NKD Mag - Issue #59 (May 2016)

MAY musicians: 04 AJR finding their voices through others

08 JAMIE LAWSON a career that is just getting started

10 PARACHUTE

38 KEVIN GARRETT

a talent for all audiences

42 JUKEBOX THE GHOST building a live audience

46 SHE IS WE finding light in the darkness

wide awake for the rest of the year

social stars:

16 CARDIKNOX

26 LA FEMME COLLECTIVE

on getting their start by women, for and what’s next women

18 THE ROCKET SUMMER

28 LELE PONS

not just your high school throwback

doing it for much more than the vine

24 ELENA COATS the in-demand, singer on-the-rise

publisher: CATHERINE POWELL

editors: ARIELLA MASTROIANNI CATHERINE POWELL

writers: MARY BARNES MERISSA BLITZ TAYLOR DOUGHERTY IAN HAYS STACY MAGALLON NAUREEN NASHID CATHERINE POWELL VANESSA SALLES RYAN SLOAN TANYA TRANER

photography: CATHERINE POWELL

design: CATHERINE POWELL

AJR Words by VANESSA SALLES Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

The next time you’re jamming to your favorite song on the radio, there’s a pretty good chance you can thank AJR for it. The New York-based indie pop band, composed of brothers Adam, Jack, and Ryan Met, have penned some major hits over the last two years; their latest being Andy Grammar’s “Good To Be Alive”. Of course, AJR isn’t new to the music scene. In 2013, their debut single, “I’m Ready,” went multi-platinum and catapulted the trio to the top of everyone’s favorite playlists.

Since then, the AJR brothers have taken a step back from creating their own tunes and have instead been lending their songwriting skills to fellow musicians.

“It’s been two years of us doing a lot of writing for other artists,” Jack said. “We wrote a couple of Andy Grammar singles and have also written with Rachel Platten, American Authors, etc.” Clearly great at what they do, Adam, Jack, and Ryan used their hiatus as an opportunity to get inside the minds of other artists. “It’s actually a really interesting process,” Adam said.

“It’s a lot of research and a lot of listening to everything the artist’s done, on Spotify.

We do this research to know what these artists want to say with their music and, as a result, we’re able to put ourselves in their shoes to figure out what they want to do next.”

Along with research comes stepping out of comfort zones. “Having worked on our music for so long, we really got into the habit of just doing things our own way,” Ryan shared. “But, being able to get into the mind of somebody else like Jason Derulo or American Authors is just really, really cool. It’s opened our minds to the rest of the industry and all the people who work in it. It’s a completely different 04

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process than writing for AJR, which is a much more “homey” feeling for us.” For the trio, writing songs for other artists is all about discovering how they can truly contribute. “We always have to think, ‘what can we do to take it to the next level?

What are we bringing to the table?,’ Jack added. “Obviously, there’s a reason that these artists want to write with us so it’s just about figuring out our value whether that means writing the chorus or writing a verse. We have to stop and think of how to encompass their style and add on to it.”

Although things have worked out great for AJR, being so successful in the songwriting field wasn’t something the brothers were necessarily looking for. “Throughout our years of doing radio shows, we’ve made friends with a lot of awesome artists,” Adam said. “It’s great whenever we get to hang with them and sometimes us hanging out morphed into them wanting to have a writing session with us. It was never really something that we sought but it just became an extension of us and of the band.”

The magic that’s come from co-writing with other artists? Well, besides getting super successful singles out of it, the trio’s discovered the voice they want to share as a band. “Through all the co-writing, we’ve come to realize what AJR’s unique sound really is and what we’ve been wanting to say through melody, production, and lyrics,” Jack said. “The band is what we’ve wanted to do, mainly, for the last 10 years; that’s always been the number one focus.

I feel like, in our minds, the whole time that we’ve been writing for other artists was just about us having a fun thing to do. It was never about making money or making sure we kept our names current; we just had a lot of fun! Of course, AJR is our priority.”

With a recently released single, the band is as ready as ever to step back into the spotlight. “We just dropped our new single, ‘I’m Not Famous,’ and we’re going to radio with it over the summer,” Jack said. “We’re really excited about it and we’ll definitely be touring to support the single.” Despite their debut single being wildly successful, the band admitted they “had no clue” what they were doing at the time. Now, they’re using that experience to launch this “I’m Not Famous” even further. “We actually have a goal amongst ourselves,” Ryan said. “’I’m Ready’ went 06

platinum in the U.S. and triple-platinum in Australia; so, our goal is for this new single to top that somehow.” With a goal like that, Adam, Jack, and Ryan are already equipped with a game plan. “We tried really hard to write a specific song that could work out a little better than ‘I’m Ready,’” Jack said. “We’re trying to really relate to what’s at the very front of pop music right now and so we’re looking at artists like Twenty One Pilots that are talking about real and honest issues. That was the main concept for this song and we felt like if we brought a concept like that, in comparison to the concept of ‘I’m Ready’ that was really just about nothing, people could find something to latch on to with this.”

That’s exactly what they kept in mind whilst creating the single. “On our last album, Living Room, we really focused our attention on production,” Adam said. “For this one, we really wanted to add onto that and put an emphasis on giving the most honest and blatant lyrics that hadn’t been said before. That’s what we were working on and so, in that frame of mind, we wrote two songs: ‘I’m Not Famous’ and another one. Our manager heard ‘I’m Not Famous’ and immediately was like, ‘this is it. This is your single.’ We were all happy with it and so that’s how the single really came about.

We have a bunch more songs that we’ll be ready to put out on an EP once the timing is right.”

Even though AJR can consider themselves seasoned artists, they still prefer to do produce all their sounds from the comfort of their own home. “When we first started producing from our living room, it was mostly because we just didn’t know anyone and didn’t have enough money for studio time,” Ryan laughed. “However, as we’ve continued to do it, we’ve just really grown to like it. In a studio, you have a time limit and you’re paying by the hour – creativity just doesn’t flow that way… not like it does when you can be at home in your underwear, with zero time constraints. I don’t know what’ll happen in the future but I do think we’re going to stick to the living room for awhile.” Along with their living room, AJR also plans to stick to the east coast. “We were out in L.A. recently for a writing session and honestly, I think it just made us realize how much we want to stay in New York,” Jack laughed.

“It’s two totally different environments; In L.A., it’s always warm and so it feels like

time is never passing. Here in NY, you get seasons and you get to feel the time pass.”

Like many artists, the band has found inspiration in the city. “We grew up in a very fast-paced world and with a lot of diversity everywhere,” Ryan said. “Growing up in New York definitely impacted our music and the way we do things. We tend to move very quickly and do a lot at the same time. We’re just always up to something.” With their new sounds, AJR’s found a new partner in Sony’s RED Distribution. “We just signed with them,” Jack shared. “We actually run a company called AJR Productions and that’s the label that the single’s being distributed in, through RED. All of the creative branding and music videos is still happening on our side, which is really nice; it’s the perfect kind of relationship for us. It’s great to have a network across the country that still looks to us to give them guidance on how we want the project to run. It’s definitely a modern model for the music industry and it’s working really well.” While Adam, Jack, and Ryan have their fingers crossed for “I’m Not Famous” to blow up on the charts, their main goal is something else.

