David Cook talks ‘Extreme Makover,’ second album

David Cook actually had a connection to the Indiana family he helped in the episode of ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition that airs Sunday (8 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CT) on ABC.

“I have family in a town very close to Bunker Hill, and they had brought the family to one of my shows, I got a chance to see them, and Kori [Brown] kind of gave me the meat and potatoes version of her story, and I was really moved by it,” David tells Amrie Cunningham for her My Take on TV blog. “We tried to work something out to get involved. Lo and behold, Extreme Makeover comes into play, and they reached out to us. They somehow found out about the connection and asked if I wanted to be involved. I really jumped at the chance.”

David also talks with Amrie about writing songs for his next album.

“Right now, I’m actually in Vancouver, and I’m writing with Brian Howes,” David says. “Brian was one of the co-writers on my first single Light On. I’ve been really excited with what we’ve come up with. I’ve gotten write with Sam and Sluggo again; we wrote Breathe Tonight together. I’m writing with Gregg Wattenberg again, and Johnny Rzeznick. It’s great. Kind of getting back into a different pocket, just trying to write from an honest perspective.”

David says he’s not to the point of choosing a producer for his next album, but “if somebody called tomorrow, and said Brian Eno wants to [produce] your record, I’d be like, yeah, okay!”

David Cook’s Birthday Gift? An Ice Cream Cake!

Talk about a sweet surprise!

David Cook was home in Kansas City, Mo., to sing the National Anthem at the Kansas City Chiefs game on Dec. 20 – his 27th birthday. But he didn’t just celebrate with a football game! Instead, his family and friends surprised the rocker in his suite at the stadium, singing “Happy Birthday” and delivering a Cold Stone Creamery ice cream cake in his favorite flavor – chocolate chip cookie dough.

“My 27th birthday was a great excuse to get a bunch of friends and family together,” Cook tells PEOPLE. “The Kansas City Chiefs organization was more than accommodating, and were kind enough to have Cold Stone Creamery make a chocolate chip cookie dough cake for me.”

“We were thrilled to be a part of David Cook’s birthday,” Suzanne Schutz, vice president of marketing for Cold Stone Creamery tells PEOPLE, adding that other celebs like Eva Longoria Parker, Kelly Rutherford and recent Dancing with the Stars contestant Mya have recently enjoyed their frozen cakes for their birthday. (Mya actually had one brought to the DWTS set and delivered to her private party later that night!)

**Credits to angelangiekc @ YouTube for the vid**

Also, on that note … HAPPY belated BIRTHDAY to you David!!

**Credits to jilllisar @ YouTube for the video clip**

He was the nonchalant champ, Mr. Laid-Back Goes to Hollywood. In front of 30-million-plus rabid viewers, David Cook Fonzied his way into winning the seventh season of American Idol. Oh, this Midwestern rocker was cool, cat-burglar cool.

But would post-Paula fame get to his curiously coiffed head, rattle his 26-year-old cage? At a Friday gig at the Mahaffey Theater, 1,300 fans, many of them those irascible Cougars for Cook, would say that their man remains the calm, charming customer he’s always been.

Actually, they’d scream it.

And then they’d shimmy like there’s no tomorrow. They’re swell at shimmying.

For 80 surprisingly raw, rocking minutes, neo-grunger Cook and his four-piece outfit cranked out swarthy chunks of the singer-songwriter’s 2008 platinum album. The live stuff turned out to be grittier and angrier than his way-too-safe studio songs, not to mention anything by fellow alum Chris Daughtry, who now seems lost in his generic rock sound.

In fact, Cook might be the closest thing to a metal-head that the Fox hit has ever produced. During a break between songs, his band even unleashed a Slayeresque death riff — and it sounded really darn good.

From the opening one-two punch of Heroes and Mr. Sensitive, Cook and his mates were intent on scraping off the pop lacquer from his hits. For midtempo ballad I Did It for You, his normally husky vocal bordered on a growl; it hinted that Cook, as he gets away from his Idol days, could be more Foo Fighter than pop star.

