NKD Mag - Issue #29 (November 2013) by NKD Mag

“I thought going on a television show and getting all this exposure was the easy way out ... little did I know it’s the hardest thing you could ever do.” CASSADEE POPE

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FEATURES 4 brendan dooling

10 jackson guthy

14 garrett clayton

20 g.r.l.

22 r5

28 il volo

32 goldhouse

34 new beat fund

36 twin forks

38 young london

56 amber montana

58 danielle peazer

60 k flay

62 ryan newman

66 taryn manning

EDITORIAL 30 op-ed

NKD NAKED MAGAZINE

31 playlist

40 photos: naked eye

PUBLISHERS

SENIOR EDITORs

WRITERS

Ariella Mastroianni Catherine Powell

Isabelle Chapman Noah Tavlin

MANAGING EDITOR

COPY CHIEF

Nicola Pring

PHOTOGRAPHER

COPY EDITORS

Catherine Powell

Tatiana Baez Jenna Ross Alexandra Tse

Isaac Bate Jackie Bui Susan Cheng Asleigh D’Mello Tara DeVincenzo Stacy Magallon Christine O’Dea Shina Patel Stephanie Petit Catherine Powell Tanya Traner

DESIGNERS Catherine Powell

BRENDAN DOOLING Words & Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

Brendan Dooling had an advantage over his The Carrie Diaries cast mates when they began filming in New York City last year: he grew up in New Jersey, a few miles outside of the city. While his co-stars were trying to figure out the subway system, Brendan already knew the exact route to take from his Brooklyn apartment to Upper Manhattan. But he hasn’t always known the way to go. All through high school Brendan dabbled in theater, but didn’t make a full commitment until he completed one semester at SUNY New Paltz and realized school was not for him. Four years later and Brendan is back in high school circa 1984 playing Walt Reynolds, a gay high school student, on The CW’s The Carrie Diaries.

On Acting

Brendan began taking acting classes at a regional theater around the corner from his house when he was 11. The school’s director took a liking to him and helped him score auditions when he was a teenager. “I sucked,” Brendan says, laughing. “I really thought I did so I quit and just focused on school.” He had met his current management team prior to leaving for college, and they assured him that if he hated school, they would work with him when he came back. “That was when I began to take it seriously,” he says. For Brendan, acting is a way to escape. “When I’m in front of the camera, I’m not thinking about Brendan problems,” he says. “Even if I’m doing a bad job performance wise.” Brendan is extremely critical of himself and can never tell when he’s doing a “good” or “bad” job, but he’s learned to just trust the directors to tell him if he’s messing up. When the first season of The Carrie Diaries aired this NKDMAG.COM

past January, Brendan and the rest of the cast would get together on Monday nights to host Twitter parties while the episode was airing. “It’s fun to watch it in a group like that, but I can’t watch it alone because I nitpick every little thing,” he says. And when he says “every little thing,” he means it. Brendan will critique himself when his mouth is open during a moment when he’s not speaking. But his over-analyzing is not completely negative. “I know because I’m on a television show, people are critiquing me on a weekly basis. I feel like I need to keep up with them,” he says.

On Being Seen As Walt:

“I don’t care if people think I’m gay, it’s just weird that people see me as Walt,” Brendan says. Prior to The Carrie Diaries, Brendan had never played one single character for so long. Season one filmed for six months, and season two will wrap at around five months, right before Thanksgiving. Now Brendan is really feeling the effects of being on a teen-oriented television show. Young kids on Twitter often refer to him as Walt, but as weird as it is to him, he doesn’t mind it. “It’s very cool, to be honest,” Brendan says. “Especially because it’s on a global scale.” But it’s disheartening to him when people don’t separate reality from fiction. “I’m interested in acting because I am able to separate fact from fiction,” he says. He truly loves the fans who are overly devoted to the show’s characters, and his main concern is being known for one thing. Though there are some similarities between Brendan and Walt, in many ways, they could not be more different. Walt is heavily involved in pop culture and what’s hot or not, whereas Brendan isn’t exactly “hip.” He can’t remember the last time he read a newspaper or magazine. “Walt is more superficial about things, to put it broadly,” Brendan says. In the first season, Walt uses his outward appearance to hide how he really feels. At interview time, Brendan had only read scripts for the first seven episodes and couldn’t say if the two sides of Walt will match up in season two. “I hope they will,” he says. He clarifies that Walt’s storyline is anything but superficial, but his investment in appearance makes Walt seem that way.

On The Carrie Diaries Expectations

Walt was not a character on Sex and the City, so Brendan himself has never felt pressure to reach a certain expectation with his role. “Lindsey Gort, who plays Samantha in season two, has all the weight on her shoulders,” he says. Besides Carrie, Samantha is the first Sex and the City character to be introduced to the show. It was made clear to Brendan and everyone else early on that The Carrie Diaries was not Sex

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and The City, it’s the story before Sex and The City. “I don’t have anything to imitate or impersonate,” Brendan says.

On What To Expect For Season Two Season two, which premiered Oct. 25, picked up with Walt and Carrie living in the city for the summer. The two are living the nightlife and getting a taste of adulthood while the other two members of the once “core four,” Maggie and Mouse, are still at home. “There’s a very new dynamic,” Brendan says. He adds that the season gets extremely dramatic, and is much less safe than the first season. Now that a core fan base has been established, the show’s writers are taking storylines to much riskier places. “It’s The CW so we can’t do anything to risqué, but the territory we’re walking into is definitely very risky,” Brendan says. Brendan and crew have been hard at work filming since July and will complete 13 episodes before they wrap for the year, and there’s no word on a potential third season yet. Following the first season finale, there were a few months of uncertainty about the show getting picked up for another season. For Brendan, the feeling of not knowing if he had a job in six months was nothing new. “That comes with the territory,” he says. He wasn’t too concerned about it though — Brendan was proud of the work he did on the first season, and if not enough people liked it he would find a new place to prove himself in the industry. But, thanks to the show’s devoted fans, The CW confirmed a second season and Brendan breathed a sigh of relief. “Having a regular job in this industry is rare, and I know how lucky I am,” Brendan says. He may not know where he’ll be in six months, but for now he’s enjoying the opportunity to share his passion with the world for an hour every Friday night. NKD

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JACKSON GUTHY Words by JACKIE BUI

Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

It’s a warm, late summer afternoon in New York City. Singer Jackson Guthy is all smiles as he runs around with his pug, Cruz. “He’s the coolest dog in the world. He comes with me wherever I go,” he says as he picks Cruz up in the air and kisses him. We walk through Madison Square Park to find shade to stand under. Jackson is lively and in good spirits, despite having performed the first three dates of the I Wish tour feeling under the weather. “The show must go on,” he says. “This tour is the start of something huge. I needed to go out there and kill it. You don’t get sick days on tour.” Jackson, a California native, discovered his talent and love for music by accident. He started playing piano at age 4, when his sister was too busy to finish her lessons. “When I started taking her lessons, I learned that I loved it,” Jackson says. “My mom made me do it every day.” He started singing at 7 and writing music at 9, and realized early on that this was something he wanted to do for the rest of his life. When Jackson was 14, Ellen DeGeneres discovered a song he wrote called “Birds” and wanted him to perform on her show. Jackson performed his first single, “Loving” on Ellen’s show. “It was my first live performance for about six million people,” Jackson says. He says his experience on Ellen was unforgettable and he will always be grateful for her. “I’m really lucky Ellen DeGeneres is super supportive of my music,” he says. Not long after, Jackson booked the Music Is Better With U tour with Big Time Rush and One Direction. “This tour was a huge learning experience,” Jackson says. “It gave me confidence for the tours that followed and the tours that hopefully come in the future.” He says waking up in a new city every day to thousands of screaming girls outside his tour bus was overwhelming but also really cool. “These girls are just huge NKDMAG.COM

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fans of One Direction and Big Time Rush and then they get to hear me perform and see who I am when they had no idea. I just think that’s really cool,” Jackson says. Jackson signed with Universal Music after being the opening act for the Music Is Better With U tour, and he stayed with his management team for three years. After leaving Universal to pursue his music independently, he got booked on Ellen again, and this time around he performed two songs. Following The Ellen Show, he was booked on the Summer Break tour with Big Time Rush and Victoria Justice. Around the same time, Randy Jackson discovered him, and began working as his manager. Jackson also got booked on Cher Lloyd’s I Wish tour with Fifth Harmony, which ended in mid-October. Jackson says the major difference he’s seen on all of the tours he has been on is the age of the fans. With each tour he’s booked, the fans have increased in age by a few years. “It’s cool getting to perform for people of all different ages and to see how passionate they are for the music. It’s just incredible,” Jackson says. Jackson’s favorite part of touring is performing live. He says he loves being on stage and performing his own songs for his fans to hear. “The ‘Jack Pack’ is the best [group of] fans anyone could ask for,” he says of his fans. “They make me want to work harder to make music they love.” Jackson is mostly inspired by Justin Timberlake. “I love him. I think he is the most talented person ever,” Jackson says. If there was anyone in the industry that he would like to collaborate with, he says it’s definitely Timberlake. Jackson sees inspiration from his own experiences and the experiences of people around him. The process of writing and recording a song is different every time, but Jackson says, “Me and my best friend Alex Marshall have been working on a record. We go into the studio and lay out ideas. I do all the lyrics and he does all the tracks.”