“It would be amazing if the song got big but, really, our goal is longevity,” Adam said. “We have so many other songs that we want to get out there so yeah, we hope this one blows up but we also want to be able to consistently put out new music.

This time around, we want people to focus more so on the artist than on the song; we want people to want to know who we are as artists, rather than just listening to us.”

To make sure their fan base didn’t stray during their hiatus, AJR made it a priority to stay connected with them. “Responding to people on Twitter is always so great because it keeps the fans attached to you,” Jack said. “We’ve also done a lot of remixes of pop songs on Instagram and Facebook.

Really, we just kept sharing things online.”

As for what AJR hopes to accomplish with the rest of their 2016, they’ve got a few ideas in mind. “A perfect year for us would definitely include the single doing well,” Ryan shared. “That’d be great. Touring is really our favorite thing to do – we’ve done headline tours before but having a big, sold-out one would be a dream. We have so many ideas for shows that we want to implement! We’re just gonna take the single to radio and see where it goes from there.” NKD

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jamie lawson Words by RYAN SLOAN Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

At 8 years old, Jamie Lawson learned to play the guitar. By high school, he performed in a cover band that played everything from R.E.M to Jimi Hendrix to The Beatles. Now, at 40, Jamie is the first signee to Ed Sheeran’s label, Gingerbread Man Records, and is preparing for his first headlining world tour.

“Though it’s been tough, I’ve never thought of giving up,” Jamie says. “Songwriting is a way for me to get things off my chest and sort of deal with the everyday struggles I face. It’s what I did and still do.”

In 2003, Jamie, who was 28 at the time, released his debut album Last Night Stars and began gigging tirelessly throughout the UK. “I was fortunate enough to be on the same circuit as artists like Damien Rice, Lucy Rose and Ed Sheeran in the UK and that made me certain in what I was doing,” he says. “I never became jealous or bitter when each of them broke out, instead, I thought, it can be done. They do it incredibly well and I’m in that company.” He never thought about quitting. “Listen,” he says. “I was either too stubborn to give up or too lazy to do anything else. That’s what it came down to and I’m still not sure which one I am”.

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In January 2011, Jamie uploaded a rough recording of his new song, “Wasn’t Expecting That” on YouTube. The song soon became his breakout single. It spread like wildfire in the UK, racking over a million views on YouTube in the first few weeks of its release and receiving massive radio attention, specifically from Today FM in Ireland. “It’s a love song about the first time a couple sees each other to the very last time,” Jamie says. “I wanted to capture the different stages of a relationship and how their love grows.”

A few months after the initial release of the song on YouTube, Universal Music Ireland re-released the track, and the support from the company helped with the song’s traction. Due to Jamie’s increasing popularity in Ireland, he decided to move there.

A couple years later, Jamie shared a bill with a young Ed Sheeran. “We got on pretty well but lost touch,” he says. “[Ed Sheeran] went on to sell millions of records and become really famous.” Sheeran was a fan of “Wasn’t Expecting That,” and told Jamie that he shared a deep emotional connection to his songwriting and wanted to work with him at some point in the

future.

When Sheeran returned to Ireland a few years later, he noticed a poster at a pub for one of Jamie’s upcoming shows, and remembered his desire to work with him. “[Ed Sheeran] was doing this secret show in Dublin for a hundred or so people at a venue that I have played quite a few times myself,” Jamie says. “[The venue] asked him who they wanted to open up for him and he said me. So that kind of came out of the blue you know?

But we caught up with one another and things gradually escalated to the point where we were on tour together in the UK and Europe and he asked me about joining his label.”

In October of 2015, Jamie released his debut self-titled album on Sheeran’s label, Gingerbread Man Records. After the release of the album, Jamie toured North America with Vance Joy and Blind Pilot. “There’s a lot of time waiting around [on tour]. You can either go out and explore or sit in your dressing room and write songs,” he says. “On this tour, I’ve been quite disciplined in staying in because I’ve got another record to do.” As always, Jamie is not taking any time for granted. NKD

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PARACHUTE Words by TANYA TRANER Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

You can’t help but be drawn into the genuine charm of Will Anderson and Johnny Stubblefield. Not just for their slight southern accents - and let me tell you, the accents are certainly charming – but these Virginia natives and members of Parachute truly seem to have a love and dedication to their craft that’s quite refreshing to see after nearly a decade of making music together.

This March, Parachute (comprised of Will, Johnny and Kit French) released their fourth full length album Wide Awake. “We wrote this album over the past three years, actually,” Will says. “We started writing some of the songs on this album before the last one [Overnight] had even come out.” He couldn’t sit idle waiting for that release in 2013, so he did what he does best. “It was a very long process. I was almost like a hermit.” It was constant writing. While promoting Overnight, Will wrote in back lounges after shows on tour, and spent all of his time at home writing as well. Recording began in May 2015, and by December, they had a finished product.

This time around, however, things are a bit different for Will. For the first time, he wants to take a break from writing for a while. And he blames the album itself. “I felt like we were really so obsessed with this one that I had to take a second,” he says. “I always wondered why artists don’t just write all the time, and once we did this one, it was very clear why they don’t.” The songs on the record are incredibly personal to Will. “I think it’s the most biographical in a sense.

Most of the songs are really specific to what was happening to me at that moment.”

The album took three years to come to fruition due to many factors. “We had some label changes to sort out,” he says. “And we had some band member changes which took a while to sort out.” Despite all of the setbacks, Will says the three current members never thought about calling it quits. “We

were really clear about what we wanted to do with this album.”

Once all of the band drama was settled, the guys then buckled down and made writing a new record their number one priority.

They didn’t have to juggle outside careers or issues. “It was refreshing,” he says. Not that the band were big partiers to begin with, but they cut that side of things out too. “All we cared about was the album and the close relationships we had with people, just a very small group of friends and significant others.”

Parachute have found unique ways of promoting their music to fans, including tons of interactive contests. For one of their most recent contests, fans uploaded videos jamming out to their single “Without You.” They made the contest interactive by picking three finalists, and their fans got the final vote.

The prize? A private concert from the lucky fan’s living room. They also held a March Madness bracket contest for merch prizes. “It keeps it more interesting for us and for fans,” Johnny says. They are constantly brainstorming new ideas. “It’s just fun for us because we get to meet people,” Will says.

The band wasted no time getting out on the road to support the album as well.

The Wide Awake Tour also began in March following the album’s release. At the time of our meeting, the guys are only on night three and still hammering out the kinks in their set. They’ve got quite a wheelhouse to choose from with multiple EPs and now four full lengths. “It’s so nice not having to play the same old songs, it’s really cool to have something new to break up the old stuff,” Will says.

With the album being out for a few weeks now, the guys are beginning to get a sense of their fan favorites, and they say the results aren’t incredibly surprising. “You kind of have a sense for what they like and what they don’t like,” Will says. “And the stuff that you love, sometimes isn’t the stuff they love.” The band NKDMAG.COM

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are incredibly excited to play Jennie and it’s been well received by the fans so far. “There’s one particular song, [“Getaway”] we love it, we just want to bust it out,” Johnny says. “But no one likes that song,” Will interjects. “But it’s our favorite song, besides ‘Jenny’.”

