NKD Mag - Issue #49 (July 2015)

JULY 2015 4 8 10 14 16 20 22 26 28 36 38 42

jordan fisher the technicolors alyson stoner rachel platten night riots ashley argota knuckle puck canaan smith awolnation aimee carrero brett dier rudimental

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catherine powell

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catherine powell

editors

jordan melendrez catherine powell

designer

catherine powell

writers

merissa blitz shelby chargin tara devincenzo alyssa girdwain dustin heveron brittany landau stacy magallon jordan melendrez shina patel catherine powell sam rosenthal

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JORDAN FISHER Words by DUSTIN HEVERON Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

“He knows EVERYTHING about you!”

The exclamation comes unsolicited, unannounced, and unrepentant from the father of a nearby 10-year-old boy — literally unable to contain himself at the excitement of seeing one of his idols at Los Angeles’ iconic mall, The Grove. The tone of the father’s statement is as much a compliment as it a statement of sheer awe at the man who has captivated his son’s seemingly endless energy. This jaw-dropping, stopfans-in-their-tracks starpower is emanating from none other than Jordan Fisher: musician, entertainer, actor, and professional “Oh my God I love you can I take a picture with you” personality (for those who are curious, Fisher’s final tally of unplanned fan meetand-greets during the course of our interview was an even six — not counting fans’ parents and awed onlookers).

For Jordan, it all comes with the territory. As one of the stars of the Disney Channel’s wildly successful Teen Beach Movie (and the recently released Teen Beach Movie 2), among other projects, Jordan is used to navigating the “oohs” and “ahhs” of his rabid fan base.

Despite his stardom, Jordan prefers to live the low-key life.

“I’m a super old man, I’m a home-

body when I can be,” Jordan says.

“I like to be home with my dog and watch Friends.” But don’t let Jordan’s downtime hobbies fool you, as one of the hottest young talents in the film, TV and music industries, Jordan has chosen to fill his time with work that feels like play, and no one’s playtime is more in demand.

And that demand begins with the latest installment of Disney’s Teen Beach Movie franchise.

The sequel to the smash summer sensation of 2013 came out last month. “The energy and the choreography and the music and the story and the wardrobe just took 11 steps forward this time around,” Jordan shares.

“Just going back to the island itself was a wonderful process … it almost felt like we never left and we were just continuing the story,” Jordan adds. “Hopefully it feels the same way for the audience.” Jordan credits cast chemistry as part of the reason the ensemble, like co-stars Johnny DeLuca and Ross Lynch works so well onscreen. “We all genuinely love being together … I’ll go have a burger and a beer with [co-star] Johnny, or I’ll go hang out with Ross, and we’ll sit and we’ll jam and we’ll play songs for each other.” Jordan says. “And then when you put us all on an island together and say, ‘Hey cool,

while you’re all there, why don’t you make a movie?’ That’s a pretty special experience.”

But Jordan is the first to recognize that just because a job like his can be fun, it doesn’t mean it’s always easy. “It is all fun, we all have a blast, but also there are the ups and downs of making a movie. Some days are harder than others, sometimes we’re on set for 17, 18 hours, overnight and we have to do the exact same thing the next day.” Ever one to see the bright side of things, Jordan notes, “Having each other makes it seem like something that’s just so much more doable. We all appreciate each other. You could throw us all on an island for years and years to come, and we could do it over and over again. It definitely makes [filming] easier and so much more fun.”

Jordan’s pursuit of artistic excellence isn’t just limited to film and television. He also dreams of sharing his personal passions with his music — a dream that’s already becoming a reality thanks to a recent signing with Hollywood Records. Jordan makes no secret about his love of music.

“I freak out about music, too. I kind of turn a bit crazy. I scream, I squeal, I jump up. When a song is great, you can’t help that,” he exclaims.

Jordan understands the difNKDMAG.COM

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ficulty that comes with pursuing so many different areas of the entertainment industry. “[Acting professionally] is enough to fill up anybody’s schedule,” Jordan observes. “But then you stack on the fact that I came out here to do both [acting and music], and I’m equally invested in both, and I’m reading a script and watching films just as often as I’m listening to music and honing my piano skills.”

As with his acting career, Jordan acknowledges that he couldn’t succeed with music alone. “I have such an awesome team, and they tell me where to be and what time,” Jordan shares. “I recently had to turn down a guest spot for this show because I had a [music] gig in Laguna [Beach], and it’s just so hard because I want to be able to do everything I can at all times. Thankfully my team handles that for me, and I’m very grateful for that because I could start to go crazy.”