In addition to music and hanging out with his dog, Jackson spends time surfing. “I’ve been [surfing] almost as long as I’ve been doing music,” he says. “There’s something about it that always clears your head.” If he wasn’t pursuing a career in music, Jackson says he would be a professional surfer. Jackson has received good advice from many people over the course of his career, and he says one of the most poignant messages was from one of his dancers. “It’s small, but he told me that even if you’re sick, the reason why I’m going to go out and kill it is because this is my job,” Jackson says. “I have to make it happen if I want to make my career successful.” Jackson has certainly taken this advice to heart — he says he was sick for the first two dates of the I Wish tour, but he still went out and gave it his all. The turning point in Jackson’s career came when he decided to leave Universal to his pursue his music independently. “Now I have control over the direction I want to go with my music, which is super important to me,” Jackson says. “Macklemore has made it very clear that you don’t even necessarily need a label anymore. So hopefully we’ll be able to do really well with this album and do it really well independently.” Jackson is spending the rest of 2013 working on his single, which should be out before the end of the year. He’s also finishing up his album and going on a radio tour to promote his single. He says fans can expect his first fulllength album in early 2014. Jackson’s goal for this upcoming album, and for his entire career, is to make music that he and his fans can be proud of. “My goal is to write songs about my journey in life, and the experiences that I am surrounded by, and have people find meaning in my words,” he says. “I just want people to relate.” NKD

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GARRETT CLAYTON

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Words by TARA DEVINCENZO & Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

If you Google Garrett Clayton, you’ll get a flood of results focused on two topics: Disney and his similarities to Zac Efron. As a young, handsome new Disney star, 22-yearold Garrett is embracing the opportunity to rise to the level of Efron’s success, but in his own way. Garrett started acting early. When he was 14, he was at an equestrian camp, and he decided to join the cast of the camp’s play that year, Charlotte’s Web. “It was really bad,” Garrett says of the play. “The worst.” Garrett played Uncle Homer, and he admits to forgetting his lines backstage before he went on. “I picked up bullet points of things to use, then [I’d] run out with my cue and I’d improv through the scene until I made those things happen,” he says. “Everyone would be like, ‘Well I guess there goes three pages of dialogue.’ I thought it was awesome.” After Charlotte’s Web, Garrett experimented a little more with acting. He acted on and off in high school. “I quit the drama club for about six months and I realized how much I liked it,” he says. “I was like, ‘Oh, I might actually want to do this.” By the time his school announced the senior play would be Beauty and the Beast, Garrett was in full swing with the drama club. He was confident in his acting, but in order to seduce the Beauty, he had to face the challenge of learning how to sing. He started getting coached and realized that it was much different than anything he had ever tried to learn. “With singing, it’s a lot of self motivation and you have to learn how to be really vulnerable,” he says. “I think at one point I was squatting against a wall to learn how to move my

diaphragm. You wouldn’t expect these things that you have to do. It was really cool.” Singing opened doors for Garrett. Soon after, he auditioned for a movie called Virginia. He says that at the casting call he was one of the few in the crowd of 1,500 randomly selected to audition for the lead. He was considered for the part but was ultimately turned down because the director wanted someone younger and less attractive. Garrett didn’t take getting turned down because of his looks as a loss. “I’ve always been that person if I don’t get something I’d rather it be a physicality or something out my control rather than my talent,” he says. Weeks after auditioning, while watching Saturday Night Live at a friend’s house, Garrett got an unlikely callback. One of the executive producers of Virginia called him and offered to be his manager. “He was like, ‘I think you’re talented and can have a bright future. If you keep your head on straight you can do this.’ So I was like, ‘Ok, what do I need to do?’” Garrett says. Garrett’s new manager gave him all the steps he needed to work on to become great. His first piece of advice for Garrett was to watch movies that had won Academy Awards and to start studying the acting. The next step was to move to Los Angeles. He went to a casting call for Days of Our Lives and got a walk on role. He was flown to L.A. for the part and set up a meeting with his manager during the same trip. This meeting was meant to lay out the next six months. Garrett realized it was the biggest opportunity he had ever had, and he knew he had to stay level-headed and realistic. “It was

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kind of a big wake up,” he says. “If I’m really gonna drop my life and try this I have to make a plan.” Garrett grew up in Detroit, going back and forth between his mother and father’s neighborhoods, so moving wasn’t a huge shock to him. “For me it’s always been constant change and constant moving,” he says. “You know the old saying, ‘The only thing you can expect in life is change?’ I think that’s been my whole life. It feels like it’s these amazing moments that are stacking up next to each other, but I’m just trying to appreciate them as they come.” Before Garrett moved to L.A., he took a road trip with his closest friends from Michigan to New York. “We knew that our time was up and we had to commit if we wanted to spend time together,” he says. “For us, it was always kind of like that place where you never know what’s gonna happen.” It was the last few days of relaxation before his career would be his main focus, but the cameras were rolling. “We actually recorded the whole trip,” Garrett says. “It started off as a YouTube series.” When Garrett got to L.A., it was only three months before he landed his first guest role on Disney’s TV series Shake It Up! A month after that, he did an independent film before he was cast in his biggest project yet: Disney Channel’s Teen Beach Movie. For his role as a teenage surfer in the 1960s, he

got a trainer and surf lessons before he flew to Puerto Rico for three months to shoot the movie. “It was kind of like a lights, camera, action moment,” he says. “I don’t think anyone can prepare for anything like that … it was zero to 60.” When Teen Beach Movie came out earlier this year, critics immediately compared Garrett to Zac Efron. “It’s very understandable,” Garrett says. “If I’m going to be compared to somebody, at least it’s him. He’s doing what he loves, he’s making his own work, how many people can say that?” Though he gets compared to Efron, Garrett finds inspiration from other stars as well. “I really love actors like Hugh Jackman and Ben Stiller and Johnny Depp because even though they’re all drastically different people doing completely different projects, they’re all leading actors and they’re all doing what they love,” he says. Garrett knows that to get to those standards, he has to start somewhere, and Disney is one of the best places possible to do it. “I’m at a stage in my life where I need the exposure, and it’s a great company,” he says. “Everything is just a snowball effect.” Garrett is enjoying his success, and he’s shooting for bigger things in the future. His ultimate goal, he says, is to, “come up with a concept, write a script, produce it, direct it and star in NKD it.”

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G.R.L.

Words & Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

The philosophy behind up-and-coming pop act g.r.l. is inspiring: “There is no ‘I’ in ‘team,’ and there is no ‘I’ in ‘G.R.L.’” The five girls (Lauren Bennett, Paula Van Oppen, Natasha Slayton, Simone Battle and Emmalyn Estrada) try to represent girls everywhere, and they each bring their unique personalities to the table. They embrace their differences to empower and support other girls, and not tear each other down. All the girls share a passion for singing and dancing, but besides that they couldn’t be more different. Their original qualities are what make G.R.L. an unstoppable force in the music world, and perfect role models for young females.

Lauren Bennett - “The Goofball”

On Working Together: Lauren is the only girl in G.R.L. who always wanted to be in a group. She would spend hours online searching for people that would fit. The group she pulled together is even better than she imagined because they all have the same expectations for the group, and know they’ll be more successful together than apart. “If we don’t stick together I don’t think it’d be possible for any of us to reach our goals,” she says.

Emmalyn Estrada – “The Baby”

On Joining: The girls discovered Emmalyn on YouTube and were incredibly impressed with her voice. But to be a part of the group, she needed to be able to dance. “They called me and were like, ‘Can you dance?’ and I was like, ‘Uh, of course…’” Emmalyn says. The next day she went to a dance class so she would be qualified to join G.R.L.

Simone Battle – “The Brainy One”

On Their Unique Voices: Each girl in G.R.L. puts her personality into each and every song with how they choose to sing it. On top of that, they all have unique voices that are easy to differentiate from one another. “When someone else starts to sing on our records, you can tell,” Simone says. The girls all add their own flare to each track, whether it be with ad-libbing or playing with their voices.

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Natasha Slayton – “The Girly One”

On The Group: Having already had experience working within a girl group, Natasha was hesitant about doing it again. She had planned on a solo career before Lauren reached out to her about G.R.L. She agreed to give it a try and couldn’t be more thrilled with how things worked out. “We’re really all best friends, which is weird because you wouldn’t think that five girls being put together would get along at all,” Natasha says.