When it comes to understanding your fan base likes and dislikes, some have pinned Parachute as targeting a specific audience rather than writing what they really love. “I think a lot of people will take our style of music and assume we must be calculated in some way,” Will says. “And it’s funny, I feel like other music doesn’t get that rap of like ‘Oh they’re just trying to reach a certain fan base.” This couldn’t be farther from the truth.

They’re simply making the music they love to make and finding similar artists to make music with. “People make comments like ‘Oh that’s so smart of you. Well what’s smart about it?” he asks. “There’s nothing smart about it. We ‘dumbly’ enjoy playing pop music.” They also note that they would never follow the current pop music trends and fads simply for radio time. “That makes our manager’s job much harder I’m sure,” Will jokes. It’s more fun and challenging for them to try to break through the barrier without resigning themselves to some specific formula catering to the flavor of the month in music. “The payoff is so much bigger if you do it that way, even if it might not happen,” Will says.

The guys will admit their music is sometimes heavily influenced by 80s pop music trends, however. They say, unashamedly, it’s not the “cool, badass” music of the 80s but rather the mainstream pop trends that catch their ear. “It’s like the people who probably got the same flack we do,” Will jokes. For more contemporary influence, the guys look to John Mayer, Matt Kearney, Bruno Mars and the like. “Everything everybody likes, we probably listen to. There’s nothing obscure about us,” Will says, chuckling.

With this latest album, Parachute does want to achieve some personal goals, and they’ve already started with Wide Awake being pressed and sold on vinyl. Other goals haven’t changed much – to reach as many people as possible and sell a bunch of records. It looks like they’ll get their chance.

This year is all about touring. The Wide Awake tour runs through May, and the guys will be doing a bit more in the summer as well. This fall they head out with NEEDTOBREATHE and Matt Kearney, so if you don’t see Parachute in 2016, it’s your own fault. NKD 14

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cardiknox Words by MARY BARNES Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

Some people are just meant to be together. Like Bonnie and Clyde, Sherlock and Watson, and Laverne and Shirley, Thomas Dutton and Lonnie Angle are a match made in musical heaven. Fate, in the form of a Rock Opera, brought the two artists from different artistic backgrounds together to form the pop duo Cardiknox, who have broken onto the scene with their debut album Portrait.

Thomas’ musical career started at around the age 12, when his father bought a guitar for Thomas’s younger brother. “My dad plays guitar just casually,” he says. “[My brother and I] both started to learn guitar…We were learning cover songs and I was writing my own songs.” Thomas formed Forgive Durden and they soon signed to indie label Fueled

by Ramen. He left school, started touring full time and recorded their first album, Wonderland.

Thomas had a different idea for the band’s second album. “I wanted to get really ambitious and make a rock opera concept album,” He says of the project, that featured few guitars and was mainly orchestral. Different singers were brought onto the project to play the characters within the story. The rock opera, called Razia’s Shadow: A Musiccal, went on tour, but that wasn’t enough for Thomas. “I really wanted to go to the next step with that project and actually adapted it to be a staged musical.” Thomas didn’t have much of a background in musical theatre, but luckily for him, a mutual friend introduced him to Lonnie.

Lonnie has always had a love for music and begged her parents to buy her a grand piano when she was only 4 years old. “I took lessons for eleven years and loved it, but I also really loved musical theatre,” she says. She grew up on the stage, performing in musicals and even attending summer camps where she would write and perform her own plays.

In college, she studied directing and stepped away from performing. After graduating, she began working at a major regional theatre. It was then that she and Thomas were united.

“A mutual friend of ours was like ‘I know this person who wrote this epic rock musical and you guys should work together to develop it 16

into a legit musical,’” Lonnie says of how the duo met.

Thomas brought Lonnie on to direct the stage production but she soon ended up writing the Libretto, or script, for the production.

“We started working on it,” Thomas says. “It randomly sort of got the attention of a New York Broadway producer.” The duo started working with a public theatre in New York, while they lived in Seattle. Soon after, they moved to New York to work more closely with the producers. “We ended up doing a reading of it at [a] cabaret space, which is called Joe’s Pub,” Thomas continues. “[We] had all these Broadway singers sing it and I performed in it.” It was after that performance, and two years working on it, that Lonnie and Thomas began to feel worn down with the production. They decided to take a break. “So we were like ‘let’s write pop songs,’” Lonnie says. That was when Cardiknox formed.

What started off as a distraction from their musical, turned into the forefront of their musical career. “Thomas and I both are dreamers,” Lonnie says. “We have lofty goals. We wrote these few songs and put them online to see how [people] would react.” The music got a little bit of hype and managers began approaching them. “That’s when we were like ‘whoa! Maybe we should really be thinking about this,’” Lonnie says. They hired their manager Evan Winiker who watched the band perform a private show for him in rehearsal space in Brooklyn, and things took off from there.

Cardiknox quickly began work on their debut album. “When we started writing for this album, we didn’t know that we were writing for this album, we were just writing.

I would say that we…started focusing on the album a year and a a half ago,” she says. They met with their producer, John Shanks, for what was meant to be a two-day writing session, but turned into him working with them for the entire duration of the album, even before they were signed to a label. “He basically committed to the project,” Lonnie continues. “[He] said ‘this is something special. I believe in this.’” The album was finished a year before

it’s release. “When you join the major label world, everything takes time,” Thomas says.

Evan, who worked with artists that were signed to Warner Brothers Music at the time, showed a few of Cardiknox’s tracks to an A&R rep at the label, and it went up the chain from there. “All of a sudden, we were in [Warner Brothers Records’ President, Dan McCarroll’s] office. The lights were low, the sun was setting,” Thomas says. “We played him three or four songs.” It was then that the band was signed to the label.

The duo had full control of the album production with little insight from the label.

“They stayed kind of hands off more or less,” Thomas says. “They really trusted where we were going, so we got to do our thing. It was nice to have that validation.” The label allowed them to work on the album without intervention, and they had a say in which songs made the album, even when the label disagreed with a song choice. “Everyone appreciated [one song], but it was nobody’s favorite,” Lonnie says. “But it was our favorite and we were fighting for it.” That song wound up being the favorite of many of their fans The band, who is still new to the scene, is starting to see a fan base build up right in front of their eyes. Show attendees that are there for the main act start off disinterested but end up dancing and singing along by the end of the show. “Just seeing the progression within our 30-minute set is cool,” Thomas says. “[We] see them convert and become a fan. They’ve been really receptive.” No matter how many times they perform, Lonnie says she always gets nervous before a show. “It’s like liberating, exhilarating, terrifying,” She says. “Then the second I get on stage I’m like ‘I’m home!”

The band, who has been on tour for almost three months, won’t have much down time this year. “We are going back to LA,” Thomas says. “We are going to shoot a video for “Wild Child”, we are playing a show in LA with Neon Gold and then we’re doing Bonnaroo in June.” The band plans to tour as much as they can this year, and with their music just hitting radio waves, there is much for them to look forward to. NKD

the rocket summer Words & Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

It’s totally cool if you loved The Rocket Summer in high school - just don’t call Bryce Avery your throwback.