His career won’t continue at this frenzied pace forever, and his hard work now will pay off when he’s ready to slow things down in the future. “At the end of the day I want to be able to shift into a season where I can be a dad, and live my life and have a family,” Jordan says. “I want to do so much more.”

When he’s not busy cultivating his film career, launching his musical endeavors or planning out time to be a father, Jordan has a hobby that’s very similar to many other young men around his age: video games. Except his involvement isn’t just playing video games, he’s also making them. “I worked on a video game called Until Dawn with Hayden Panettiere. I’m stoked about it,” Jordan recalls. “I got a call from my agent like ‘Is [this project] something you’d wanna do?’ Oh, 6

it’s a video game? Yes! When do I go to set?” Jordan describes “Until Dawn” as an interactive thriller that’s “pretty phenomenal.” It will be available via Play Station 4 later this summer. “It’s the same team that did [James Cameron’s] Avatar.” Jordan says. “I grew up a massive gamer, I used to work for GameStop, so working on a video game, that was a blast.”

How does a man with so much pulling him in so many different directions keep his sanity intact?

Well, it’s quite simple. “Honestly, beyond having an incredible team who runs everything for me, I have an amazing family that lives in L.A. and incredible friends. We all just genuinely love each other and have been friends for years.

And my faith, really. I rest my faith in something that is much bigger than all of us and everything on this Earth and trust in him, to be honest.” Jordan says humbly. “I believe at the end of the day I am a speck in the grand scheme of things, and I treat my life as big as it could possibly be but also know that I am the furthest thing from the most important, and when I lower myself on my priority list and let everything happen the way it’s supposed to, it alleviates a lot of stress for me.”

“That’s all you can do is just take everything one day at a time,” he continues. “I haven’t strayed from that. It’s worked so well for me for the last 21 years.”

If the young acting/singing/ video-game-making superstar has made anything clear over the course of our interview, it’s that even fans that know “everything” about Jordan have plenty more to look forward to, and that’s a situation that suits Jordan and his fans just fine. “I don’t know how it’s going to work out, but I enjoy every day of my life,” he says. “And that’s really all I can worry about.” NKD

THE TECHNICOLORS Words by SAM ROSENTHAL Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

One minute you’re bobbing your head, and the next you’re belting out all the lyrics to Ultraviolet Disguise. Their music just kind of makes you start singing along. And based on the carefully constructed lyrics and music, you would never guess that the EP was made under a tight deadline.

But we’re not convinced The Technicolors — Brennan Smiley (guitar, vocals), Troy Lowney (keyboard) and Mike Nicolette (bass) — sweat anything.

Brennan was the spark that started this Phoenix-based rock band, which originally formed as an acoustic project when he graduated from high school. “I have always been a guitar player,” Brennan shares. “I had always envisioned myself as being a guitar player … I started singing and, kind of a little bit after that, just started trying to write songs.”

Fortunately, his father was a music producer and had all the right tools to help his son succeed in the music business. “[He] kind of challenged me to write some tunes and was like, ‘Let’s make an EP or let’s make a demo.’ And it ended up being around 10 songs that I had written, and we ended up kind of working on a project together and building it.”

This seemingly minor project jumpstarted the current model of the band.

“Once those tunes were finished, I wanted to start playing shows around Arizona and got some buds to come play with me.”

Lucky for all of us, that’s exactly what he did.

“It kind of just naturally progressed from solo acoustic things to solo band things to ‘Hey, we really enjoy playing shows together, let’s book some shows,’” Brennan adds, “and ‘Hey, these shows have been going really well and the response has been cool, let’s make it a band and book some shows outside of the state.”

From that point on, The Technicolors have developed into the musical masterpiece that they are today, but not without some hard work. They were self-made from the beginning, a fact they take pride in. “We started booking our own shows and just called bars across the United States and driving to Arkansas, playing random bars and just losing a ton of money,” they explain. “We just wanted the experience

of doing it, and we booked so many DIY tours. And one point we had booked a two-month tour completely ourselves, East Coast and West Coast and everywhere in between … And from there on out we made a record, and we’ve toured on that and completely independently.”

Not many artists can say that they built themselves up from scratch and became extremely successful without a record company’s assistance, but these guys have proved that it is possible.

In the beginning of April, The Technicolors released their EP Ultraviolet Disguise. The guys were amazed and a bit taken aback by their fans’ reactions. “Really amazing, I think we never really experienced this much of a response to a piece of work that we’ve put out,” they agree. “And I’m still trying to figure out what to do with it, what to do with that attention.”

With only three weeks to record and release the EP, Brennan, Mike and Troy were working under pressure to accomplish everything before they set out on tour.

