American Idol Constantine Loves Life on the Road

By the time the "American Idols" Live Tour 2005 takes over the Onondaga County War Memorial with its nine (down from 10, but more on that later) TV stars and what's sure to be a flock of shrieking fans, the singers will have been on the road together just shy of two months.

The tour that started July 12 in Sunrise, Fla., ends right here in Syracuse.

According to Constantine Maroulis, the final 10 from the 2005 version of Fox's popular TV show still feel like a big family.

"I'm loving it. I love being on the road," Maroulis says during a phone interview on Aug. 24, when the show was in Portland, Ore. "I dig it. The whole lifestyle, I love it."

Maroulis indeed sounds like he's having a blast, even after he was handed the phone by a tour publicist and the duty is to talk to a reporter he has never met.

He doesn't sound rushed, even though the publicist has set a time frame of five to 10 minutes for the interview.

And he doesn't sound frazzled about the absence of the 2005 runner-up, Bo Bice, who had to leave the tour less than a week earlier for what Bice's Web site reported as emergency intestinal surgery.

Maybe that's because he doesn't have to talk about Bice, the long-haired singer (just like Maroulis) who constantly was grouped with Maroulis during the show's run in a duo that was called "the rockers."

The publicist set that limit, too, requesting the reporter not to ask about Bice. She says about the situation: "We're taking it day by day. Our hopes and prayers are with him. Everybody on the tour wants him to get back to full health as soon as possible." A few days later, reports came out that Bice would miss the rest of the tour.

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