The Dallas-bred, Los Angeles resident is roughly one month into the album cycle of Zoetic, his sixth studio album, when I meet him on a rooftop in Midtown Manhattan. I’m his last appointment at the end of a long an exhausting press day, so he doesn’t turn down a beer when it’s offered to him. However, he only takes two sips before putting it down and admitting he’s not really a drinker. Below us on 7th Avenue, people are just getting out of work. For Bryce, work never ends.

Growing up going to a Christian private school, by age 12 Bryce was anxious to get out. His parents finally agreed to send him to public school and on his first day he “ran towards the kids wearing flannel and listening to Nirvana.” A new friend of his helped teach him both guitar and drums, and the two of them would get together and play Nirvana songs after school. “Four years after I picked up a guitar the first The Rocket Summer CD was out,” Bryce recalls.

The Rocket Summer has always existed as a one-man band. Bryce was initially 18

inspired by Dave Grohl’s commitment to the first Foo Fighters album, where he played all the instruments. Confessing he didn’t know enough musically-inclined people to form a traditional band, Bryce took Dave’s approach and made an album by himself. When it came time to tour, he was able to pull enough friends together, but all of them had intentions of going to college and not being full-time musicians.

So when it came time to do another record, Bryce once again did it by himself.

“All of a sudden it was like, ‘oh, this is what I do,’” he says.

To an outsider, The Rocket Summer “made it” a long time ago, but to Bryce, his recent headlining tour was the first time he really felt that. “I’m not on the radio or stuff like that, but the passion and the community that is The Rocket Summer, the fans, it’s nuts,” he says. He notes that some of the excitement coming from the crowds on the Zoetic Tour may be a side effect of Bryce taking a step back for a minute. Fans had to wait a little longer for Zoetic than past records. “I don’t ever want to do that again,” Bryce confesses.

For Zoetic, Bryce explored over 100 song ideas that came to him over the course of

a few years – some that were obviously not Rocket Summer songs and made him consider starting a side project. “I got it out of my system, though,” he says, “I want to make another record as soon as possible – but only if it’s awesome.”

While there was nearly a four-year gap between Life Will Write The Words [2012] and Zoetic, it didn’t exactly take Bryce four years to write this record. He toured on Life Will Write The Words for a solid year, and then release a B-sides EP, as well as a Christmas EP, so it wasn’t until 2014 that he began writing Zoetic. Of the 100 or so songs, Bryce began recording almost 50 of them before starting to narrow them down to the 11 that made the record. Zoetic was completed in May 2015. “I just want to make great art,” he says, “Sometimes great art happens quickly and sometimes it takes some soul searching and experimenting, which is what Zoetic was.”

As an artist who had been making music long before Twitter and Instagram came around, Bryce sometimes has trouble making time for the now-necessary aspect of his career. Because Bryce writes, records and releases all his music on his

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own, it can be hard for him to find time in the day to “take a selfie of [himself] vomiting rainbows”. “I’m old school in the sense that I believe that songs are key,” he says, “I’d rather be putting out stuff that I put my soul into, that’s super authentic.”

While Bryce hopes that the majority of his fan base is on that same wavelength, there’s no way of knowing for sure. He notes that the response to Zoetic has been “overwhelmingly positive”, but he admits that even he was aware that it may take a few listens for people to catch on.

“So many people have told me that this is their favorite [The Rocket Summer] record, but it took them three or four listens,” he says. While many The Rocket Summer fans may have been expecting Do You Feel? [2007] Part Two, Zoetic is about as different as a Rocket Summer album could be while still being a Rocket Summer album. Given the recent obsession with nostalgia that many bands that were cool in 2005 have been exploiting, Zoetic was a risky record to release.

“I’m not your freakin’ throwback, I’m sorry,” Bryce laughs, “I appreciate it, and I get it, and I love nostalgia, too, but if I were to become that to everyone I probably couldn’t handle doing it.” He quickly clarifies that he’s not against the idea of doing a 10 Year Anniversary tour for a popular record in the future, because as a music fan he enjoys those types of things, but he doesn’t want to be the artist that meant something to someone – he wants to be the artist that continues to mean something to someone. “If I do one of those tours, you best believe I’ll be writing [new songs] every night,” he says.

On their most recent tour, Bryce and his band played seven new songs, and were pleased to find fans singing along to the new songs just as much as the old ones. Now that the record has been out for a few months, Bryce’s main priority is to continue to give it life by playing the new songs live as much as possible.

The Rocket Summer will finish up their U.S. shows this month and then head to the U.K. As for the rest of the year, nothing is confirmed yet, but Bryce is confident when saying that there will be more shows. “If I could tour every day of my life and have a studio in the trailer, I would do that, he says,” I really feed off the community.” NKD 22

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elena coats Words by STACY MAGALLON Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

We all dream of befriending the lead singer of our favorite band. We might even dream about sharing a stage with them. Some of us never get that lucky. Fortunately, for singer/ songwriter Elena Coats, she gets to live that rare reality.

Born in Twin Falls, Id., Elena’s mother discovered her daughter’s talent for singing before she was 5 years old. By the time Elena was 9, she began playing guitar. She started showing off her musical abilities at local spots in town and at annual country fairs. When her friends started high school, she already knew what she wanted to do with her life. Elena packed up and moved to Los Angeles shortly after to pursue singing. For the second half of ninth grade, she spent most of her time in California, but brought her school work with her. Once Elena realized the difficulty of the situation, she switched to online school, but transferred to a school in L.A. for her senior year.

After moving to and from Idaho for almost four or five years, she now currently resides in LA and graduated high school in 2015.

In 2013, Elena met Travis Clark, front man of pop-punk band We The Kings. They met at the band’s Summer Fest Tour featuring Breathe Carolina, T. Mills and The Ready Set. That was the first time Elena ever 24

performed with WTK, before Travis proposed an idea -- to feature her on “Sad Song” for their then-upcoming album, Somewhere, Somehow. “I’ve been a fan of We The Kings since I was 10,” she says. “It was totally a dream come true for me.” Since then, Elena has also been featured on “XO” on We The Kings’ fifth studio album, Strange Love (2015) and is supporting them on their current tour, From Here to Mars Tour. “Everyone I’ve ever met has connected me to where I am right now,” she says.

“He’s the nicest person I’ve ever met,” Elena says of Travis. After being taken under Travis’ wing, her talent was placed on a pedestal. “He was willing to help me out and fight for me,” she continues. “He’s everything you expect him to be.”

Elena’s social media following isn’t large, but is compensated by the followers she has gained through her guest vocals on We The Kings’ albums. Soon after “Sad Song” was released, people took notice, and grew interest in her solo work. When Elena first moved to LA, the first question that popped into her head was, ‘Who do I want to be as an artist?’ “I went back and forth quite a bit especially because I was also growing as a person,” she recalls. “You can’t just pick a sound.”

Elena strives to be the fresh artist

no one has heard of before. Her sound is a blend of pop, hip hop, and electronic. Growing up on the sounds of The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana, as well asTaylor Swift and Sara Bareilles, Elena’s influences range anywhere from alternative rock to hip hop. She cites Taylor Swift as her main influencer, having listened to her earlier country albums before she hit the wave of mainstream pop.