Pat Kirch, the drummer for The Maine, produced their first version. going to go with a different sound but felt like this one had the right feel. “He was just so amazing and brought us into his studio and helped us build five tunes,” the guys recall. “Those songs did come from older ideas that were just kind of laying around, and we did those and for a while we thought we were going to release those.”

But things rarely go according to plan.

“We, for whatever reason, found ourselves in another place where we had another opportunity to record more songs.”

After recording some more songs, the guys then realized the sounds were just not matching up. “We did one more tune, and it was completely different than the other batch,” Brennan explains. “The other batch were way more throwback garage, which we still really dig, but we just kind of like decided to roll with this and ended up with five more songs that were completely done from scratch just in that short amount of time.”

After their change of sound, the trio was under pressure to get the EP out to their fans before heading out on tour. This wasn’t the first time the guys had a fire underneath

them to release a collection of music; their previous album was also under a time constraint. “We did all the tracking for it in 10 days and then all the other post stuff over the next month, but we’ve always kind of worked quickly. I think we are all believers in the idea that the recording is just the birth of a song, and when we take the songs on the road and play them, that kind of where they become fully formed.”

The guys all agree that they “don’t think there’s any way to fully capture the true identity of a song just in the recording,” and playing a song live is really the point. “I think I’ve always loved that idea,” Brennan says. “The recording is the alpha, and the live show is the omega.”

Now, the guys are part of 8123, The Maine’s management team, which Brennan says started through mutual friends. “I had known a couple people in that crew just through being buddies and music lovers in Phoenix. I think 8123 as a functioning body has always had similar aspirations as we’ve had. I remember thinking about that a long time ago when I first kind of looked into what 8123 was and down the road it just ended up working out.”

Being part of such a successful project has influenced the guys and the fans as well.

“The nice thing is that we are allowed to be ourselves, and everyone is different, and everyone is very supportive of that. We don’t really feel pressured to be a certain thing, it’s just like, ‘Here we all are.’ And we all support each other because we all happen to dig what we are doing. It’s been really cool, and it’s different. It’s different than anything we’ve ever could have been apart of.”

So what’s next for these young rockstars?

They have big goals for the rest of this year, especially touring and recording. A lot of touring. After they complete the 81TwentyThree Tour, The Technicolors will venture to the West Coast and then to Brazil. They’ll have a short break before they pick up for their fall tours. “The challenge will be finding time to be creative and record in between all of this,” the guys say.

Busy schedules, tight time slots and constant touring is all part of the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, but The Technicolors are no strangers to the pressure of deadlines. In fact, they thrive on it. NKD NKDMAG.COM

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a l y s o n s t o n e r Words by MERISSA BLITZ | Photos by CATHERINE POWELL Hair & Make-Up by BIANCA DIMILLO | Styled by LISA CAMERON | Blazer by ENDLESS ROSE

Alyson Stoner is an all-around theatrical threat. She dances, sings, writes, acts and is incredibly smart and well-spoken, too. Most known for her roles in the Step Up and Camp Rock films, and as the voice of Isabella in Phineas and Ferb, Alyson has credits in countless other projects and, above all, strives for self-exploration and growth.

Alyson grew up in Toledo, Ohio.

She got her creative kick-start when she started dancing at the age of three, after wanting to emulate her sister. Her dance instructor was Broadway-trained and taught Alyson facial expressions that allowed for her theatrics and emotional articulations to develop in a genuine, realistic way. A few years later, she filled in for her sister at a modeling convention, which is where the wheels started turning. She met valuable agents and managers, and by what she calls a “fluke,” won a few awards.

Through the advice of these professionals, Alyson and her family started giving Los Angeles a shot.

In 2000, they made the cross-country commute to Los Angeles for nine months.

“I don’t necessarily recommend it,” Alyson says. But, the difficult sacrifice proved worth it. Perhaps more importantly, Alyson and her family refused to let the wonderment and deceitful promise of Hollywood take over.

“I commend my mother for having the intuition that she does, because she treated the industry just like a hobby, just like going to basketball practice,” she explains.

“So I never thought of myself as any kind of special or unusual child, and yet she allowed for the doors to remain open for it to blossom into a career.”

Alyson’s theatrical agent in Los Angeles quickly submitted her on commercials and television shows. She and her family were not expecting immediate bookings, but Alyson was soon cast in several projects. By this time, Alyson was 7 and exploring the realm of acting in the city — all while her family was on a trip to Hawaii.

“Being from the Midwest, Hollywood was just not on our radar,” she recalls. “It was another world that was untouchable and somewhere in another galaxy.”

In 2003, Alyson was cast as Sarah Baker in family classic Cheaper by the Dozen, where she learned cues from actress Bonnie Hunt. “I think as a child you absorb your environment,” she notes.