Paula Van Oppen – “The Hippie”

On Being True To Themselves: With pop music, it’s almost impossible to tell if something is real or a gimmick. With G.R.L., what you see is who they are. They’ve faced criticism for always wearing makeup or dressing well from those who say it doesn’t represent all girls, but the truth is they love the glam. “We love putting on makeup and dressing up, it’s who we are and we’re not going to hide that,” Paula says. NKD

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Words by STACY MAGALLON & Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

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R5 feel really good about their lives right now. When I met them back in December, the members of five piece poprock band — dressed in coordinated black and white ensembles for their show at Highline Ballroom in New York City — were anticipating the release of their EP, Loud (2013). Since then, they’ve released a full-length album, and they’re only getting started. I meet up with the band at Bryant Park in New York City on the morning after their Good Morning America television performance. The band — Lynch siblings (Riker, Rocky, Ross and Rydel) and their long time friend, drummer Ellington Ratliff — welcome me with “How’ve you been?” and “Long time no see!” This time around, they’re not dressed to match, but they follow a pattern of ripped jeans, comfortable T-shirts and combat boots or running shoes. We gather around two small tables with black folding chairs, still damp from the on-and-off rain. Lead guitarist Rocky takes a napkin and helps me wipe off some of the water off the chairs. After playing to a crowd of roughly 17,000 people in Toronto a few days ago and performing on Good Morning America, the quintet has no complaints about their career. While Ross and Rocky argue over the size of their Canadian crowd, Ratliff gets a word in. “The last few days have been pretty epic,” he says. Their eyes widen when I tell them I pre-ordered the deluxe edition of their new record. Their new album, Louder (2013),

is an extension of their four-song EP. Under the guidance of producers Emanuel “Eman” Kiriakou, Evan Bogart and Andrew Goldstein, the band worked to create the most versatile album possible. It took much longer to record Louder than it did to record Loud. The band wrote most of the new material while promoting the EP on tour. They spent many nights recording and brainstorming on the back lounge of their tour bus, which cut down studio time to three weeks. “Being with the same group of producers for three weeks straight was really fun,” Ratliff says. By the end of the third week, friendly pranks began. “Whenever someone left their computer open to go to the bathroom, one of the producers would take their laptop and send bizarre emails to the head of our record label,” keyboardist Rydel recalls. Her band mates laugh hysterically. In one instance, Rydel was the jokester sending out those emails. Fingers were immediately pointed at her brothers and Ratliff, while no one suspected her. She still takes pride in her prank. “Those emails said really bad things or were extremely inappropriate,” Ratliff says, smiling. Over the past few months, R5 have traveled to London, Paris and Sydney. A cameraman filmed their overseas adventures for their behind the scenes collection of videos titled “R5 on R5,” which they made for their Vevo channel. There was a major language barrier in France, but that didn’t stop the band from

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getting through to their international fan base. “We learned enough to get around,” Rydel says. “But we still can’t complete a full sentence of French.” Ross interjects with, “I said, ‘Je t’aime’ a lot,” before he tilts down the frames of his sunglasses and winks at me. R5 tried to see as much of each new city as much possible, but jet lag got in the way sometimes. “If we didn’t have a camera guy with us, I’d probably be sleeping,” Rydel says. R5 are expanding their international travel soon — they’re set to visit Japan in November, hopefully South America during the holiday season and they’ve got their fingers crossed for a world tour next summer. Rocky is personally determined to play songs off Louder at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in their home state of Colorado in 2014. R5 are hopeful for radio play with their album’s recent release, but they are open to other paths as well. “I don’t want to stop at Top 40 radio,” Ross says. “I hope our album goes wherever it wants to go.” “Is it raining again?” Rocky asks as he looks up into the light gray sky. Riker and Ross mimic their brother, squinting their eyes and staring upward. “No, dude,” Riker says. “I think the leaves above us are just wet.” It is indeed beginning to drizzle again, but I decide to let the two bicker it out in a brotherly fashion. It’s R5’s overall quirky, familial charm that makes their fans go crazy for them. “Why would you want boring

fans?” Rocky asks. Their fan base, commonly referred to as the R5Family, are anything but boring. Fans from the Tri-state area began lining up for their Good Morning America performance at 9 p.m. the night before, but it doesn’t stop there — fans spread their love for the band via social networking, specifically Twitter. “The crazier, the better,” Ross says. R5 want to be known as a serious pop-rock group because they are constantly fighting a stereotype. Ross has a lead role on Disney Channel’s Austin & Ally and Riker has a recurring role on Fox’s Glee. “People don’t know what to expect, which leads them to make assumptions about us,” Rydel says. Austin & Ally premiered in 2011 and Riker has been a Dalton Academy Warbler on Glee since 2010. R5, however, have been rocking out since 2009. “Our management in the U.K. knew of our Disney affiliation and certain assumptions were made,” Riker says. “But after we got off stage, they told us we were unbelievable.” The last time I spoke with R5, they discussed their persistent work ethic and how bettering themselves as a group for “next time” is crucial for success. They still stand by that principal almost a year later. “I feel like we raised the bar from our EP to our album,” Rocky says. His band mates agree. For now, they’re determined to write even better material, and somehow incorporate pyrotechnics and background dancers into their live shows. R5 agree that pushing that bar will extremely hard, but it won’t be impossible.

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If you could play the lead role in any movie, what movie would it be? rydel: Tangled ross: That Thing You Do! rocky: The Lord of the Rings ratliff: North by Northwest riker: Casino Royale

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IL VOLO Words by TANYA TRANER & Photos by CATHERINE POWELL For operatic pop group Il Volo, language isn’t a barrier when it comes to music. It’s a good thing, too, because they’re playing all over the world. The three singers, Ignazio Boschetto, Gianluca Ginoble and Piero Barone, met on an Italian music competition show in 2009. While competing against one another, Ignazio says a producer paired the three of them together to perform the song “O Sole Mio.” After the show ended, the singers continued to tour and create music together, and eventually formed Il Volo. The trio describes themselves as “three voices, one soul.” “When we sing together we all have the same goal, and when we mix our three voices, it’s really something,” Ignazio says. “But one thing is that we love music. Our passion and love is for music.” Their quick rise to international stardom began with a guest appearance on Barbra Streisand’s SRO tour, followed by appearances on American Idol and The Ellen DeGeneres Show. The group signed with Geffen Records, making them the first Italian artists to sign with an American label in the United States. Fans have taken to this trio — they play sold out shows at nearly every stop on their current North American tour. “I think our fans are the best ever because they love us and you can imagine how much we love them.” Ignazio says. Gianluca adds, “listening to the fans singing your songs is incredible.” While it amazes the group to hear fans relate to the passion and emotion of a song even when they cannot understand the Italian words, the guys have no plans to translate their music. “These songs were born in Italy, and we’ll keep singing in Italian,” Ignazio says. “Our goal is to bring the name of Italy to the entire world.” However, Gianluca says they did put some English songs on their latest album, We Are Love (2012), for their American fans, but they sing in French, German and Spanish on the record as well. “What’s important is music,” he says. “Not the language.” The group says they miss their original fans back in Italy, and their families, while on tour. “We are here thanks to our parents,” Gianluca says. “Without the support of our parents we are nothing.” Each morning they talk to their families on Skype, and have their parents travel with them whenever possible. “Being without our families is a heartbreaker,” Ignazio says. “We hope to go back sometime before Christmas to Italy.” Upon wrapping up their tour on Nov. 12, they will continue promoting their latest record, Buon Natale: The Christmas Album (2013), which might make it difficult for them to get home to their families before the holidays. “Every morning we sing ‘I’ll Be Home For Christmas.’ Good luck.” Ignazio jokes. Gianluca says their love and passion for sharing music with the world makes these sacrifices worth it. “We want people to know that we are doing this for the love of music and not for business,” he says. “It’s the last thing we are thinking about is money.” NKD

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WRITE-IN | ANTHONY LI of action item e

Does size matter?

Sorry to disappoint if you’re intrigued by the title, but get your mind out of the gutter! This article is an attempt to examine what exactly the “size” of band means. I’m sure you’ve heard, “Wow, so-and-so is blowing up,” or “That band is massive.” But what does that really entail? There’s no global-account-of-how-huge-an-artistis chart. However, if you were to compare two acts, you can make an educated guess as to which is “bigger.” Picture yourself at a concert. The band is about to take the stage and you’re surrounded, shoulder-to-shoulder with people screaming the band’s name. At your imaginary concert, how many people are there? 100? 1,000? 10,000? You go home from the concert and the next day at school or work, and a friend asks you who you saw last night. Have they ever heard of that band before? An artist’s size can be determined by how many tickets they sell when headlining. An artist’s size can also be determined by how many people have heard of them. But which is more important? Do you remember that band that had that one single five years ago? Of course you do, but how many people go see them now? Size isn’t permanent, because people change what they care about. Being the math nerd that I am, I tried to hypothesize an equation that can accurately describe an artist’s size. If you failed high school algebra, feel free to skip this paragraph. I personally think it’s more important to have people care about your music, rather than just have a huge number of people who have heard about you. Much like music, fans are quality over quantity, with a massive amount of quality fans being the obvious goal. So if X is the number of people who are familiar with an artist and Y is the amount of people who are passionate about an artist, the equation would look like this: X x 2Y = Artist’s Size Y Or, X times double Y over Y. Doubling Y gives the fans who care, all of the strength. One single person’s love and dedication to artist can mean more to a career than most will ever know or appreciate. Now that I’ve successfully been able to make your brain hurt, let’s get to the real facts. When it comes down to raw numbers, size should be directly related to financial success. It is the music business. Financial charts of superstars are readily available but what about the thousands of artists who aren’t on the Forbes list this year? There’s no way to actually tell. Size is relative, no matter how you look at it. If you take one thing away from this article, you should know how much a passionate, loyal fan can mean to an artist. You’re the reason why people like myself are able to fulfill our dreams. So if you’re a dedicated fan of someone’s, let this be me thanking you on their behalf. If you’re an artist and you’re reading this, you better go the extra mile every time.

THE PLAYLIST Aly Silverio of Jawbreaking takes us through her current top tracks.