“I grew up listening to her, and as she’s evolving, I am as well, and I can look to her for that inspiration,” Elena says. “If you don’t listen to Taylor Swift, you’re lying or you’re unhappy.”

Elena hopes to have some solo music released this summer, though she isn’t exactly sure yet. “The music I’m working on right now sound like they could be summer anthems,” she says. “Something even I would jam to on the way to the beach.”

Elena wants to do what her favorite artists have done for her. Her main ambition is to reach people with her music. It’s always been about speaking out. Elena would love to be mainstream artist, or at least a solid combo of all the genres she grew up listening to. Until then, she is choosing to cling onto what’s most familiar -- herself. “I want to stick to being myself,” she says. “That way my music can just evolve with me.” NKD

la femme collective Words by NAUREEN NASHID Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

In an age where females are put down and discouraged from success, it’s up to women to inspire and support other women. La Femme Collective (LFC) does exactly that. It’s an online collective to share and read success stories of women all over the world. Not only that, but the community also offers an open space to have free flowing discussions and gives advice to their readers for anything career related. Every week they have a feature #entrefemmeur, an empowered woman who inspires others to lead kickass lives. These #entrefemmeurs share their stories of how they followed their dreams as strong and independent women living in a patriarchal world.

Founded by Nora Henick, who is also the editor-in-chief, it has already reached out to thousands of readers since it launched in March.

NKD: How did you get the initial idea for LFC? Tell us about that moment.

Nora Henick: I was researching women in tech for a blog post about The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing for my job at the time. I wanted to learn who some of the key players were and what they were doing. While I was doing this research, I noticed a lot of women discussing how they’ve gone unnoticed or uncredited for the work they’ve done. As a woman who has always believed in equality for all people, no matter gender, age, sexual orientation, etc. I was extremely frustrated by this. This definitely wasn’t the first time I was struck with disappointment and anger over the way women are treated in the work world, but it definitely was the last time I was going to let those feelings overcome me without doing something about it. It was then that I decided I wanted to create a platform that encouraged free-flowing discussion and storytelling in hopes of furthering the career development for women. That’s when the idea that was LFC was born.

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NKD: How was launch day? Was it more than you expected or just as you expected?

NH: Launch day was everything I could have hoped for and more, as cliché as that sounds. At the time, I was working another full-time job, and so I strategically planned LFC’s launch during my lunch break. The response we got was above and beyond what I could have expected - the website actually crashed. Besides for March 8th being LFC’s launch day, it was also International Women’s Day, which is really important to each LFC team member. We really wanted to share what we’ve been working on so tirelessly with an audience that would want to get involved in the conversation. I’ve had a lot of amazing women reach out to me saying they found us on social media on International Women’s Day - (thanks to Marissa for being an absolute social media guru) - women that may not have found us on any other day. Launch day was just the start of what I hope to be many more exciting days in LFC’s lifetime, but no matter what, it is definitely one I will never forget.

NKD: So far what has been your favorite part about the site and the community it has built?

NH: I don’t know if I can pick one, so I’m going to cheat and pick two. The first being, hearing from all of the people that LFC has inspired. So many people, men included, have told me how LFC has impacted their lives already, in the short time it’s been live.

I cannot wait to continue to see that impact become more widespread. My second favorite part is all of the unbelievable people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting already.

Sometimes, when meeting or emailing with someone, I actually have a moment where I sit back and think to myself that never in a thousand years did I think I would have the opportunity to not only hear what this person has to say, but also that I get to share my thoughts and visions with them.

NKD: Is there anyone you look up to that you’d love to have on the site?

NH: Once again, cheating and picking two instead of one. By the time LFC has its first birthday these two women are going to be tired of reading about how badly I want them on the site. Hopefully they’ll just cave and decide to write a piece each so I’ll shut up. Those two women would be - Leandra Medine and Emily Weiss.

Leandra, founder of Man Repeller, and Emily, founder and CEO of Into the Gloss and Glossier, are great examples of finding something you’re passionate about and turning it into a resource for others.

It would be probably up there with launch day to have either one of them, or if I’m lucky, both of them, on the site.

NKD: What are your current goals for LFC? Where do you hope to see it in a year?

NH: Now that I’ve officially left my other job to manage LFC full time, I have goals running through my head a mile a minute. But a major one, that’s really important to me as well as the team, is enhancing the community aspect of LFC. We created this platform for others, not just ourselves, and we really want to see people engaging with each other through it. Whether it be finding people to network with through the site, commenting on a piece offering your own bit of advice, or even saying, “hey I went through that, too. I’m glad I could see what direction it took you in.” We’re really encouraging conversation.

A year from now, I hope to see LFC continuing to do what it’s been doing - inspiring others and encouraging conversation about the working woman. My biggest goal for LFC is for it to reach and help as many people as possible, so that’s all I can really hope for a year from now, too. NKD

LELE PONS Words & Photos by CATHERINE POWELL Make-Up by JULIE HARRIS

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In the beginning of 2013, the popular video app Vine officially launched. In less than a year, the social network was breeding celebrities who now dote more Instagram followers than many mainstream musicians and network television stars. And while your average teenager will tell you that Vine is no longer cool, the stars that got their start on it are cooler than ever. One of the most successful being Lele Pons.

I meet with Lele in New York in the middle of a bi-coastal press tour for her new book, Surviving High School. Immediately after we wrap our photo shoot she will fly back to Los Angeles for a full day of television appearances and interviews before escaping to Coachella for the weekend, which will be thoroughly documented on Instagram for her 5.3 million followers. But in the moment, Lele is extremely present and engaging with all those around her. She asks her Mom for advice on what to wear – seamlessly transitioning between English and Spanish when she does, and gives the shoot crew a sneak peek of her new Instagram video, which will go on to get 3 million views in less than three weeks.

It’s clear that the main difference between Lele and any other 19-yearold girl is her follower count. Oh, and her book deal.

Lele’s story starts in Venezuela, where she was born and lived until she was 5 years old. She then relocated to Miami, where she lived until she finished high school. She admits that the move wasn’t easy at first because she didn’t speak any English at the time, but grew to love

the city in her time there. She went to school and spent her weekends with friends like any other girl.

“For the most part, my life has been pretty normal,” she admits. But that all began to change once she downloaded Vine.

Prior to Vine, Lele hadn’t signed up for any social media accounts.

But after Vine became super popular among her immediate friends and classmates, she decided to take the plunge. With no ulterior motives, Lele started posting videos for fun and her audience began to grow. It didn’t take too long for her

attracts 10.9 million people to her page. She was grouped in Vanity Fair’s coveted “New Establishment” list in 2015, along the likes of Mark Zuckerberg, Amy Schumer and more. In the same year, she also topped Time’s “30 Most Influential Teens” list.

While her numbers on Vine were still growing, Lele made the jump onto other social platforms, and she pulls in an impressive audience on both Instagram and Facebook.

“I still love doing Vines because they make people laugh, but I think Instagram is my favorite platform right now,” she admits. She frequently posts her Vine videos to Instagram, now.

