Months ago, the SCCA released its lineup for this year’s performances.

There were a couple of highlights from the list, but my interest was immediately piqued when I saw that Bo Bice was coming to Suffolk.

For all of you that are not avid American Idol fans, here’s a recap: Bice came to the show during Season 4 and made it all the way to the finals. He lost to Carrie Underwood.

That’s sort of like playing a round of golf with Tiger Woods when both of you were in high school, and only losing by a couple of strokes.

Underwood has gone on to be the best-selling artist to come from American Idol, with sold-out concerts, endorsement deals and pretty much every music award under the sun.

Anyway, the cool thing about Bice is he was older, and he had this whole rocker thing going for him. All the other performers in the show had been good singers, but they all had the same sort of persona.

And then, along came Bice, who hails from Huntsville, Ala., with his long hair, his Lynyrd Skynyrd influence and “Let’s just rock-n-roll” attitude.

He was simply more fun to watch.

I’m not really an Idol junkie (I watch the first two weeks, when people are terrible, and the last two weeks, when people are good), but even I would tune in to watch Bice.

Needless to say, when it came to who would do the preview for the Bice concert at the SCCA, I was all about it.

In fact, I had to guilt Tracy Agnew into letting me do it.

Sometimes when you do previews, you can talk to the artists. Other times, if the artists are traveling or if they think they’re too cool, you have to just compile information for a general bio.

Thankfully, Bo was the former and not the latter.

He called in from his tour stop in South Carolina, and we chatted about his tour, his new music and how he just flew in from Iraq days before, after spending a couple of weeks entertaining the troops.

He was really nice, humble and excited to come to Suffolk to play.

There was no ego, no superiority complex.

I’ve talked to high school students who think they’re bigger stars than Bice – and that’s just because they beat out two other kids to win some pageant in Nowhere, Va.

It was cool to talk to someone who lived up to the expectations I had for him, and kudos to the SCCA for booking him.

Now, if we can get Faith Hill next, I’m all set.