"And then what?" Dimiceli wants to know.
"Then they put you in front of a camera and they give you a list of songs," Murphy replies.
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"What if you don't know any of the songs?" Dimiceli asks. Her religious parents allowed no rock and roll in the house, so she's worried she won't know any of the tunes.
"Well, if you've been around music for a while, you're gonna know one of those songs," Murphy says, a tad condescendingly.
"And you have to sing one of those songs?" Dimiceli is clearly scared.
"Yeah," Murphy says. "But they give you a few hours to learn 'em."
"And that's the same day?" Dimiceli again.
"That's the second round," Murphy clarifies. "The second round's the same day."
"But it's not Simon and Paula and all them, right?" Dimiceli has visions of getting in front of cruel Simon and not knowing a word of any of the approved tunes.
"That's the last round, after you go through all these auditions," Murphy says. He hadn't made it to Callow, Jackson and Abdul on his first try.
"So if you get a callback, then you go? So after the second round, they're like, 'All right, we'll let you know?'"
And so on. Murphy thinks he has an advantage this time, that he has honed his act to a razor's edge after not getting through last time. "They don't want a lot of like oh-oooh-whooaa-ooooh," he says, half-heartedly attempting to recreate a Mariah-Whitney style of melismatic, oversouled singing.
"Everybody on the video tape I made last night sounded like that," a smiling Rasinger says, clearly comforted by the notion that all of them are likely doomed.
"They don't want you to wail," Murphy says. "They want you to sing it straight through."
"They want to see your voice as it is so they can see if they can adjust it," Dimiceli opines, though she states it as fact.
"That's kind of why I thought I would have an advantage if I came back…" Murphy says before Dimiceli cuts him off yet again.
"That's good because that's how I am. I don't know all that wahhh-ahha-oooh stuff," she says.
"…I thought that at least I would know a little more and I would be a little more prepared to--" Murphy continues. This time Rasinger interrupts his musings.
"Yeah, they want to hear a song, so that's all I'm gonna do," she says. "Sing a song."
Later, Murphy abandons his attempts at enlightening his fellow competitors. He punches up some numbers on his cell. "Hey, Jason," he says into the mouthpiece. "I got you a girl right here," he says, indicating Rasinger. "She's gonna sing for you, someone from Texas! With a Southern twang! She's gonna say something real twangy, and then she's gonna sing for you!"
Rasinger laughs. "A twang? Want me to say, 'Howdy, y'all'?" she asks the table.
Murphy hands her the phone. "Hi, y'all," she says. "Does that sound Texas? 'Cause it is."
Outside the bar, it starts to rain again. The kids in the tent city are getting all wet again. Twenty-four hours to go.