And while making videos has become a career for Lele, she still gets the same enjoyment out of it as she did when no one was watching. “Making videos is something I think is really fun so I don’t think I’ll ever get to a point where I feel obligated to do it,” she says.

Which should relieve her massive audience, who have formed their own little community around Lele’s comedy. Despite her increasing fame, Lele has made a point to not let it get to her head and continue to be authentic and true to her roots. “Being yourself is what people will like the most, so that’s what I do and what makes people relate to me, and continue to follow me,” she says.

Shortly after Lele graduated high school, it was suggested to her that her funny experiences from the last four years would help people and that she should write a book.

She liked that idea, and decided to proceed, using her Vines (which

“MAKING VIDEOS IS SOMETHING I THINK IS REALLY FUN, SO I DON’T THINK I’LL EVER GET TO A POINT WHERE I FEEL OBLIGATED TO DO IT.” six-second comedies to catch on, but her initial audience was comprised merely of the people around her. “Everyone at school would talk about them and how funny they were, so I started doing more,” she says.

What happened next was completely unpredictable. Lele’s audience continued to grow and break records on the app. She became the first Vine user to reach one billion loops, and has since accumulated over 7 billion. She is the most followed female on the platform and

“THE BOOK IS ESSENTIALLY MY jOURNAL FROM HIGH ScHOOL THAT INcLUDES ALL THE ExPERIENcES I WENT THROUGH, FROM FUNNY SITUATIONS TO BEING BULLIED.” 32

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essentially documented most of her high school career) to help with the story. “The book is essentially my journal from high school that includes all the experiences I went through, from funny situations to being bullied,” she says, “It’s a guide for people going through the same thing I went through and will hopefully be a fun tool for kid sin high school now.”

This being her first book, and her writing experience being rather limited, Lele teamed up with famed young-adult fiction author, Melissa de la Cruz to make Surviving High School the best it could be. Lele admits that she wasn’t familiar with

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Melissa’s work prior to meeting her, but she’s extremely thankful for the opportunity to work with her. “She was a wonderful partner and has a lot of experience in the book world, so she really guided me through everything and made sure I understood the process,” Lele says.

Surviving High School has been extremely well received by fans, but Lele has no plans to write another book anytime soon. “There are so many things I want to do in my life.

Now that I have written my first book, I am going to try some new adventures in my life, like acting,” she says. Lele recently wrapped production on her first movie, We Love

You. The film, which is a collaborative effort between Awesomeness Film and YouTube and directed by Huck Botko, is pegged to be a fun, feel good romantic comedy with a bit of a twist. We Love You follows two best friends – Noah (Justin Dobies) and Ford (Yousef Erakat) – who both fall for the same girl, Callie, played by Lele. In an attempt to save their friendship, Noah and Ford propose that Callie date both of them, and humor ensues. While there is no confirmed release date yet, the film is expected to release sometime in 2016.

With a new interest in acting, Lele’s recent relocation to Los An-

geles seems like the perfect fit for the budding star. “It was definitely easier than the move from Venezuela to Miami, for sure,” she says of the cross-country move, “I was sad to leave my friends in Miami, but I had visited L.A. a lot before and had made some great friends there as well.” While stars like Josh Peck and Justin Bieber make guest appearances on her Instagram, Lele is inspired the most creatively by the ever-growing “internet personality” scene in Los Angeles. “We all constantly come up with ideas and help each other make them better or funnier,” she says of the community.

She often collaborates with other social media comedians such as Anwar Jibawi, Amanda Cerny and Alissa Violet. “I feel like we all speak the same language and understand one another. We are all comedians in our own way and are always making creative content together,” she says.

Also on Lele’s current agenda is the launch of her official YouTube channel – the latest social platform she plans to conquer. Considering Lele is responsible for the frequently-used term, “Do it for the Vine”, the switch to YouTube may seem strange to some viewers, but Lele plans to use the platform as a place to expand her comedy past the six-second limit of Vine. Her channel trailer promises a number of things: Comedy, “Latina Stuff ”, Dancing, Characters and of course, her mom, who has become a fan-favorite reoccurrence in her video.

With a career that was almost an accident, Lele hopes to take her Vine fame and transfer it over to more traditional media, like film and television. “Hopefully I can become as well known for my acting as I am for my Vines,” she says. In terms of her personal life, her goal has never changed. “My personal goal is to always surround myself with people that love me for who I am and make me happy,” she says.

While Lele may be dubbed the internet’s “funny girl”, it is clear that her many talents and intense drive will make her much more than that in the future. NKD 36

kevin garrett Words by MERISSA BLITZ Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

“That’s going to take a long time; how much space do you have on your phone?” asks Kevin Garrett as he starts to talk about his life.

The 25-year-old, Pittsburgh native, has had quite the journey so far even though he only just hit a quarter of a century in March.

Kevin started playing music when he was 4, picking up the violin. He was so involved with the instrument that he kept playing for about 20 years which caused his desire to go to school to study music.

“I went to NYU [New York University], studied music and audio engineering,” Kevin says. “I was a big dork, pressed a lot of buttons.”

Though he was excited to be studying at NYU, the reason that Kevin moved to New York City in the first place was for the accessibility to concert venues and to be able to perform in some of the country’s top music venues.

“As soon as I got to the city I started playing and my first gig was at Rockwood Music Hall on a Sunday afternoon at 3:00 p.m.,” Kevin remembers.

It was just him, his RA and two off-duty police officers who were just on the hunt for coffee but ended up stumbling in to the very venue that would kick start Kevin’s music career.

A few months later, Rockwood’s owner asked Kevin to come back and play.

“I ended up being an opener for 38

Norah Jones, that was really awesome,” Kevin says. “They kept asking me back and that’s when I figured, maybe I can hang.”

As Kevin’s confidence in his talent grew, he began to write a lot more frequently and play as much as he could.

He ended up signing a publishing deal with Roc Nation right out of college. They were really interested in having Kevin write for other artists that they were involved with. Writing is something that Kevin really likes doing – having worked with KNGDM, and just recently co-writing and producing Beyonce’s emotional Lemonade opener, “Pray You Catch Me”– and still considers writing his “main hang.”

“I started writing when I was 13 or 14, but it wasn’t until I got to New York that I was really feeling a lot more comfortable and confident with what I was trying to say,” Kevin explains.

Kevin has been doing co-writes since before he signed with Roc Nation. Whenever he writes with somebody else he tries to take himself out of the equation and because when he writes for himself it’s very personal, that’s why when he writes for himself, he always writes alone.

Before Kevin stepped out on his own, he was playing music with a band for a short time in college. Their vibe was more indie-folk/folk-rock, a very different vibe than the indie-pop/ electronic-infused R&B/soul artist he is today. They worked completely

independent and in the “DIY” type of way that Kevin was used to working in.

“We did a one-off show with this guy James Vincent McMorrow and I thought that that was the end of it. I didn’t know that I would ever be in touch with him ever again,” says Kevin.

Little did he know, James would contact him a year and a half later asking his band, which had since dissolved, to open for him on tour. After explaining that he was no longer with his band, Kevin showed James a demo of his hit “Coloring” before it had ever been released. James loved it and in January of 2015 Kevin embarked on his first major national tour.