Bonnie “was incredibly caring, but also her work ethic was seamless and her choices are very informed.”

While Alyson’s dancing and other creative talents are stellar alone, her defining — and perhaps surprising — attribute is her intelligence. “I enjoy studying neuroscience. Even from a young age, I always look at the psychology of actors and of characters to understand the interplay of their thoughts, feelings and behaviors,” she says. Because of this, she relies more on science rather than acting class to understand stories and characters. Despite signing up for acting classes, she hasn’t NKDMAG.COM

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been able to endure most courses.

“I’ve been so stimulated and challenged in other ways outside of that environment so far,” she shares.

Her interest in science came from within herself. Science at school wasn’t her favorite, nor was school itself. The environment made it difficult to stand.

“I made it through three quarters of one year of junior high and thanked God a million times for booking a movie to get out of there,” she recalls. “I haven’t ever understood cruelty among kids, it saddens me a lot.”

Instead, Alyson looks into her own psyche and examines the “themes” of her life as well as corresponding patterns.

With the help of different mentors, she has consumed a wealth of information about the world and humanity, and how she interacts with it.

“I have a theme of chaos, and it stems from personal upbringing to the nature of the industry,” she shares. “I find that I gravitate toward it, and even though I thrive in it, there’s no reason to bring about that stress on your nervous system.”

Because of this understanding, Alyson attempted to quit when she was around 16 years old. Battling a health issue, she attributed it to the extremity of the industry and yearned for a more balanced schedule.

Yet after eight months of self-removal, Alyson went back to one audition — and booked it. “I was like, ‘All right, I’m stuck!’

It’s just in my DNA,” she notes.

Also in her DNA is singing and songwriting. Alyson’s mother, who has always been a strong believer in her potential, started to collect pages and pages of Alyson’s lyrics she had been writing since she was five. Singing and performing wasn’t on her radar until several projects asked for the talent, and it quickly broadened her options.

“My connection to music through dance just continued to grow and deepen,” she notes. “I discovered that I had something that I wanted to say.”

Alyson labels herself as an introvert, and despite the outgoing nature of her industry and crafts, she finds solace in 12

writing lyrics. Sometimes she is called “Dictionary Queen” and she loves vocabulary, mouth feel and vowel placement — a quality that is extremely evident in any conversation with her. While she falls into cliches, her nuances evade any unoriginality.

“It was an outlet for an introvert, and it became this sector of art where I could actually tell my own story as opposed to someone else’s,” she says about writing.

Again, Alyson attempted to quit music a few times, as she did with acting, but then opportunities — booking musicals, singing as a character and writing songs for projects — arose and sucked her back in.

The industry often comes with ties and conditions, but Alyson thrives with the moments she can exert her own independence on her work. Currently, her released music hasn’t been her own, but rather work focused on portraying certain meanings for different projects and other people’s visions.

“What comes next, that’s my heart,” she says.

Now Alyson is embarking on a music career centered fully on herself and her vision. With her songs (the first single is already picked out), the excitement to release a complete project cannot come sooner. But it is not without a certain fear.

“That’s where the fear comes in, if it’s ever going to come in,” she says about released music. It’s been a journey of selfdevelopment and musical development, and it has been a collaborative effort.

Alyson yearns for experience in every facet of the process: production, writing and directing — anything she can delve into, she does with fervor.

It’s no new statement that the age of the Internet has transformed listeners and the music industry into an impatient breeding ground of instant-gratification, and Alyson understands this.

“The general public and the consumer now is so trained and conditioned to give about a half of a second to what they hear,” she comments. “So I’ve got to combine my tenacity as an artist with just as much aggressive growth as a business woman to

make sure it’s a holistic body of work.”

She aims to combine sections of her own character and different story lines to make the most impact on listeners.

While waiting for her the release of her first single and album, first single to drop Alyson shows her passion on YouTube.

Somewhat ironically, Alyson is not fond of social media and tends to shy away from the self-representation, but she adapts in comfortable ways.

“I’m tired of not having a voice in so many different projects,” she says. Alyson turned to YouTube in search of feedback from fans and for greater exposure to industry professionals. Alyson has often collaborated with musician Max Schneider and music producer and filmmaker Kurt Hugo Schneider on various cover songs.

Each video has millions of views. Alyson sees her co-workers as entrepreneurs and media pioneers, sure of their brand while maintaining their integrity.

Like many content creators on YouTube, they are just looking to expose their individuality and voice. However, other social media outlets aren’t so convincing.

“I’m very much old school,” she explains. She mentions first filming movies for 55 days versus filming movies in 11 days now as a point of reference.

