Twist of Fate

"Is there any more buns?" he asks a crew member on a recent Friday afternoon, eating dinner while simultaneously talking about his rise from "American Idol" casualty to a chart-topping singer-songwriter with a multiplatinum surname.

Through it all, he sounds a little weary, like a man whose lungs still burn from his long hike to fame.

"Be careful what you wish for," Daughtry sings on his hit power ballad "Home," " ‘Cause you just might get it all," and his words have taken on a real-life dimension that Daughtry only could have imagined when penning the song for his self-titled debut last summer.

"It’s been very, very hectic," Daughtry says between bites of food. "It wasn’t like this was a surprise. I knew what to expect. When you’re on (‘American Idol’), it’s kind of the same thing, and it just kind of escalated from there when the record came out. This has been going on for over a year now. But no matter how much you get used to it, sometimes you miss being normal."

Being normal, that’s a simple enough aim, and to that end, Daughtry gets by on an earthy, down-home appeal. He speaks in an unassuming North Carolina drawl and occasionally downplays his abilities, like an athlete who doesn’t really know why he can run faster than everybody else.

"I was one of those singers who would kind of sing along to the radio, and I thought I was OK, I could mimic, but I thought that was something that everybody could do," Daughtry says of discovering his voice when he was a teen. "And then one time I sang in front of a buddy of mine, we were just goofing off and he had his guitar, and he looked at me like, ‘Dude, why the hell aren’t you doing this?’ I didn’t think it was anything special."

Daughtry’s voice is big, booming and well-steeped in radio rock convention. He sings with a touch of grit that never becomes too threatening, and has the fashionably rugged air of a metrosexual lumberjack.

On the surface, Daughtry doesn’t seem like a natural fit for something as shiny and pop oriented as "American Idol," where working musicians are still something of a novelty.

"The thing is, I was playing in bars ever since I was 16, and nobody gave me the time of day," Daughtry says of what drew him to the show. "So I figured, ‘Why not go on that, get my face out there, and if they like it, great; if they don’t, at least they saw who I was and somebody might like it.’ And then it just kind of took on a life of its own and it became OK."

That’s putting it mildly, especially from a dude whose tunes seldom are prone to understatement. Daughtry favors supersized choruses and a never-ending series of crescendos in his repertoire, and he stretches his vowels like they were made of rubber.

"Can we make this something goooooood," he howls on "It’s Not Over," the opener to "Daughtry." " ‘Cause it’s all misunderstoooood."

He mostly testifies to the edifying powers of a lover’s embrace or the benefits of living in the moment, ready-made topics for a ready-made audience.

"I don’t now if I’m doing anything any different," Daughtry says. "I just wanted to focus on stuff that rocked, had some big guitar in it, but also focus on the melody, something that anybody could sing along to, no matter if they’re a rock fan or a pop fan. I think that’s missing in a lot of music, the good hooks that draw people in and make them feel."

As his words suggest, Daughtry’s quick to recognize his own orthodoxy, and rightfully so: His tunes are cut from a familiar cloth, the modern rock equivalent of comfort food. His debut is reassuring, not revolutionary, and so is Daughtry’s back story: Should anyone struggle to believe this guy’s luck, well, they’re not alone.

"Being a successful musician is kind of like winning the lottery. I didn’t know if I was going to be that lucky one," Daughtry says. "It was one of those things where I was 16 years old and I was like, ‘Well, maybe I should try doing this,’ " he adds with a sleepy sigh. "And then one thing just led to another."