Kevin has been non-stop touring since then opening for up-and-coming talented musicians such as X-Ambassadors and Alessia Cara.

“Both tours worked out very smoothly in their own ways,” Kevin says. “I think Alessia is a little more in my alley sonically than X Ambassadors, but they’re both very prolific writers and I think their influences are very similar to mine so we were all on the same page behind the scenes.”

While touring with different bands, it was clear to see the difference in the demographic of each audience and how they responded to the music while attending a show as well as afterwards.

“With James and with X Ambassadors, and we did a tour in April with Hey Rosetta! too, it’s an older crowd

and a different kind of music fan,” Kevin explains. “I’ve never played shows where that many people come and just sit still and don’t talk or anything.”

Kevin remembers how amazing it felt when he opened for James in front of 1500 people in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and they were so attentive that you could hear a pin drop.

The crowds that came to Alessia’s shows was younger and “more engaged in terms of social media.” Some of the funnier moments that Kevin remembers from that tour are the things that the fans from those shows came up with on Twitter and Instagram.

“One of my band mates, well both of them, they got this flower halfway through that Alessia tour just randomly and they gave it a name so I put it on my Snapchat story and then the next morning somebody made a Twitter account for the flower and I was lost for words,” Kevin remembers.

The younger generation who goes to shows now is very obsessive and almost possessive when it comes to the music they like. Creating memes and giving presents to their music idols are not out of the ordinary. This was the first time that Kevin had done shows where fans came up to give him things after his performance and knowing that they cared so much touched him.

“The way that the younger crowd goes to a concert is so much different than some of the crowds that I was used to at the time,” Kevin says. “It was good because I hadn’t really tapped into that kind of market and they seemed to react really well so I was really happy with those dates.”

The music industry is heavily influenced by how the youth is reacting towards music and how they obtain their music as well. Physical forms of music are becoming obsolete as the era of streaming music is currently upon us, the main player being Spotify.

Because of Spotify’s curated playlists and incredible discovery tools, it’s easy for people to discover new music while listening to the music that they already love. This way of discovering new music, while being an independent artist, has helped Kevin out immensely.

“Too many times on Twitter, people 40

are saying thank you Spotify for introducing me to this guy and that’s been pretty cool,” Kevin says. “It’s been cool to kind of see it work for me.”

Though proven helpful in Kevin’s case, and in many others, there is still controversy around the fact that musicians aren’t getting paid enough for the amount of streaming that their music gets on platforms like Spotify.

“We’re still adjusting to the paradigm shift that is streaming becoming the industry standard so, it’s kind of a compromise still between the artists and the streamers and I think it’s going in to right direction,” Kevin says. “At the root of it all, it comes down to people listening and engaging with streamers, if everybody subscribed or everybody was that kind of an active user, the vision Spotify has, or that they’ve been preaching about, might take full effect.”

Currently Spotify is streaming Kevin’s EP Mellow Drama but Kevin is hard at work creating a body of work that will soon become his debut album.

“I’ve been writing a lot for it over the holidays, I wrote another batch of 15 or so songs,” Kevin says.

Since he’s been touring non-stop for over a year, he hasn’t had time to focus on writing since all his concentration has been put into touring.

“Being on tour, since I’m independent in that respect, really takes full control of my brain, so now that I’m off, I’m doing a little bit of travelling in April to work with some people and hopefully we’ll get some stuff done,” Kevin says.

On his EP, he was co-producing but this time around he’s doing everything on his own, writing songs on his guitar or piano and having them take a life of their own. Kevin has been exploring a lot of new sounds with this record but the writing is still very much passionate and emotional takes on experiences that are personal to him.

“The main goal is to be honest and to try to make that accessible,” Kevin explains. “As long as I’m connecting with people, whether it’s live or whether it’s on a recording, you listen to something and relate to it in some way, that’s all I’m really shooting for.” NKD

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jukebox the ghost Words by IAN HAYS Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

Jukebox the Ghost is the power-pop band everyone doesn’t realize they already love. The Washington, D.C. trio has paid their dues over the past 10 years and is poised for a take-over of your local radio waves. With four albums released and at least 150 shows a year, the boys are set to take things to the next level. With Ben Thornewill classically trained on piano, Tommy Siegel on guitar, Jesse Kristin on drums, and all contributing to the vocals, Jukebox the Ghost is a congregation of craft and performance.

The guys met in college. Connecting over their love of music, they determined it was “socially acceptable” to start a band.

So, they came together and recorded their first album. Those first years were a rough but rewarding experience for them. From the get-go, they played almost 200 shows a year. They traversed by mini-van and pleaded with fans at shows for floors to sleep on for the night. Their manager was still in college, for goodness sakes. But, it was this nose to the grind, “DIY” aesthetic that chiseled Jukebox into the artists they are today. And while the payoff was gradual, it wasn’t without its rewards.

In the beginning, there was that fear in the back of their heads; that pang of doubt they would succeed haunted them. But, within a year, they were able to quit their day jobs and pursue music fulltime. And they owe this to their ever growing fan base from the countless shows they put on. At venues where maybe 100 people showed up for their early performances, now 1,000 cram in to join in on the fun. Some cities are hit and miss as the guys say there isn’t quite a national awareness of them yet.

On how modern fans consume music, 42

Ben stated that people no longer view music as being local. “We’re a case study in how that is not true. It’s been very local, a grassroots interest in our band over the years.”

And this just proves a dichotomy the industry has struggled to tackle. Music is a global industry. With the technology people have now, you can listen to a song a band in Africa recorded in their garage and then the latest trending pop song within seconds of each other with the push of a finger. There’s an unwavering balance between wanting to bring the world to your fingertips and still give the listener the personal touch like they are at their local record store. As the band put it, “The pro of the internet is anyone can put out a record; the con of the internet is anyone can put out a record.”

So how does Jukebox the Ghost tackle this behemoth? Through crafting smart pop songs and their seemingly endless dates of live shows. The band has “never been a blog darling” and “never been anointed”. So, it is through fan base word of mouth and enthralling new audiences that they climb their way up to success.

Their live shows, especially at first, were naturally energetic, but there was a learning curve. While the band grew up loving and playing music, they weren’t rabid concert goers. They learned to put on a great show through putting in their own work and just being themselves.

And that hard work started to pay off.

Jukebox the Ghost released their self-titled fourth album in October of 2014 on Yep Roc Records. As the album turned heads and got ears buzzing in the industry, the album was re-released on Cherry-

tree Records in 2015 with great success.

Unfortunately, the music industry is a fickle beast with so many trying to do so much all at the same time. Cherrytree Records went under and the band was, and still is, left without a label. While this was tough of on the band, the most frustrating part was seeing the countless good people working there stranded. But, being without a label comes with a price. Having a label allows bands to cross certain barriers. There is a legitimacy for an album when a label puts their stamp of approval on it. Venues and festivals are more willing to book you for gigs. Even though Jukebox the Ghost has legitimacy and connections in the industry from a decade of experience and four albums under their belt, being signed to a label means also that they as artists can put more work into their craft, rather than the business side of everything.