“I could feel my pride getting in the way for awhile,” she comments on her social media presence. “But I’ve adjusted a lot since then. It’s invigorating because we have a little bit more in our immediate control.”

Despite having to mold a persona online, it hasn’t deterred Alyson from moving forward in the industry. She has a series of films coming up that jump the lines of genres, has a few new dance styles she seeks to study while in New York, and she is set to focus exclusively on her music.

Above all, she seeks to expand and grow.

“I want to represent love in all that I do, and from the minute takes to the huge stage performances, I have to grow in compassion for myself and other people,” Alyson explains. “It’s all a yearning to grow and to be free to understand and to find ways to love and see beyond the typical judgment and assumptions that are made.”NKD

RACHEL PLATTEN Words by MERISSA BLITZ | Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

Rachel Platten lounges on a black leather couch in a conference room in the Columbia Records office, running on steam after her 3 a.m. wake-up call for Good Morning America. She’s still giddy from meeting George Clooney, and she is seemingly humbled by the large crowd of people who filled the studio and Times Square that morning. Rachel is becoming an inspiration to many. It’s something she’s always dreamed of, but it took a lot of hard work to get here.

“I got started playing music when I was 5,” Rachel says. “I started taking classical piano lessons, and I grew up singing and playing and harmonizing with my mom and sister in the car.”

Rachel moved to Greenwich Village in New York City after college to pursue her music career, residing in the very apartment building where Bob Dylan once lived.

She accepted every gig she was offered and played shows in every small club and coffee shop on Bleecker Street and the Lower East Side.

“It’s been about 10 years of hustle since then and touring around the country in my mom’s car and eating a lot of food that was cheap,” Rachel remembers.

There was a point in Rachel’s life about a year ago where things just weren’t going in the direction that she hoped, and she didn’t see a reason to keep pursuing music.

“There were a lot of opportunities that almost happened but didn’t,” she explains.

“I had a lot of doubt and a lot of fear that maybe this career wasn’t suppose to happen.”

Though she was having these doubts, there was still a small flame inside her that was pushing her. That’s when she wrote “Fight Song.” “Fight Song” was Rachel’s declaration to herself to not give up.

“Once I wrote the song, it didn’t happen immediately but gradually I noticed it was resonating with people on a deeper level than anything I had ever written before,” Rachel says. “I had this feeling that I needed to keep going, that this message that I need to give to the world really is working, even if I only give it to a couple of people.”

In June, “Fight Song” is number three on the iTunes top 100 chart. During her GMA performance, people were holding up signs

with #MyFightSongGMA and what they’re struggling to overcome and what they’re fighting for.

“It’s amazing to me that this song that I needed, because I needed to remember that I believed in myself, is resonating with people and has become their reminder and their anthem,” Rachel says.

She says people approach her all the time with their own unique story about how her song relates to their lives.

“I don’t think it’s ever going to lose the effect,” Rachel says. “Everyone has a struggle. Everyone’s gone through something. Everyone needs a fight song.”

“Fight Song” is one that brings people from all walks of life together because it’s relatable. One of Rachel’s favorite things about being a musician is being able to unite a group of people who might not have any reason to be brought together otherwise.

“I love everyone feeling something together. I like reminding us that we’re not so separate. I think we have this misconception that we’re alone and that we’re separate from each other and that’s not true,” Rachel says. She takes it upon herself to remind people that we’re all connected in some way and that “we should support each other and take care of each other.”

Back in April, Rachel performed at the Radio Disney Music Awards. “[They] were pretty special because it was the first time I played at the Nokia Theater to an audience of that size,” Rachel says.

The stage for the night wrapped through the audience and wasn’t something that Rachel was used to working with. “I remember looking at the stage at rehearsals and feeling like, ‘Oh God, I can’t do that. I need to sit behind my piano, I don’t know how to use that stage,’” Rachel remembers.

But, she says, about three minutes into her set she was working the stage like she never had before, feeding off the energy of the crowd and wishing that it wrapped around the entire stadium.

Rachel is probably going to experience the thrill of performing on stages of that size this summer when she goes on tour with Christina Perri and Colbie Caillat, who have inspired her to create the music that she has today.

About four years ago Rachel and Christina did a radio show together in Ohio, which was the first time Christina really inspired Rachel. “Her voice was just so beautiful, and she has this steady calm on stage,” Rachel remembers. “She embodies self-acceptance and girl power and positivity but also with this raw honesty, and I just love her. I love her music.”

Colbie brings a message to light that resonates with Rachel – a message that she wishes to help spread to the world as well.

“Colbie’s ‘Try,’ that song, man, the video really touched me, and it really made me think,” Rachel says about the song, which encourages people to accept themselves the way they are.