TRACKS 1. “ADORE YOU” - MILEY CYRUS

2. “ANGELS” - THE XX 3. “MAKE YOU FEEL MY LOVE” - ADELE

4. “WITH ME” - SUM 41

5. “VIDEO GAMES” - LANA DEL RAY

6. “BIG PARADE” - THE LUMINEERS

7. “EVERYTHING” - MICHAEL BUBLÉ

8. “THE WAY I AM” - INGRID MICHAELSON

9. “EASY TO FALL IN LOVE” - BRIGHTEN

10. “REPLAY” - ZENDAYA

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GOLDHOUSE Words by STEPHANIE PETIT & Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

Most college students spend their weekends either partying or studying. Grant Harris of GOLDHOUSE did neither. “Instead of going to parties and stuff, I was in my dorm room writing music,” he says. Although music began as a hobby for Grant, it eventually took precedence over schoolwork. He soon gave up studying dentistry to pursue music full-time. Grant’s parents supported his decision — his father is a classically trained pianist, and he met Grant’s mother while performing. “They were totally cool with it because they ultimately wanted me to do what I enjoy doing,” Grant says of his parents. “I think [my music] not being completely horrible helped them be ok with it. They heard what I was working on and knew that it wasn’t just a lost cause.” Grant never expected the solo project that began in his dorm room five years ago under the moniker Breathe Electric to actually go anywhere. Now, Grant doesn’t feel like the material he wrote as Breathe Electric represents him. “I was like, ‘Man, this doesn’t really characterize what I originally set out to do,’” he says. “I’ve made such a transition over the years and I just kind of wanted to start fresh.” His current project, GOLDHOUSE, represents more than just a new title — it feels and sounds like something new to Grant. Although he creates electro-pop similar to Breathe Electric, he believes GOLDHOUSE has a clearer focus. He describes it as “’80s pop vocals with today’s dance-electronic instrumentals.” While he produces all of his recordings electronically, he does add live bass and drums to his shows. “I never wanted to say, ‘Now it’s just going to be a regular band for live,’ because I don’t think that’s representative of the music, but I also didn’t want to go up there and just hit play and kind of karaoke-sing

over it,” Grant says. “I wanted to do some things that I hadn’t really seen other people do.” The product is a DJ/live band hybrid with live vocals. Grant also mixes and modulates his tracks on the fly. GOLDHOUSE spent the past summer on the Vans Warped Tour, even though Grant’s music isn’t typical of the tour’s style, which tends to be mostly punk rock. “It’s definitely different because there’s a lot of rock, there’s a lot of metal,” Grant says. “Some of the biggest drawing bands at Warped Tour this year were metal bands.” Undeterred, GOLDHOUSE upped their energy level and “people started to give us a chance,” Grant says. “It was honestly great. It was better than we could have hoped.” Grant decided he wanted to put out a new recording early this past summer. He traveled to Los Angeles and worked with Canadian singer-songwriter Simon Wilcox on two songs, “Feel Good” and “All Over You.” Grant wrote the rest of the songs on his own. The three-month-long process turned into his latest EP, Back To Life (2013). “I feel like Back to Life was really a culmination of everything I’ve been going for and I finally hit that sound that I’ve been searching for for five years,” Grant says. “I finally felt like I had a finished product.” After a four-week tour with Young London this fall and having his remix of Lady Gaga’s latest hit “Applause” appear on the single’s official remix bundle, some musicians would take some time to catch their breath. Instead, Grant hopes to release a full-length album early next year. “It’s always up in the air,” he says. “The goals that I want to achieve coming up are the goals I always want to achieve. I want to consistently put out better and well-rounded music and music people can relate to and really makes them feel good.” NKD NKDMAG.COM

NEW BEAT FUND Words by ASHLEIGH D’MELLO & Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

New Beat Fund’s description of their music as “the best kind you have ever heard” might raise a few eyebrows. However, they have reason for their confidence. The past few months have been a whirlwind for this Los Angeles four-piece. If signing to Red Bull Records and playing their very first Vans Warped Tour wasn’t enough, they spent September touring the country, opening arena and club shows for Blink-182. “It’s not really something you think will happen,” says guitarist Shelby Archer of the Blink-182 tour. Blink-182’s New York show, a Sept. 11 memorial show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg — their most intimate years — added to the enormity of what New Beat Fund were doing. “We all grew up learning their songs and it’s just crazy to be opening for them, especially playing a venue this small,” Shelby says. “It’s a very, very surreal feeling.” New Beat Fund attribute much of their success to their unique sound. “We call it G-Punk,” Shelby says. “Like, Gangsta Punk, from the West Coast. We grew up on hip-hop and Snoop, Dre and Tupac. We also grew up with punk rock. We pretty much just smashed it together and we call it G-Punk.” Bassist Paul Laliberte says New Beat Fund formed through a combination of family ties to his brother, guitarist Jeff Laliberte, and a “garlic mashed potato, silk robe and pinot grigio” encounter with Shelby and drummer Michael Johnson. As for their name, Michael says: “We were working in a studio called Sound City in Los Angeles, and there was a jar that said ‘New Boat Fund’ on it, but the ‘O’ had been crossed out and the ‘E’ had been put on there, so it said ‘New Beat Fund.’” While a jar with only “a paperclip and a gummy worm,” according to Paul, might not inspire or motivate most bands, New Beat Fund’s sense of humor and optimism paid off. Red Bull Records signed the band, and the two are a perfect match. “A big reason we went with them instead of some other labels that liked us is that they didn’t want to change us at all,” Paul says. For a group that has always had the same four members, not making compromises is an important consideration. “They give us the resources to express ourselves and our vision. They even let us give away our music for free,” Paul says. Like Red Bull, Warped Tour also has a reputation for taking risks that pay off. “We were definitely the outcasts of Warped Tour, which is a tour for outcasts. So we were the outcasts of the outcasts,” Michael says. “It was actually really cool, the spectrum of music this year was pretty broad. We’re definitely not a screamo-hardcore band. So after a day of listening to a lot of that, I think we were kind of refreshing to people.” For a band that named themselves after an empty jar, New Beat Fund has had an undeniably remarkable year. New Beat Fund are currently on tour with several bands they played with this summer — 3OH!3, The Summer Set, and Wallpaper. on the Journeys Noise Tour. Aside from touring, Shelby says, “We are still writing and getting that out to people as much as we can. We are always working on music and recording.” NKD

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TWIN FORKS Words by CHRISTINE O’DEA Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

After almost 13 years as frontman of acoustic/indie rock band Dashboard Confessional, Chris Carrabba hit a dead end. “I don’t know if anything went away with Dashboard,” Chris says. “I just know that at some point when I sat down to write Dashboard songs, nothing came out. And I sat down a lot of times to write Dashboard songs.” These experiences slowly brought Chris to the think about doing something new and different, which led him to his new project, folk/ Americana band Twin Forks. Dashboard Confessional toured with successful rock bands like Wilco, Beck, Weezer, U2, Bon Jovi, Say Anything and Saves The Day. Chris says, however, that this is the music he has wanted to make since the beginning of his music career. With Twin Forks, he has found joy in the process of making meaningful music. He spent over a year bringing together a band that could have a real connection, and planting the seed that would eventually grow into Twin Forks. The group is born out of Chris’ friendships with each member — Suzie Zeldin on mandolin and vocals, Jonathan Clark on bass and Ben Homola on drums. Chris, who plays guitar and sings, thinks Twin Forks came together to find even greater connections as a group than he had with each member individually. “It’s a collaborative group,” he says. The band could easily have never become a serious project. Each member played in different bands, kept different schedules and no one was interested in joining a new band. “So we kept saying, ‘We’re not a band, we’re not a band’,” Chris says. “We really fell in love with the music but we kept saying we’re not a band.” After playing just one show, the group felt the bond that comes with playing music together. Chris says the members of the group simply had the same feeling after the first show. 36

It was the moment when they felt like a band. “Whatever it was that we came off that stage after the first show and said, ‘We’re a band.’ It’s a big goal of mine to never lose that,” Chris says. Chris says the music Twin Forks wrote at first was “not exactly what Twin Forks would come to be.” Each day brought different results depending on who brought ideas to the table. From traditional or contemporary country to heavier rock sounds, Suzie, Jonathan, Ben and Chris tried a mixture of musical genres but kept returning to a simple idea of natural and acoustic. The group threw a few covers of Hank Williams’ songs or “Galway Girl” by Steve Earle into their live sets, which audiences received warmly. Chris cites those songs as some of the key inspirations for Twin Forks. Because each member of the band came from other musical projects, like The Narrative, Dashboard Confessional and Bad Books, fans had preconceived expectations of Twin Forks. Thanks to these involvements, they also have years of experience and thousands of fans. However, much to the annoyance of promoters, Twin Forks has made a point not to promote themselves with the names of their other projects. “We weren’t going to go play these big places and put on a marquee ‘Chris Carrabba and Twin Forks,’” he says. “It’s important enough that we need to allow it to live or die on its own merit.” Chris realizes people have assumptions about their music, but he has faith in Twin Forks. “I think [fans] will find more energy in what we’re doing now than in anything that we’ve ever done in front of any number of people before. I’d rather play the smallest room you’ve got for the cheapest tickets you’ve got,” he says. “We believe we can earn a fan base just based on what our music is. We’re inviting you to a Twin Forks show because we are Twin Forks.” NKD

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YOUNG LONDON Words by STEPHANIE PETIT & Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