But don’t fret, Jukebox the Ghost has devised a way to come out on top. And it all has to do with their fifth album. Now, this album is still in its infancy; nothing has even been recorded yet. But, they have started writing and hope to start recording by the end of the year. When it comes to goals for the album, it is still too early for anything to be cemented. Creating an album is such a fluid process and the guys want to be open to everything, that setting anything in stone now would only hinder the later outcome. So, they are taking it one step at a time. The first step is writing, of course.

For Ben and Tommy, their best writing comes when they can get isolated in a stationary place off the road. Touring is so hectic it is difficult to get in the correct headspace for creating new material. They

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are so focused on the next show and what is immediately at hand that putting their thoughts elsewhere would hurt more than help. But, when they do get off the road, they can hunker down to focus solely on writing. This gives them open reign. Every song comes out a new way and follows its own path to fruition.

For Tommy, writing a song is like other creative processes. “There’s no trick to writing a song or a book. But, there is a trick to creating a space in which you can create.”

And writing is nothing new to Jukebox the Ghost. For their last record, they recorded 50 demos in 10 months before going into the studio. This is a band that takes their craft seriously. When they get to focus purely on writing, they also get room to play with different arrangements and instrumentation. The band plans on doing this again with their fifth album, while keeping in mind the lessons they have learned with playing so many live shows.

With their last record, performing the songs live wasn’t a top priority when forging the tracks. And as they put it, they “dealt with the consequences”. With such layered arrangements and no plan in place, it was tough to determine what they could instrumentally leave out and what needed to stay when it came to performing songs live. Most artists think of songs having two lives- one recorded and one performed.

This allows them to curate the songs and get the recorded feeling across live when they may not have all the supplemental instrumentation like they do in the studio.

For Jukebox the Ghost, they want to capture the energy and vitality of a live show, knowing the recorded songs will work on stage. But, they want to do this without compromising any of the writing. This is a heavy feat the boys have been well trained to accomplish.

Jukebox the Ghost has all the time they need to get this done. They just finished their most recent tour (save some festivals and one-offs here and there) and are ready to decompress and work on writing. Part of this process is to “reintegrate into life and society”, getting back into normal routines.

They’ve spent the last several months on the road and are more than happy to be sleeping on their own beds again, maybe play a little soccer and watch a little Star Trek. Tommy even has a couple side projects he is working on. The dream is alive and well for Jukebox the Ghost. NKD 44

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she is we Words by TAYLOR DOUGHERTY Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

There are some who are natural born fighters; people who will get back up on their feet no matter what, returning stronger and wiser each time. Rachel Taylor is one of these people. If you’re like me, then you’ve known her since your high school days as one half of the duo He Is We, but after breaking away and going solo in 2014 she’s now back full force with what she calls “He Is We 2.0,” She Is We, and her debut solo record, WAR, out now.

Rachel grew up a military brat and the daughter of two cops. She and her family moved around frequently, leading her to become homeschooled until the 6th grade.

“I was always ‘weird’ because I was homeschooled,” she says, “My curriculum was all through cassette tapes – all music. To memorize things I started turning school into music… I was always like ‘no one else sings math?” This is where the seeds of her future career in music can be found. “I was that kid that, for Christmas, would get a keyboard or a karaoke machine so I could record cassette tapes of me singing over classic music, because it had no words.”

Rachel is the first to admit she had a rough adolescence between dealing with the pain and stress of her parent’s divorce and her dad being sent to Iraq. “That changed everything,” Rachel said of her father deployment. “My dad was my best friend. Still is. There were several times where we’d be on the phone with him and we’d hear sirens go off and the call would cut. We wouldn’t hear from him for three or four days and we wouldn’t know if he was dead or alive.” Her anger sometimes manifested physically and she recalls a particular time when she beat a teacher up with a book for calling her father a “gun-toting gorilla,” which landed her in alternative school. “I told her that men and women, like my father, died for her ability and her right to have that opinion,” Rachel says. Through these tough times though, she always ended up turning back to the one thing that consistently 46

helped her: music. “A church friend brought me a guitar, it was garbage, but I didn’t have anything else. I would teach myself how to play and just started writing. I wrote a song called “Radio” (which appeared on He Is We’s album Old Demos) and after 10 years I’m still playing that song.”

After graduating from alternative school she moved to Tacoma, Washington (which she jokingly calls “Tacompton”) where she began working at Ted Brown Music Company. There she met Trevor Kelly and the two eventually formed He Is We. The bands use of social media as a means of promotion is what got them noticed by Universal Motown.

“It happened really fast,” Rachel said of He Is We’s success. “I was sent out on the road and it was… bad.” During He Is We’s tour in 2012 Rachel was diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis, a chronic inflammatory disease of the axial skeleton, and rheumatoid arthritis, which forced her to leave the tour early.

“It was like one thing after another,” she said.

“That’s when my dad started calling me his phoenix, because no matter what happened I got back up. I would just dust it off and be like ‘alright… let’s go.’ Just like fighting. You’re hittin’ me, but I’m still here. Lets go. And I made it.” Leaving the tour to focus on her health is when her relationship with He Is We began to breakdown. After Trevor Kelly and Stevie Scott, (who had taken over for her after she left the tour), left the group, Rachel returned and attempted to continue, ultimately deciding to go solo and release an EP titled Come Alive. In August 2015, however, she refocused her efforts into She Is We. Rachel credits her connection with the diehard fans what kept her going during the period between He and She Is We. “It was all I had,” she said. “In my thank you’s of [WAR] I have the names of fans who don’t understand that they got me through it.”

For Rachel, WAR represents her full story.

Every battle she has faced and won. “It’s been in the making for awhile now. I didn’t know

I was making a record. I didn’t think I’d be doing this again. I thought it was over. After the record came to be, and I was picked up

by Concord Music Group and Vanguard Records, I was like ‘holy crap… we literally have chapters for each and every battle.’ They let me pick the songs and put them in order so it could make sense,” she said. “It starts with ‘Boomerang’ which kind of sums up everything. From childhood to who I am now… ‘Monster,’ ‘Lead The Fight On,’ and ‘Runaways,’ those songs were done while He Is We was falling apart.”

And while making WAR was therapeutic rewarding in of itself, getting the record out and seeing the fans reaction to it has been another. “I’ve cried every show,” she says with a laugh. “It’s been unreal. I expected some of the diehard fans would pick it up and be sweet but the fact that literally so many people are sharing their stories with me – that was the point of He Is We to begin with and now She Is We where it’s my story. The goal was to bring people together. The goal was to reach the ears and the hearts of people who feel like they have to be quiet. The goal was to make sure that every victim realizes they’re a survivor… it’s like finally music’s being done right.”

Rachel’s optimism is what is most striking.

It can be easier to choose the darker path, a path you can wallow in and one you think gives your feelings validation. But she’s chosen a more difficult path, a path of happiness and strength. She really is a phoenix like her father describes her. She accepts her past and is moving forward through her music. “I’m 25, and this story that seems so dark, somehow, has brought so much happiness to me. After everything I’m able to stand tall and there’s no bitterness anymore. I believe in karma. I believe as long as you keep your chin up and treat others the way you want to be treated, you do things with a pure heart, you might have to look really hard, but there’s something there for you. There’s happiness to be found.” NKD

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