American Idols

David Cook is in the curious position of having gained a loyal fan base while singing other people’s music. The trick is whether those fans stay when they hear his own.

Judging from the reaction of the crowd at the pbpulse.com Stage on Saturday night at SunFest, the trick seems mostly to have worked for the 2008 American Idol winner.

There was an initial stretch of solid but same-sounding power ballads from his self-titled debut that sent some of the curious up the street to groove in the massive crowd watching UB40.

But Cook and his band, including guys he’s played with since before Idol, kept that mid-tempo rock raging, as much as mid-tempo rock, indeed, can rage.

That’s why the dead-sexy inappropriateness of his cover of Van Halen’s Hot for Teacher was so effective.

“Thought you had us pegged, didn’t ya?” he said.

Mostly, he seemed to be the same guy who got all those viewers to vote for him – salt-of-the-earth dude from Missouri with soulful eyes and voice that can both hold a beautiful note and shred it mercilessly when he needs to.

And he just seems nice – he gave a shout-out to the princess of Brunei, “who flew all the way to be here” and made the crowd cheer. (Hello! Random!)

And he flirted with the crowd between songs such as Avalanche, Life on the Moon and Declaration, telling one side that he felt close to them, and the other that “there’s a distance” that he wanted to work on. Cute!

“You all gave me a job that pays a hell of a lot more than bartending, I’ll tell you that,” he said, referencing all those Idol voters.

Elsewhere at SunFest:

UB40, featuring new singer Duncan Campbell (brother of former singer Ali and existing member Robin), also has a lot of songs that have that low-key, reggae-pop groove.

But if you like Here I Am and Red Red Wine, you’d like it. The gazillion people shoved in to see them sure did.