For over a decade, America has watched contestants flock to auditions for American Idol in cities all over the country. Now, the American Idol Small Town Audition Bus Tour is coming to Bowling Green. 

Auditions for the show will be from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Friday at Fountain Square Park. Two American Idol producers will be serving as the judges for this round of auditions.

Anyone who shows up during that time period will get an audition, as long as they are within the age requirement, 15- 28 years old, according to American Idol.  Minors have to be accompanied by a guardian.

Contestants will register when they arrive and all information that contestants will need to know regarding what to do and what to bring can be found on americanidol.com.

Bowling Green is just one stop on the bus tour, which goes to ten small towns across the country.

The show has already done the initial round of auditions throughout the country in the larger cities that they typically do, but for this tour they have chosen smaller towns that they haven’t gone to before.  This will give people who can’t get to the larger cities the chance to try out, according to American Idol.

Kim Lancaster, executive assistant/public information officer for the city of Bowling Green, said she was contacted by a producer of American Idol about three weeks ago.

The producer told Lancaster that the show was going to be visiting ten smaller towns on a tour bus and that they would like to come to Bowling Green, Lancaster said.

Lancaster also said that the producer wanted help finding a location and getting the details together so that the show could come to Bowling Green.

“Well, I mean, we’ve definitely gotten calls from other national things before and they don’t always pan out or they’re not always as appealing as maybe they seemed in the beginning so definitely, you know, we wanted to talk to them further and make sure we understood what they were wanting to do,” Lancaster said. “But as soon as we realized you know, what this tour was all about, we were obviously extremely excited to host them and very, very happy that they had chosen Bowling Green as one of their ten locations.”

The producers had to fill out paperwork and pay fees because they couldn’t have an event of this scale at one of the city’s parks without giving prior notice and getting it approved. Lancaster said she thinks they called her because they want cooperation from the cities they visit. 

“If they’re not welcome, I’m sure they would not visit a city,” Lancaster said.

Lancaster said she doesn’t think it will just be local people who audition for American Idol.

“I think we’ll have a fair amount of people from Bowling Green that try out, but I think we will definitely pull from Louisville, Lexington and Nashville as well,” Lancaster said.

“I’ve already gotten a call from a couple folks from the Louisville area who are planning on making the journey down…so I know that we’re going to draw from surrounding cities and surrounding counties, I’m just not sure how much,” she said.

The people who make it through to the next round will go on to perform for the American Idol judges at a later date.