It is a sunny, Saturday afternoon in New York City, but inside The Studio at Webster Hall, where electro-pop duo Young London are playing a show, it’s hard to tell. With flashing lights, dance-ready music and a small but enthusiastic crowd, it feels more like 3 a.m. Matt Rhoades and Sarah Graziani’s enthusiasm is contagious. Matt tells the crowd, “We’re killing it in this dungeon.” At first, they seem an unlikely pair. The two have different tastes in music: Matt likes European-dance techno, and Sarah prefers singer-songwriters like Regina Spektor, Ellie Goulding and Fiona Apple. But somehow the two have managed to use their contrasting styles to create a unique sound. Matt and Sarah, both 27, also contradict each other in appearance. Sarah is a petite, bubbly blonde in contrast to Matt’s tall frame. She is the lead vocalist, while he is the producer and engineer, though he also sings on their tracks. Although both call Boston home, the pair didn’t cross paths until 2010 when Sarah came into a small studio Matt owns in Boston to do guest vocals on her friend’s project. Matt was playing in a rock band called And Then There Were None at the time, but he broke up the band to work with Sarah as Young London. “[Matt] really liked my voice and he was like, ‘We need to write together,’” Sarah says. “He kind of just kidnapped me, and that’s how it got started.” Like their tastes in music, their writing styles were very 38

different. Matt is calculated when he writes lyrics, and Sarah is the opposite. “The stuff that I write about, he makes fun of me,” Sarah says. “It just comes to me from the sky. It means something to me. For me, it’s usually about relationships and stuff like that, but he writes about, like, space which is cool, too.” When it comes to the music, Sarah says Matt is usually in the studio and comes up with the music for a song, then she will get an idea for the vocal melody. They quickly realized the music they wrote did not fit into the standard for the Boston music scene. “We kind of do the opposite of what everybody else in Boston does,” Sarah says. “Boston is really rock and roll. Even though pop-dance stuff was kind of huge at the time, in Boston it still felt underground.” Young London was picked up by Tooth & Nail, the record label And Then There Were None worked with, and they headed west to work on an album. In 2011, Sarah and Matt flew out to Los Angeles where they worked with a producer and released their self-titled first record. However, they found the songs they were most proud of were the most were the ones they wrote themselves. Young London left the label, and this year they independently released a new EP, Instincts, with the help of a Kickstarter campaign. Fans helped them raise more than

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their goal of $8,000 to manufacture Instincts, as well as cover touring travel expenses and new merchandise. On this EP, they stuck to writing the music they wanted to do, instead of what labels or producers wanted. “We were like, ‘Alright, let’s go back to our instincts and do the music that we genuinely like,’” Sarah says. “That’s what it means to us.” Sarah adds that the EP contains a few different types of songs on it. The duo hope to produce more electronic dance music in the future. While EDM might not seem like it belongs on Vans Warped Tour where fans are more accustomed to seeing alternative, rock and metal bands, the tour is evolving to include more musical diversity. The new Spotify stage added to the tour this year included many DJs and EDM artists such as Outasight and Wallpaper., so Young London fit in well during the tour this past summer. “We were wondering, ‘Is anyone going to like us?’” Sarah says. “We met tons of people in our same genre which we were not expecting at all. Kids were really into it. We didn’t know what to expect but it was good.” Their live show is energetic and keeps their audience moving. “Especially with the new record, I can see [the audience] dancing a lot,” Sarah says. During their shows, their original songs are intermingled with remixes of today’s radio favorites such as “We Are

Young” by Fun. as well as throwbacks like Third Eye Blind’s “Semi-Charmed Life,” a song Matt pushed for — Third Eye Blind is his favorite band. “We call that the cover sandwich,’” Sarah says. “We like to make anybody able to enjoy our set even if they haven’t heard us before, so we do it to keep everybody feeling like they’re still involved. We put our own spin on it, but people can still feel like, ‘I know that song.’” They also recorded a cover of “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles, which was originally performed by a male/female duo like Young London. Sarah and Matt’s chemistry is evident, and people often ask if they are together. But that is something they’re keeping to themselves. “We don’t tell anyone,” Sarah says. Instead, the two seem focused on the future. After spending the summer on Warped Tour and a few weeks in the fall on tour with GOLDHOUSE, Matt and Sarah are anxious to start working on new material. “We’ve been antsy because we couldn’t really write all summer and now we’re out again,” Sarah says. ”We’re excited to get back in the studio and do some new stuff.” They have one simple goal in mind when writing their music. “I just want people to have a good time,” Sarah says. “It sounds like a cliché but I just want people to be happy.” NKD NKDMAG.COM

SELENA GOMEZ Oct. 20, The Prudential Center (Newark, N.J.)

THE WANTED Oct. 26, Roseland Ballroom (New York, N.Y.)

DRAKE Oct. 27, The Prudential Center (Newark, N.J.)

cassadee E P PO Words & Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

AnnaSophia Robb.

remember the exact moment I knew Cassadee Pope was a star. It was the summer of 2009 and Cassadee’s old alt-pop band Hey Monday was performing at the Highline Ballroom in New York City on their first headlining tour. There was a point in the set when the band left the stage and Cassadee was set to perform the band’s acoustic treasure “6 Months,” accompanied only by an acoustic guitar. But there were technical difficulties and Cassadee was forced to sing the song a capella. The sold out room went silent and I felt a chill go through my spine. Three years later, four of the biggest names in music turned their chairs around on The Voice as America felt that same chill through their TV screens. I meet the pop-turned-country singer in New York City. It’s been about a year since Cassadee’s Voice audition aired, and she hasn’t really slept since. “Everything has changed, honestly,” Cassadee says. Prior to auditioning (and eventually winning) season three of The Voice, Cassadee was struggling. After Hey Monday broke up in 2011, she attempted a solo career without the help of a label and wasn’t satisfied with the outcome. 48

“There was always this dark cloud hanging over me,” she says. “I knew there was only so much I could do by myself.” She self-released an EP and went on a small tour, but she eventually hit a wall and couldn’t support her career financially any longer. With no label or management backing her, only her fans were pushing her forward, and even they were beginning to lose interest. Growing up, she had big dreams of singing in an arena with thousands of fans singing back to her, and after a few months of struggling she started to believe that wasn’t a plausible goal anymore. “I knew it could only go on for so long before I really couldn’t do it anymore,” Cassadee says. When she got the call from producers for The Voice, she had to “let go of her pride” a little bit. They had called her before season two asking her to participate, but she politely declined because she wanted to try it on her own. “I thought going on a television show and getting all this exposure was the easy way out … little did I know it’s the hardest thing you could ever do,” Cassadee says. When the second call came, she knew it was now or never — they weren’t going to call her again.

When previews for season three started airing, footage of all four judges turning around for one singer was being used to hype up the show. Cassadee was that singer. Going into her audition with that dark cloud still lingering over her head, to walking off the stage after being fought over by the judges is something Cassadee describes as one of the best moments of her life. That single moment relit her fire and passion for her career. “It felt like I was starting over in a much more positive way,” she says. When her episode finally aired, she was shocked by the amount of air time she was given. Contestants are told which week their audition will air, but not which episode of two that air each week, or at what time. Cassadee anxiously watched Monday night’s episode, but was not in it. When Tuesday’s episode was almost over, she assumed she would just be thrown in a montage with other contestants. But she was wrong. The Voice gave her a long segment at the end of the show, and so began her journey. Throughout the season, Cassadee constantly received hateful messages from people who didn’t think she deserved to compete on The Voice because of her previous success. “I took it pretty hard,”

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ORIGINAL LOVE

Cassadee met her boyfriend Rian Dawson, drummer of pop-punk band All Time Low, when Hey Monday toured with them early on in their career. In a joint interview with Alternative Press, Rian admitted he wished Cassadee could still tour with his band, but it obviously doesn’t make sense anymore given their styles. However, Cassadee thinks that has made their relationship stronger. “It’s made us realize how badly we want to be together,” she says. There will be times when they don’t see each other for several months because of their equally demanding schedules, but their time together is always unique. Cassadee is confident they’ll stay strong because of their mutual respect for each other’s careers. “He has never seen me so happy and excited in my life, and I think that makes for a great relationship,” she says.

she says. “I’ve worked very hard since I was a kid.” She admits that Hey Monday were treated very well early on in their career — they scored a Fall Out Boy tour less than a year after forming. But they had their own set of issues with their label and management teams. But even prior to Hey Monday Cassadee had heard her fair share of “no’s” when it came to singing. “To say I don’t deserve this as much as a kid who’s never gotten a rejection was really insulting,” she says. Luckily, Cassadee had a number of people ready to jump to her defense, including Maroon 5 singer and The Voice judge, Adam Levine. He said the kids who took their shot with The Voice didn’t have anything to lose because if it didn’t work out, they would have so many other shots. People like Cassadee, who had already been in the industry for over four years, had everything to lose — The Voice was her last shot, and she scored. Levine had been rooting for Cassadee before day one. Cassadee’s roommate, Ali Tamposi, was dating James Valentine, Maroon 5’s guitarist, prior to Cassadee’s audition, and he told Levine that Cassadee would be auditioning. “Before the show even started, Adam knew a girl named Cassadee Pope was going to try out, but he didn’t know what song I was going to be singing,” she says. When he turned around he instantly recognized her and was legitimately mad when Cassadee chose Blake Shelton to coach her instead of him. I joke that it’s probably not a bad feeling to be wanted by Adam Levine, and she laughs and says, “I can’t say I minded…” Shelton was her first choice from the beginning, but not because he is a country singer, like many people assumed. Cassadee didn’t know she wanted to go country — she chose Shelton because he was more of a hands-off coach. “He’s like your cheerleader, he doesn’t get too pushy,” she says. She knew what she wanted to do and just wanted someone to help, not tell her what she should do. Before the show she was very closedminded and stubborn when it came to her music, but when she chose songs for The Voice, she didn’t restrict herself to any genres. She chose to sing Miranda Lambert’s hit “Over You” because the lyrics meant something to her and Shelton, who wrote the song about his 52