As well as being one of Idol’s more defiant winners, he’s also one of the most likable. He has a chatty way with an adoring crowd, ambling on and cracking wise as if you were shooting pool with the dude. At one point, he improv-ed a snippet of Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On. (“Not even on the set list!” he mock-bragged.) And he had a warm, crowd-juicing moment with friend Charley Belcher and the WTVT-Ch. 13 star’s lovely daughter, Lindsey Rose.

Cook is too smooth, too independent to lamely reproduce his Idol moments. At the same time, he knows he has a hot rep for re-imagining pop hits. So with cheeky verve, but an earnest energy, he uncorked a couple of offbeat ’80s doozies: Cutting Crew’s (I Just) Died in Your Arms and Johnny Hates Jazz’s Shattered Dreams. He basically took a sledgehammer to those pesky one-hitters, but you know what? They were better for the beat-down.

Oh, and one more thing: Kudos to the Mahaffey for mussing up its hair and bringing in Cook. The regal opera-style hall actually makes for a fine rock venue. Keep bringing the noise, kids.

A few words with the accidental ‘Idol’

For American Idol fans, all-American boy Kris Allen’s recent surprise victory over the dynamic and flamboyant Adam Lambert likely still burns fresh in their memories. But the year before provided almost as much drama, with gruff-voiced rocker David Cook beating out the angelic David Archuleta in the Season 7 finals.

Cook proved to be the “stealth Idol”: Sure, he never ended up in the Bottom 3, but who predicted he would actually win? Since his victory, Cook has flourished, with his self-titled debut album opening at No. 3 on the Billboard charts and ending up a platinum-seller.

He talked to The Miami Herald about his first solo tour, “Declaration,” which hits the Don Taft University Center at Nova Southeastern University Sunday night.

Q: How’s life post-Idol?

A: Good, man, they’ve kept me busy. And I’ve really enjoyed being on the road — to be on the road this long is really a testament to a lot of people’s belief in the record and belief in the tour, which is really cool to see.

Q: What can we expect from your show? Any surprises?

A: Well, lately, we’ve been trying to unveil a new song here and a new song there. We’ve done covers — we actually last night just played a cover song by an ’80s band, Johnny Hates Jazz, a song called Shattered Dreams. So we try to have fun.

Q: Is this your first time in Miami?

A: I think so — we started the tour in Tallahassee, but I don’t think we ever made it down to Miami. I’ve never visited myself, so this is gonna be completely new to me.

Q: Is it true that you never planned to audition for American Idol?

A: Yeah, I’d actually gone to Omaha for my little brother — he was auditioning and I went as kind of moral support. I was living in Tulsa, putting together a record there, and then my family and one of the producers on the show talked me into it while I was in line.

Q: The selection of songs you sang was really diverse, from Bryan Adams to Dolly Parton to Lionel Richie to the Beatles to Roberta Flack. Is your musical taste as diverse as that?

A: I try to be, yeah. I like a little bit of everything. I probably come off as a bit of a music snob at times because I don’t really like a whole lot of music, but I like a little bit of almost every kind of genre.

Q: From Season 7, with whom out of your Top 10 are you still the closest?

A: Oh, wow — there’s actually a lot of them. I was fortunate enough to play with them in Los Angeles a couple months ago, and almost everybody from the Top 10 came to the show, so I got to see Brooke [White] and Syesha [Mercado] and Ramiele [Malubay] and Mike [Johns] and Carly [Smithson]. I got a great relationship with all of them, so it’s hard to say.

Q: What are some of your biggest highlights post-Idol?

A: Getting to play in the Philippines with Archie [Idol runner-up David Archuleta] in front of 115,000 people, which is pretty incredible. And then last night was a huge milestone, the one-year anniversary of the record release. We played at Hammond, Ind., and got to play our record from start to finish, which was a lot of fun.

Q: Did you watch Idol last year?

A: I watched it as much as I could — being on the road is kinda tough, but I got to see a little bit.

Q: Does fame seem overwhelming sometimes to you?