“This took two hours to do hair and makeup today,” Rachel says about her look for GMA. “I don’t want anyone to think that they’re not good enough or pretty enough based on comparing themselves to someone who’s in a magazine because you don’t realize how much work and how much effort is put into that.”

Rachel strives to emphasize acceptance and determination. (Her album Be Here also gives off positive vibes.) The themes shine in her recently released EP, The Fight Song EP, the preview for her full-length album that’s coming out this summer.

She’s excited for the future of her career because she’s finally able to do what she wanted most: reach as many people with her music and inspire them.

“It’s why I do this, is to bring people this message of love yourself and be inspired and be empowered and don’t give up and don’t quit,” Rachel says. “The fact that that’s working and that people are getting that message is amazing.”

Though Rachel has been rising in her success recently, she still struggles to comprehend how she is able to reach a vast quantity of people and touch them so deeply.

“My mind doesn’t let me be present very much so I’m working on just being present and getting to soak this up,” Rachel says. “I want to make sure that I’m here and I’m really understanding and appreciating everything that’s out there.” NKD NKDMAG.COM

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A S H L E Y A R G O TA Words by TARA DEVINCENZO | Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

While most 22-year-olds are just entering the workforce, others have been full-fledged professionals since their pre-teen years. With a knack for singing, dancing, acting and sometimes a medley of all three at once, Ashley Argota has allowed herself to take the opportunity to seize the world outside of the classroom and in front of evergrowing audiences.

The Redlands, California native’s talents were discovered early on by her mom, who she says found her JingleBell renditions in the grocery store to be very telling. She had taken on acting roles as young as five years old, but she hit her stride at 11 years old when she was cast as Young Nala in the repeatedly critically acclaimed play The Lion King.

By the time she was 14, she had a Broadway show on her résumé and was about to sign onto her break-through Nickelodeon role. Co-starring as Lulu in True Jackson, VP, Ashley hopped effortlessly from being on-stage to being on-camera.

While she had a steady flow of secure roles, her career was starting to become cemented into acting. “Especially in the past seven years, I feel like acting has taken over everything,” she admits.

She still had two other points to her trifecta that were lacking from her daily repertoire.

A lack of studio time on the road with The Lion King inhibited her dance time, and becoming Lulu for True Jackson was a full-time gig. Despite being busy and successful, Ashley felt the void of not practicing her first true talent.

“After Lion King, I felt like it was all acting all the time,” she says, “which makes me miss music.”

During acting interims, she would go to a studio to write music, juggling her passions in her free time. “I try to work on them at the same time, but it usually ends up that I have to focus on one or the other,” she says.

Finally, she found a role that started to open up the doors she had always been knocking on. ABC’s The Fosters was the first place she joined acting

with singing. Like many actors after many auditions, her nerves got the best of her, and she was concerned that she hadn’t completely nailed it. But when she received the call back from casting, she got more than what she had even hoped before prior to going in. “The first phone call I got was from the musical director,” she recalls, meaning that not only had she nailed the audition for the part, but they had big plans for how they would incorporate her singing as well.

And so Nickelodeon’s Lulu transformed into Lou Chan, the band mate and girlfriend (as of season two) of Brandon Foster (David Lambert). The band dynamic helped Ashley push her character to the forefront, her career to even higher levels, and most importantly for her, she started singing again.

Showcasing her singing on The Fosters brought some attention to her notas-publicised but still incredibly strong talent. “I think it kind of pushed me to write some more and work harder on my music,” she says.

In addition to her television presence, Ashley continues her on-stage work in the evenings on Romeo and Juliet: Love is a Battlefield. Played at Los Angeles’s Rockwell Table and Stage, the play is what Perez Hilton called “a love child between William Shakespeare, Pat Benatar and Tina Turner.” As the leading lady, Ashley acts alongside Disneyveteran Corbin Bleu as the infamous pair of starcrossed lovers, expressing their anguish set to a (you guessed it) Pat Benatar soundtrack.

While she only steps out as Juliet in the evenings, the rest of her work has a direct correlation with her stage performances. She has had to tone down the so-called theatrics on her shows to save her voice, which is easier said than done. Her commitment has instituted a full regimen of a conscious awareness of overexertion during her day jobs, and a natural concoction of hot water, apple cider vinegar, cayenne pepper and honey. “If it sounds disgusting that’s because it is,” she admits.