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brother’s passing. “I went in thinking, ‘This is a beautiful song,’ not, ‘This is a country song,’” Cassadee says. The judges and viewers’ reactions aided her decision to pursue country music. Cassadee grew up on country music, and she always loved it. She believes that even without The Voice, she would have made the switch eventually. “I never really considered myself a honky-tonk artist,” she says, laughing. “I didn’t think I would be accepted in Nashville.” Even after she won The Voice she still had to think about what direction she wanted to go in. It was her friend Ali Tamposi who eventually persuaded her to go the country route. Ali, who is a songwriter herself, knew that writing a pop album meant sitting in a room writing words over a pre-made track, and she also knew that wasn’t for Cassadee. “I go into a session with a guitar and that’s how I want to do it,” Cassadee says. She identifies with the musicianship and respect for instruments that exists within country music. “You can actually hear all the instruments on a record. Does that even happen in any other genre anymore?” she says. She thinks country music is always relevant, which is why she’s confident she’ll be sticking around it for a long time. “It alters and there are trends, but there’s always that authentic sound that will never go away,” she says. At the time of our interview, Cassadee has only released four songs off of her debut album, Frame By Frame. The album was released on Oct. 8 and

debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard Top 200. The album as a whole is extremely personal, but the song “11” stands out for fans, and for Cassadee. The song tells the story of her parent’s divorce when she was a kid and how it forced her to grow up rather quickly. Because of some of the lyrics, (“When dad would drive away and take his love with him”) Cassadee was worried how the song would come across — especially to her parents. “‘11’ isn’t about bashing anybody or making my parents feel bad about what they did,” she says. “I just wanted to go back to that place of feeling helpless.” She notes that if she wrote a song about how she feels about the divorce now it would be boring because as an adult, she understands that her parents made the right decision. “At the time, my world was crashing around me and I wanted people to be able to relate to that,” she says. Before releasing “11” she explained the song to her dad, and explained that she doesn’t feel like that anymore. A year ago, it would have been harder for her to clear the air. Cassadee’s relationship with her father wasn’t great when she first auditioned for The Voice — at the time, they hadn’t spoken in over a year. When she made it to one of the last rounds, she and the other remaining contestants were scheduled to do “hometown visits” that would be filmed and aired on the show the following week. The producers called her dad without her knowledge, and she was devastated. The show made

it seem like Cassadee had no idea where her dad was, but in reality they just hadn’t spoken. She later checked her phone and saw she had a voicemail from him. It took her a few days to call him back, but she did, and they reconciled. Now they talk all the time and he even comes to her shows. “I wish we could have mended our relationship earlier but it’s good now and it resulted in one of the best songs I’ve ever written,” Cassadee says. After spending the winter in Nashville writing and the whole summer and part of the fall on tour with Rascal Flatts and The Band Perry, Cassadee feels like she’s definitely become a part of the country family, and has been accepted by fans of the genre. “These people look forward to these shows for months and they’re all so welcoming,” she says. Because shows are only three days a week as opposed to the six she was used to with Hey Monday, it’s hard for her to find a groove. But even though she’s getting there, she’s still growing. “I’m going to quote Britney Spears … I’m not a girl, not yet a woman,” she says, laughing. As corny as it may be, it rings true. Cassadee has grown significantly from the 20-year-old I saw at Highline Ballroom four years ago. But one thing hasn’t changed: whether she’s headlining an 800-capacity club, opening to an arena of 17,000 or performing for millions on national television, Cassadee Pope can convince just about anyone that she deserves to be a star. NKD NKDMAG.COM

AMBER MONTANA Words by JACKIE BUI & Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

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Amber Montana, star of Nickelodeon’s Haunted Hathaways, is getting used to the fame that comes with being on TV. “When the show first aired, nobody knew who I was,” Amber says. “Now [that] we have episodes aired, I’ve noticed that slowly, people will notice me. It’s really cool that all these people watch the show.” The 14-year-old actress is in New York City for Nickelodeon’s 10th annual Worldwide Day of Play, an event designed to promote wellness and stress the importance of a healthy lifestyle. This year, the free event is being held in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, and offers a day of activities and games for kids and their families, and a chance for kids to meet the actors and actresses of their favorite Nickelodeon shows. Amber says she’s been overwhelmed by fans’ love since arriving in New York. “When I went out to Times Square today, there were just fans everywhere,” she says. “They were screaming and it was amazing. I had no idea that so many people loved and supported the show.” Before Amber joined the Nickelodeon family, she lived with her parents and two brothers in Tampa, Fla. Early on in life Amber participated in beauty pageants, but at age 7, she decided she wanted to try acting, and left her pageant days behind her. After going on a small audition, Amber appeared in promos and advertisements for amusement parks. “It was awesome. I got paid to go to Disney World,” she says. Amber realized she wanted to pursue acting as a career. “I just loved being in front of a camera,” she says. “I loved having fun and doing that kind of thing and working in that surrounding.” Amber auditioned for a role in a movie that she says was recently sold to Lifetime, six years after it was filmed. The movie, She Could Be You, is based on a true story of a girl named Jennifer Marteliz, who went missing while she was walking home from school one day. “The whole process [of filming] was amazing,” Amber says. “Me being a character at 7 years old and being able to work around those people was amazing. I definitely caught the bug for it.” After wrapping the movie, Amber’s mom moved her out to California, where a family friend started managing Amber’s new career. Amber initially started home schooling, but went back to public school for fifth grade, because she wanted the social interaction, but she found she was constantly being bullied. “I got bullied because people knew I was an actress, so I started being friends with people who weren’t cool,” she says. “So then I was known as ‘not cool’ and got bullied [some more].” Amber went to sixth grade with the intention of starting fresh in middle school, but found that she was still being bullied, so she made the decision to go back to home-school. Being home-schooled made it more convenient for Amber to go on auditions without worrying about being taken out of school. She landed a recurring role on Man Up, an ABC show

that is no longer on the air. Amber then went on to audition for shows on Nickelodeon. After auditioning for a show and being disappointed about not landing the part, Amber booked Haunted Hathaways. “After auditioning for two months, I finally got the role,” she says. “I was just so happy, I was like, ‘This is a dream come true.’” Three months after filming the pilot, Amber found out that Nickelodeon picked up the show for 20 episodes. “I was like, ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me,’” Amber says. “It was the most amazing moment. It was surreal. It was so weird to think that for so many years, I had been trying to get a show and it actually happened,” she says. “It was real life.” Amber says the work environment on the set of Haunted Hathaways is fun, and it’s not too strict. “It’s definitely a professional environment, but it’s a place where you feel comfortable and where we can pull pranks on each other,” Amber says. “And when I say that, I mean I pull pranks on everyone and they fail at getting me back.” The best prank Amber says she’s ever pulled was on her Haunted Hathaways co-star, Chico Benymon. Amber replaced his deodorant with cream cheese. “It was hilarious,” she says, “His face was priceless.” Amber wants to make the show good enough so Nickelodeon will keep it on air. The network recently cut many of their shows, and Amber does not want Haunted Hathaways to fall victim to the same cut. “I love working on the show and I don’t want to do just one season. I want to do several seasons,” she says. “I definitely work my hardest on the set. Everyone on the show wants more seasons, and knowing so many Nickelodeon shows have gotten canceled, we are trying … to make it the best we can. I think we’re doing a really great job at it,” she says. Amber says the kids who bullied her in elementary school are now looking to make amends and be her friend. “I’ve noticed they’ve been trying to find me on Facebook,” she says. “I feel bad, because I want to be friends with them but at the same time, I don’t want to be used.” Amber does have a group of friends who are supportive of her and her career. “They’ve all been really supportive and so proud of me,” she says. “They’re there for me, they watch the show, they love the show. It’s really nice to have all that love from them.” Amber says she sees both the fun and “crazy” part of fame. The fame that’s come with Haunted Hathaways will take some getting used to, but Amber says she knows it’s something she will enjoy later on. “I think I’m definitely going to enjoy it when I’m older, who wouldn’t? It’s so amazing to feel all that love,” she says. “I’m really excited to get to that point in my career.” For now, Amber is enjoying her stay in New York City and is taking it all in. “Everything is absolutely surreal. Getting to meet hundreds of fans the past few days is just crazy,” she says. “It’s a dream come true.” NKD NKDMAG.COM

DANIELLE PEAZER Words by ISAAC BATE Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