A: Yeah, I think only because it happened real quick, you know? It’s hard to wrap your head around. But I’m lucky — I’ve got a great band around me, I’ve got great friends and family, and the crew’s fantastic, and they all kind of help me process it.

‘American Idol’ David Cook is one cool, calm singer-songwriter-guitarist

By Sean Daly, Times Pop Music Critic

When I first saw David Cook on the seventh season of American Idol — a show he’d wind up winning over Muppet Boy David Archuleta — I thought he looked like a weary door-to-door salesman pushing Hoovers in Boise. I also thought Cook had supremely bad hair, like a reverse mullet or, for that matter, a “skullet.”

Let me tell you: I’ve never been more wrong about a contestant. With a superheroic calm and a growly approach to hits by Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson, the rocker creamed the competition. The singer-songwriter-guitarist did it with old-school style and grace, never once relying on his brother Adam’s brain cancer as a plot point to earn the weepy vote. Ryan Seacrest might have brought it up; Cook never did.

Post-Idol, the 26-year-old has had a smash platinum album (2008′s David Cook, produced by Green Day knob-twiddler Rob Cavallo), hot celeb girlfriends (Idol’s Kimberly Caldwell) and an even hotter nine-month tour. He has also suffered heartache: On May 3, Adam Cook succumbed to brain cancer. David continues to play with an “AC” on his guitar, which are also the initials of his younger brother, Andrew.

As Cook heads to St. Petersburg to play the Mahaffey Theater Friday — and prepares a new album for release in summer 2010 — we called to compliment him on his unerring composure. We also tried to talk him into trashing a hotel room:

You are one cool dude, Cook. In all my Idol watching, I’ve never seen a contestant who was so incredibly laid-back. What was your secret?

I think with everything going on in my life — and with Adam being sick — I just didn’t care. There were more important things going on, you know? That’s no disrespect to the show. I was trying my best, and I enjoyed it, of course. But I just never got too worked up about it.

A.D.D.: As for Ellen DeGeneres’ role on Idol, Cook says, “I’m bummed to see Paula go. But Ellen is a knowledgeable fan of the show, plus she’s funny, so I’ll think she’ll do a good job.”

Okay, you have the cool part down for a rock star. But I think you should start trashing hotel rooms. No one does that anymore. Why is that?

I think people don’t trash hotel rooms because there’s a recession going on. (Laughs) The last hotel room I trashed was actually done by my dog.

A.D.D.: Cook’s dog is a Scottish terrier. Because Cook obviously wants to give him an identity crisis, he named his pooch Dublin.

If you were going to trash a hotel room in the future, how would you start the mayhem?

I’d probably glue the furniture to the ceiling. You gotta get the Gorilla Glue for that. Then maybe I’d have a good ol’-fashioned food fight.

I had you pegged for tossing a TV off the balcony.

Nah, we’re just having some good clean fun, right? We don’t want anyone to get hurt.

If you could claim any musician’s catalog as your own, whose would it be?

(Immediately) Springsteen. That was easy. I saw him a few weeks ago when he was at Giants Stadium. He did Born to Run in its entirety. He played for three hours. And here I am doing an hour, an hour and a half each night, and I come off the stage and say, “Man, I’m tired!”

Your audiences run the gamut from 14-year-old girls to 44-year-old women, the so-called Cougars for Cook. What’s the weirdest gift one of your more mature fans has given you?

An a– grab.

Excuse me?

An a– grab. We played in St. Louis the other night, and while I was walking to the stage, I got three a– grabs in a row.

A.D.D.: Cook said the grabs were pretty forceful, but not enough to bruise his tuchus. “I did have a handprint there though,” he chuckles.

I’ve always wanted to ask you about this. When you were in youth-league baseball, did you really serve up a dinger to future St. Louis Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols?

It’s totally true. Absolutely, I was 16, in Missouri, in an American Legion game. I’m on the mound, I throw him a curveball, and it never comes down.

You should have thrown him your out pitch.

(Laughs) I didn’t have one! That’s the reason I’m in music today. I didn’t have an out pitch.