Being able to belt out ’80s diva hits is just the tip of the iceberg to her music career — Ashley continues to write and produce her own music. With some influence and inspiration from her songstress gurus Kelly Clarkson and Katy Perry, Ashley has created a style and persona that she can call her own. She found herself being pushed and pulled by various producers into styles that felt unnatural, like rap and EDM, and immediately stepped away. She found a counterpart in Rebecca White, who she says pretty much co-wrote her entire album and kept her on key with her true self. “I can’t write about something I don’t know because then I won’t mean it when I sing it,” she says.

She struck gold in the midst of all of this work by finding a social life fused with her career with Love is a Battlefield. “I’ve never bonded with people that quickly and that well,” she says.

Not only do they take weekend trips together, but they have matching tattoos.

Ashley is continuing to play Lou in season three of The Fosters, but she will also be playing Helen in next year’s movie musical Broken. She is still devoted to her role as Juliet, and, throughout all of this, her own music.

Finishing her album and touring are on the top of her music goals for the end of the year. Adding Kelly Clarkson to the roster comes in next, though she admits there are a few others who might trump that spectacle.

“If I was popular enough and had the opportunity to go on tour, I would want to showcase my friends,” she confides.

She released her single “Limitless” early this year, and by the end of the year, she plans to really spotlight her music. Coming full circle from a career that kicked off on set of The Lion King, she has in innate voice within telling her “Remember who you are.” Though her audience has grown from her mother in the produce aisle to millions of Americans, she is still striving to bring her dreams of touring to fruition.

“I love performing, I’ve always loved performing,” she says. NKD NKDMAG.COM

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knuckle puck Words by SHELBY CHARGIN Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

Knuckle Puck bandmates started out as casual acquaintances who managed to find magic in the local Chicago music scene.

When they started out, they weren’t sure what was to come of the band. “We just had fun with it,” Kevin Maida (guitar) says of their start. “We met Ryan a couple years later. We had other bassists, but we met Ryan, and he’s been with us ever since.”

For Kevin, Nick Casasanto (guitar), Ryan Rumchaks (bass), John Siorek (drums) and Joe Taylor (vocals), playing music with a band was fun, and local shows were something they grew accustomed to. But the guys of Knuckle Puck have quickly gained national attention. “It was like almost two years ago now, I was still in school,” Kevin reminisces. “It was when our manager Zack [Zarrillo], we started working with him, and we acquired a booking agent. It was when we got our first full U.S. tour, which was with Neck Deep and Light Years, it was like, ‘All right, we can keep consistently doing this.’ And then after that tour offer we just kept getting more, and we were able to build up a whole year of doing stuff.”

For the band, it was completely unexpected. After their considerably small start, playing music drastically different to what was in their local scene, having that confirmation really pushed them through.

“Basically before any of that stuff it was just kinda like up in the air. We were like, ‘I don’t know if we could do this for as long as we’d like to.’ We were just kind of unsure. So that just solidified … like having people have your back how people work toward a common goal of touring and being in a band ya 22

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know?”

That turn of events helped them really reach out to more fans beyond their Chicago suburbs. “That took a while for us, it was more so, we were a local band for a long. Well not for a long time, but for a little while, and like it definitely took a really long time to reach people outside of the midwest kind of.” It was a bit of a daunting task, but it just took a bit more effort on the music side of things. “And that changed, that changed when we started putting out more music and started trying to be an active band on our own part.”

Kevin’s outlook on putting out new music and having it reach as many people as possible is easy to see when he looks back on creating the full-length they are planning to release this year. It was a process that has been worked on for some time, and he is proud of it. “We started recording in February, when we got home from the U.K., and we recorded for like four weeks straight like almost every single day. And then now it’s just been like a process of listening back to it and getting mixes back, and figuring out our work and just getting it ready for the release.” Those four weeks of recording haven’t been the end of it though, like many bands, they live and breathe their album until the day it’s released. “It’s safe to say it’s completely consumed our minds for the past like … half year that’s all we’ve been thinking about obviously. I’m really happy with how it came out. I’m excited,” he smiles.

The good attitude everyone has toward the album stems out of the unity they had creating it. “It was weird because with all of our EPs or splits, you didn’t really have to pay attention to ‘does this add to the cohesiveness of an album like a full-length record should.” Kevin explains, “so when we were writing we definitely kind of keep an ear out like ‘does the song make sense with these other songs that are on here.’ As far as like a central theme, there’s really nothing like anything like that … it was the first time we had to really think ‘does everything fit with everything else, and if it doesn’t, can we use it?’”

For a band who has been able to do things so smoothly and seamlessly, it’s no surprise that the album felt like a natural progression. “It kind of just came naturally,

I wouldn’t say we really struggled with that, which is kind of cool that things just kind of came naturally,” Kevin explains. “We weren’t like ‘Oh man these six songs that really fit well together but now we have like four songs that just are out of left field.’ We didn’t really think like that. And if something felt not normal for our band, we found a way to make it, and just to have it on there. We didn’t really struggle with it, it was a really good time actually.”