The job of a backup dancer is a paradoxical one. Night after night they undertake spectacular feats under bright lights, on a stage in front of thousands of screaming fans. Yet the only time they ever hold the attention of the crowd is if they fall down or move out of sync. Their role is to be almost invisible on stage, and yet they are a crucial part of shows that would seem bizarrely empty without them. Danielle Peazer is an unqualified success as a backup dancer, having mastered the ability to disappear completely into the choreography while in plain sight. In the busy lounge of the InterContinental on West 44th Street in New York though, she is drawing eyes from all around. Perhaps it’s the poise that seems to come with being a dancer, or perhaps it’s simply that tall, slim, beautiful women will always have a hard time being inconspicuous in public. Her looks are far from generic. Her father is Guyanese, her mother half Italian, and as a result she’s impossible to place. Danielle herself was born and lives in London, but she’s far from the archetypal English rose — her hair is a soft-brown curly explosion, with the kind of ringlets that almost demand to be tested for springiness. Her accent, entirely North London, seems incongruous coming from her mouth. She started dancing when she was only 2 years old, but Danielle’s first real commercial gig was at the Brit Awards in 2008, dancing for Leona Lewis. “That was the one that got me in the circle of commercial dancing,” she says. “After that it’s just keeping up your reputation.” Danielle hadn’t always planned to be a commercial dancer. Between the ages of 16 and 18 she trained full time to be a professional ballet dancer, at the English National Ballet School. But it wasn’t for her. “After two years I kind of just lost the love for ballet,” she says. “It’s such an intense art and I’d always done these other styles 58

of dancing while I was growing up. I thought, ‘Why cut myself off to just ballet?’” It’s been a massively successful transition for her. Since her gig with Leona Lewis, her resume has included dancing at the London Olympic Games and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, as well as various X Factors, Britain’s Got Talents and many individual artists. “It’s a different sort of performing, because in ballet the audience is so silent, it’s very polite, you clap at the end of the performance,” she says. “Commercial dancing, you’re at a concert. There’s screaming at you for the whole two hours, photo flashes, glow sticks and posters, so it’s a different atmosphere but I love that it’s a whole group thing, rather than, ‘I’m doing this for you and you stay quiet.’” Given the importance of not standing out on stage, building a reputation and continuing to get work in the world of dance is largely a matter of extreme professionalism at all times. “It’s word of mouth. You’ll work with one choreographer, and they all know each other, and it’s not just the job you do on stage but how you are in the rehearsal studio, how you conduct yourself the whole time,” she says. “You never allow yourself to slack or anything. You have to give 100 percent, because you are representing that choreographer and they are

danielle peazer | nkd magazine *

representing the artist. You want people to hear your name and say, ‘She’s hard working, loyal, she’ll do a good job for me.’ And then hopefully the jobs get better and better.” And the jobs are doing just that. Dancing for Beyoncé is her dream. “I’m hoping she’s not going to retire anytime soon. Like, don’t have any more kids please,” Danielle says, laughing. In the meantime, though, she’s flying to Hong Kong to dance for Kylie Minogue. “I think I’m literally there for about 30 hours then I fly back,” she says, showing a little trepidation. “Usually I’m ok with jet lag. I think I’m just not going to change my watch or phone or anything, there’s no point for a day trying to adjust.” Though it’s a demandingly all-consuming profession, Danielle’s not actually in New York to dance, but to enjoy New York Fashion Week. She’s always had an interest in fashion, and has a solid second career in modeling. It’s something that’s recently become more serious when she began a collaboration with Jawbreaking Clothing. Jawbreaking is Aly Silverio’s clothing brand, which largely focuses on graphic tees. “[Silverio] contacted me a couple of years ago and sent me some of their T-shirts and ever since then I’ve always loved her business ethics, the way she goes about their business,”

Danielle says. “I love the designs on her T-shirts, and the opportunity for a collaboration came up. I thought there’s no one more perfect, she’s young, I’m young, and it just seemed like a perfect fit. Other than the fact that we live either sides of the Atlantic.” With the help of some furious texting, emailing and whatsapping, Danielle and Jawbreaking were able to come up with a design that’s now on sale. “We basically designed a T-shirt based on my tattoo: peace, love and happiness.” She gestures to the three tattoos on her wrist: a smiley face, a peace sign and a heart. Danielle is thrilled with how the whole process has gone. “It’s worked really well and it’s given me that door into fashion a bit more,” she says. However excited Danielle is about the prospect of getting more involved in the fashion world, though, she’s determined to keep a very level head about it. “I‘d love to do more of it, depending on the brand and if it’s something that I actually genuinely would wear,” she says. “I am a dancer, and that’s what I focus on, that’s my career. All this other stuff is there as well which is brilliant,” she says. “I already succeeded in what I wanted to do, which is dancing, and that’s what I want to carry on doing. Anything else is a bonus. I’ve always been wary of selling my soul to gain recognition.” NKD NKDMAG.COM

Words by SHINA PATEL Photos by CATHERINE POWELL 38

k flay | nkd magazine *

K Flay has been making waves in music as one of the few female rappers on the scene. But 28-year-old K Flay, known as Kristine Flaherty to her parents, hasn’t always been about making music and creating a name for herself. K Flay learned guitar as a kid, but she was more focused on school and getting good grades. Her hard work paid off, as she went to Stanford University, but her journey to Stanford was not an easy one. When she was six, her parents got divorced and her mother remarried. Then when she was a freshman in high school, her biological father died. When her dad passed away, K Flay made a big decision. “…as a consequent of my dad I was totally sober, because he was not, until I was 23,” she says. It was in college, around 2004, when K Flay begin experimenting with music. “I started messing around with [music] and I started playing house parties but I was still a super serious student,” she says. “I loved school and I was good at school.” She graduated with a double major in psychology and sociology, and after college, she began teaching the GRE and SAT. It was around this time that K Flay found a couple of people in the Bay area who started to mentor her in her music. She says, “Their attitude, looking back in retrospect, is like, ‘This could be cool. It’s not really right now. You need to work hard to learn what you’re doing and become a good live performer.’” K Flay learned that live shows are important, and she worked to make them the best that they could be. “For me, the live show is a lot more important than the recording part even though the live show is an ephemeral thing and the recording is permanent,” she says. She soon started touring, got a manager and was signed to a record label. It was when she got out on the road and left home that she realized that music was her new career, not just something she was messing around with. The hardest part about those first few tours was doing it alone. “You don’t have that camaraderie that comes with having band members or whatever,” she says. “I was just this lone wolf.” K Flay got into the rap scene by making fun of it. One day she was making fun of rap music and her friend challenged her to make a rap song. The rest was history. “At first it was just me joking around,” she says. “I was being clever and cheeky and it was fun. But then, over time, I started making music that was more emotionally resonate to me. A little bit darker and better than that other stuff.” Even when she was out on the road by herself, she recalls there was a certain darkness that spurred her to write more serious music.

Years later, K Flay is still all about producing killer live shows. “A recording is inherently contained, and the live show is inherently unpredictable,” she says. “It’s the moment where I get to be wild and emote what the song really is. It brings something out in the song that doesn’t exist ordinarily.” K Flay loses it when she’s doing a live show. She doesn’t care what she looks like — she’s head banging, jumping around and emitting energy her fans can feed off of. Her drummer, Nick Suhr, who she added to the project two years ago, is vital to her shows because they both love the release of energy that comes from playing live. Recently she added a DJ, Noah Souder-Russo, to her act. She feels that three is a good number of people to have on stage. Adding people to a musical project always changes the dynamics but also gives them an opportunity to expand. By having backup, K Flay has the freedom to be a true frontwoman because she doesn’t have to do everything herself. In the studio, K Flay finds it a bit more difficult to communicate emotions. Part of the issue is trying to convey dynamics in a song, which is something she thinks has become increasingly difficult with new technology for making music. “It’s so easy just to automate something and be done with it,” she says. She tries to mix up the rapping and singing to create different moods. “I just try to get into that headspace of whatever that song is. I try to recreate where I was when I wrote it,” she says. Recently, K Flay finished opening up for Icona Pop on their headlining tour, and now plans to make a full-length album. She has been recording throughout the year, and she says she’s about a quarter of the way done with the songs she feels like she could actually use. Her main goal is to get the album out so it can be released by next year. “A full-length is a great way to establish a sound and I’m kind of looking forward to that,” she says. She says she’s had trouble finding consistency in her music with her EPs because they sound like samplers of different music rather than one consistent sound. Since 2010, K Flay has released three EPs; her self-titled KFlay, Eyes Shut and What If It Is. She hopes to convey one uniform sound in her full-length. K Flay’s ultimate goal is to headline and sell out The Fillmore, a historic music venue in San Francisco, and put out a full-length she can be proud of. “I want as many people to hear the music as possible, but it has to be the right time,” she says. “I feel like this next project is the right time.” K Flay plans on doing music for as long as she can. “I never really think about what I [would] do if I didn’t do this,” she says. “I’m pretty committed, until it stops becoming something that is fulfilling personally and creatively.” NKD

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RYAN NEWMAN Words by STACY MAGALLON & Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

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ryan newman | nkd magazine *

