including Joy to the World, Silent Night and Angels From the Realms of Glory.

"I feel like Christmas songs are already epic," he says, "and to be able to have a full choir and orchestra back you up makes it even more epic. You just feel like there's this amazing field of energy up there.

"Everyone puts a lot into that performance. Sometimes people go, 'That Mormon Tabernacle Choir, they're always so smile-y and stuff.' I guess that's because they're loving what they're doing. That's what makes them so magical when they perform."

In addition to the well-known carols he sings on the album, David performs three songs that won't be familiar to many listeners. Gesú Bambino, for instance, is a Christmas song published in 1917 by Italian-born Pietro Yon, who eventually became organist at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. "It's a very classical song," David says. "I was actually wondering if I could pull it off. To be honest, I'd never done anything like this."

The Cat and the Mouse Carol, written by British singer-songwriter Ted Hutchinson, will be new to most American listeners, though it's more popular in England and Australia. "We wanted to find a song that we could introduce to everyone, a song that no one really knew but that had a nice, personable story" David says. "It's a very innocent story that's almost like a child's Christmas story."

David makes a nod to his ancestry with Los pastores a belén, a traditional Spanish carol. "The whole theme of the concert was 'heritage,'" he says. "I wanted to bring my pioneer heritage into it. I actually do have pioneer ancestry on my dad's side, but my mom, she's Central American. So I wanted to bring that into it, too."

Glad Christmas Tidings is already available on CD, DVD and Blu-Ray. A PBS special of the concert premieres Dec. 13.

David hopes to find some time in early 2012 for songwriting and, perhaps, acting classes. "There might be some fun little projects to try out that I might want to get ready for," he says. "Other than that, I think I'm going to try and take it easy and take some time to myself, too."

Having been released from his contract with Jive Records earlier this year, David's seriously considering releasing his next album on his own -- and it might not even bee a full album.

"I've been thinking about trying something like having singles come out one at a time over a period of time," he says. "It's a different process, and you're more free that way. The way things are working nowadays, I think that'd be better to try out.

"Of course, with a record label, you have more of a platform in one way. At the same time, you're more tied down. Even though it's hard to find the organization you'd normally find with a label situation, I feel like I want to try it in a different way than a label normally would have me do it."

USA Today