'American Idol's' Clay Aiken, Ruben Studdard reunite for Patchogue show

Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken, who finished first and second, respectively, on season 2 of the singing competition "American Idol" in 2003, bring their 20th-anniversary tour, "Ruben & Clay: Twenty," to the Patchogue Theatre for the Performing Arts Thursday at 8 p.m.

"I haven’t been on tour on the road performing in 11 years now," Aiken, 44, told Newsday TV's Elisa DiStefano. "I semiretired after 2012 and only twice I’ve performed" since then, he said. "Ruben and I did a show on Broadway in 2018" — the cheekily titled "Ruben & Clay's First Annual Christmas Carol Family Fun Pageant Spectacular Reunion Show" aka "Ruben & Clay's Christmas Show" — "and now he’s the only person who seems to be able to get me back onstage! When we discovered or realized it’s been 20 years [since "American Idol"], it made sense to celebrate that."

In the Patchogue concert, he said, "We will both be doing stuff people expect to hear from us" — including his million-selling 2003 cover of Simon & Garfunkel's 1970 hit "Bridge Over Troubled Water," and Studdard's 2003 certified-gold single, "Flying Without Wings" — "but also some of the songs we sang on the show." As well, they will "talk about how we choose those songs, talk about the process. People are going to transported back to 2003 in a whole lot of ways," he said. "We are excited to make it feel like that nostalgic element."

He and Studdard, also 44, "stay in touch and [have] stayed close to everyone over these past 20 years," Aiken said of their fellow "American Idol" alumni. "We have a chat thread that we all chime into every once in a while. It's probably a bit like a class reunion. It was an incredible learning experience, that's for sure," he said. "At the time we did it, only 10 other people in history had ever been an 'American Idol' finalist, so it was all very fresh and exciting for us, and exciting to relive it."