If Nickelodeon wants actress Ryan Newman to get up and get active, she is listening. Ryan has been all over New York City, promoting the network’s Worldwide Day of Play. I meet up with her outside the Trump Hotel in SoHo, which is crowded with young fans hoping to catch a glimpse of Nickelodeon stars. We settle down on benches near the hotel, away from the action. It’s the day before Worldwide Day of Play, an annual event designed to encourage kids to be active. Nickelodeon shuts off all television programming for a three-hour period to help get their viewers off the couch and outside. Ryan has been an active dancer her entire life, and she is excited to appear at the event to promote healthy living. Though her schedule makes it tough for her to squeeze in physical activity, her acting career manages to keep her on her toes. When Ryan was a kid she begged her mother to let her act. “I was very persistent about it,” she says. “My mom gave in when she realized I wasn’t going to give up.” Ryan started her career with modeling and commercials before acting in television and film. She starred as the younger version of Miley Stewart on Disney Channel’s Hannah Montana, had a guest appearance on Good Luck Charlie and had a regular role on Disney XD’s Zeke and Luther for four years. Today, 15-year-old Ryan is a series regular on Nick at Nite’s See Dad Run, which just wrapped filming for the second season. The show follows fictional actor David Hobbs, (Scott Baio) who becomes a stay-at-home father after 10 years on television. Ryan plays Emily Hobbs, David’s eldest daughter. “Emily is a typical teenage girl,” she says of her character. “She’s really spunky and sassy, but she has a good heart.” Ryan was excited to start growing with Emily during the second season — she believes she and her character work off of each other. “I get to bring my own experiences to the table and I get to take from Emily’s experiences,” Ryan says. Ryan’s on-screen family on See Dad Run might as well be her second family. “Our chemistry is off the charts,” she says, smiling. “We’re always laughing together.” Baio, who is also an executive producer on the show, is determined to make sure the cast has fun. “I feel like the adults on the show are more childlike than the kids are,” Ryan says, laughing. Ryan and her cast don’t know if the show will be picked up again for another season, but she’s hoping to film a movie soon. Ryan is as passionate about music as she is about acting. In

an episode of See Dad Run, she sings a cover of Kelly Clarkson’s “Stronger” with James Maslow of pop group Big Time Rush. She is currently focusing on her music career, though an album isn’t in the works yet. Ryan, who has been taking classical singing lessons since she was 6, is prepared to deal with the stigma some Disney Channel actresses who pursue a music career face. “I’m not necessarily a regular Disney girl who was forced into singing,” she says. Though it’s been difficult for Ryan to maintain a personal life outside of her professional career, she tries to make it possible. Her school program allows her to go back to school in California when her schedule permits, and she’s also welcomed back for prom, homecoming and football games. “It’s important for me to have that aspect of normal life, especially high school,” Ryan says. Education has always been her first priority, and will continue to be. Between that and her dedication to leading a normal life, she’s able to balance both. “I’m a huge math nerd,” she says, adding that she’s currently talking pre-calculus. College is definitely a plan for Ryan’s future, but she says she doesn’t want to study acting because she’s been working for so long. Ryan doesn’t mention which colleges she’s looking into, but she says, “I’m aiming pretty high.” Ryan loves social media. She constantly updates her Twitter to connect with her fan base and thank them for their support. As important as social networking is in the entertainment industry, it can stir up some negative energy. Ryan tries to keep a positive outlook, but she says she gets plenty of hateful messages along with nice ones. “I’m a normal girl,” she says. “If someone says something bad, it’s going to cancel out five good things. It’s going to happen for at least a couple seconds in your brain.” It’s Ryan’s mentality about these situations that makes her mature for her age. She tries not to take any hurtful comments to heart. “I feel bad for the person who felt the need to do that,” she says. “If you have five good comments, and one bad comment, who cares?” When our conversation comes to an end, Ryan and I walk back to her hotel. Fans outside the lobby scream her name, hoping to get her attention and snap a photo with her. Ryan may be a normal teenage girl with an abnormal lifestyle, but as I watch her smile bright with a young girl, she seems completely thrilled about it. NKD NKDMAG.COM

TARYN MANNING Words by SUSAN CHENG & Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

taryn manning | nkd magazine

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Actress Taryn Manning sits at a table in a shaded area of New York’s High Line park on a September morning. Taryn, who plays Tiffany “Pennsatucky” Doggett, an inmate from the highly acclaimed Netflix show Orange Is The New Black, is a stark contrast from the character fans watch on Jenji Kohan’s series. In the final few episodes of the first season, Pennsatucky spends every moment of her time terrorizing and provoking the other characters. Taryn’s hair is pulled up in a knot. She is dressed in a pastel pink, patterned top and a pair of matching floral bottoms. Since it is 10 a.m., she has forsaken stylishness for comfort, stowing away her heels and settling for a pair of moccasins. Taryn, who is in town to film the second season of Orange Is The New Black, praises the Netflix series for its sense of realness and vivid characters. “I think one of the fascinations [people have with the show] is that it’s real. There are women’s prisons and a sense of camaraderie, and so much inner turmoil,” she says describing some of the show’s themes. “Maybe what is so fascinating are all the character studies. I think that’s what makes it so compelling, all the back stories and how everyone’s so different.” Taryn’s character, Pennsatucky, is a small-town girl and former meth addict in jail for murdering a nurse at an abortion clinic. In one episode, viewers find out Pennsatucky, who had been a regular at the health center, ends up shooting the nurse for making a rude remark about the number of pregnancies Pennsatucky had terminated. At her trial, the addict-turnedkiller finds support from a pro-life Christian community, who misinterpret Pennsatucky’s premeditated murder as an act of martyrdom and heroism. Soon after, the inmate becomes a born-again-Christian and begins preaching her fundamental readings of the Bible to those around her. “She’s such a weirdo,” Taryn says, regarding the outlandish Jesus-loving inmate, who goes to extreme measures to play God to the other inmates. “I have to totally forget all my worries as Taryn and whatever it is I’m going through, good, bad, whatever,” she says, explaining how she gets in character. “I literally erase them from my mind and just go into a completely ignorant, unapologetic, messed up chick who just doesn’t know who she is but all the while is super clever and resourceful.” Therein lies perhaps Taryn’s only similarity to Pennsatucky.

It is Taryn’s resourcefulness, talent and refusal to accept defeat that has gotten her to where she is today. Taryn was born in Falls Church, Va. to musically inclined parents who split when she was only two months old. After her parents divorced, Taryn and her older brother Kellin spent much of her childhood traveling to and from Virginia, where her father lived, and Arizona, where her mother had moved. After relocating again to San Diego, Calif. when she was 12 with her mother, Taryn started dancing, attending ballet and jazz classes every day after school. Even Kellin, who is now 39, was musically inclined. Growing up, he made tunes on his four-track, and eventually persuaded his sister to provide the vocals to his beats. The siblings released their first successful dance pop album, Boomkatalog One in 2003. Today, when Taryn isn’t acting or belting out soulful lyrics to her brother’s music, she’s DJing and making her own dance and electronic music. “I grew up with my mom making sure I was practicing my pliés, and my dad was making sure I was singing,” she says. But while Taryn grew up immersed in music, acting was something she found on her own. One day in dance class, she overheard some girls talking about acting classes. Determined to try her hand at performing, she decided to take action. “After a few times of hearing it, I went home to my mom and was like, ‘Mom, Shandra and Ashley take acting classes in Burbank, and I want to go,’” she says. “I just always wanted to try everything.” The aspiring actress traveled back and forth between her home in San Diego and acting lessons in Burbank, starting from age 13. It was also around this time Taryn lost her father. “It was just the most confusing, weird and surreal experience of my life, the most finite thing I’ve ever had, the loss of a parent forever, you still wrap your head around that, especially when it comes out of left field,” she says. But these obstacles also helped shape her into the enduring actress she is today. When she was 19, she moved to Hollywood to search and audition for acting roles — at first without an agent. “I was just young and fearless. When you’re 19 and have your eye on the prize, nothing else matters,” Taryn says. With her mind bent on succeeding, Taryn consulted everything from Backstage West magazines to books from the renowned Samuel French Theatre and Film Bookshop. “I would

taryn manning | nkd magazine

“I KNEW I WAS GOOD AT [ACTING] ‘CAUSE OF MY CLASSES... BUT I DIDN’T HAVE ANY MONEY.” TARYN MANNING

get [Backstage West] religiously. I think it came out once a week, and I would just scour it and go to these funny auditions for student films,” she recalls. “I started off being an extra, background talent, you know. I mean there’s all different ways people can get started out in acting. I’m really proud to say that I built it from the ground up.” But starting from the ground up was not always easy. At first, Taryn struggled even to pay rent — $500 a month for a studio apartment in L.A. “I knew I was good at [acting] ‘cause of my classes … but I didn’t have any money so that was another part of trying to make it,” she said. “I play a lot of troubled characters because I can tap into that, but I’m actually a really responsible person. I’m not these characters I play,” she says. Yet, the actress has an astounding ability to transform into characters like Pennsatucky. Taryn actually helped Jenji Kohan develop her character. “I created her in a sense. I designed her with Jenji,” she said. Despite having a hand in creating Pennsatucky, however, the role did call for some research. It required her to study the Bible, attend church and even look into documentaries on making methamphetamine. “I have this list right here, and I’ll look at it before I start acting,” she says, revealing a list on her iPhone. “And it’s literally all the ingredients that make up meth. I mean, it’s disgusting,” she says, perusing the list, which contains chemicals such as brake fluid and hydrochloric acid. “So I look at this, and I’m like, ‘Alright. Imagine what this will do to your brain.’” In addition to Pennsatucky, Taryn has played the pregnant best friend of Britney Spears’ character in the 2002 flick Crossroads, Eminem’s ex-girlfriend in 8 Mile (2002), and a prostitute in her breakthrough movie Hustle and Flow (2005). Taryn attributes her ability to embody a certain role to her own experiences. “I can reach into a well of depth that I have from things that I went through that sucked,” she says. Despite all that she’s endured, she regrets nothing because she feels she has accomplished what she set out to do. “I grew up so, so poor, which is whatever. I wouldn’t change that for the world,” she says. “I mean, I set out with a dream, and I made it happen. The fame and all that stuff, I was never out for it. I just am happy that I don’t have to be a waitress, and I pay my bills with a dream that came true.” NKD

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NKD Mag - Issue #29 (November 2013)

Articles inside

Taryn Manning