The good times for Knuckle Puck have transferred into touring as well. They feel welcome in the current pop-punk era.

Going to different places and being greeted with open arms, so to speak, has been a blessing. “Even just going off of how reactions have been every night, not just for this tour, but for the past like year that we’ve been touring,” Kevin says. “It just like, feels nice that you can consistently go back to a place where you’re still pretty much like a stranger, you have no idea about the area or the people that live there, but you can consistently go back to a place like the East Coast or New York and people still like care about your band. And you definitely get the same reactions, and it’s cool.”

And this tour with The Maine has been no exception. “It’s been honestly one of the coolest tours we’ve ever done,” Kevin notes.

“We didn’t know The Maine, didn’t know The Technicolors, but we do know Real Friends. We all live by each other at home, and like when we were both local bands, we would play local shows together, and we’ve been waiting to tour with those guys for a long long time.”

Real Friends also hails from Chicago, and Kevin gives the impression that they all share the same outlook about just enjoying what they’re doing. “It’s truly phenomenal.

Everyone on this tour is like really cool,” he says. “We may not sound like each other, but that doesn’t really matter. We’re all here for the same reason, and it’s really, really good vibes all around. It’s great, it’s awesome. I’m kind of like speechless about it and the way it’s turned out.”

The exposure of this tour with The Maine has been huge for them, as Knuckle Puck have been able to introduce their music new people. “There’s a lot of people who are just coming out to see The Maine,

but that’s awesome because that’s a new set of ears that gets to hear your music every night, and sometimes, almost every night after the show, people will come up to us and be like, ‘I’ve literally never heard your band before,’ but the fact that they were able to hear our band because of a band like The Maine taking us out on tour is like incredible,” he gapes.

He pauses for a moment, but quickly returns to his thoughtful demeanor. “I think we, us and Real Friends, probably catch people off guard because I don’t think they expect us to sound how we do … we just don’t sound like The Maine. I feel like people expect us, if they’ve never heard of our band, to sound like them,” he explains. “But at the end of the day, if they’re having a good time, and they’re into it, and if someone, like today starts to like our band and they didn’t know who we were yesterday, then that’s really all we’re trying to do.”

This summer will bring Knuckle Puck to possibly their biggest accomplishment yet: playing the Vans Warped Tour. “We’re really excited for that just because we all grew up going to Warped Tour,” Kevin recalls. “So it’s just like super cool to actually be playing it and kind of have a different perspective on it as an active member of it, so we’re all really psyched for that.”

And their goals for Warped? Well, they’re probably the same as other bands. “I want to try and meet as many people that I would normally never be able to tour with.”

As for who they want to meet? It’s not hard to guess. “We all wanna meet Riff Raff. I mean like who doesn’t nowadays?” Kevin says.

Like the other members of his scene, and a lot of his friends, Kevin, and all of Knuckle Puck are happy to be playing music and doing what they’re doing. “I wanna keep doing it for as long as we can, you know, just writing music and going on tour, making new friends and meeting new people every night. Short-term, I wanna kiss Shawn,” he jokes, before continuing. “I’m kidding.

Short-term, I don’t know. I just wanna kiss Shawn.”

In true pop-punk fashion, Kevin and the rest of Knuckle Puck keep the seriousness to the music and keep the rest of life fun. Actually, the music is pretty fun, too. NKD NKDMAG.COM

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CANAAN SMITH Words & Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

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If you’ve turned on country radio lately, chances are you’ve heard Canaan Smith’s Virginian accent telling you he wants to love you slow like the Mississippi and strong as a fifth of whiskey. While “Love You Like That” isn’t Canaan’s first single on country radio, it’s his first to make it into the Top 10 — and it’s still climbing. Canaan’s career has been a slow build up to an extremely fast last few months.

Canaan grew up in Virginia, surrounded by a family of musicians.

While there’s a high population of country music fans in his hometown of Williamsburg, there weren’t many people playing it. So he packed up his belongings and moved to Nashville.

He didn’t know a single person in town and said yes to any offer that came his way, whether it was co-writing or a writer’s round. His first stroke of luck came in 2009 when “Runaway,” a song he co-wrote with country duo Love and Theft, made hit No. 10 on the country charts. Canaan signed a pub-

lishing deal shortly after. He spent the next few years developing his sound and finding his voice in songwriting.

“Record labels started noticing and UMG and Mercury Records came to the table with a great offer, and they were a great fit,” Canaan says.

His first single, “We Got Us,” was released in January 2012 — almost a year after he signed his deal. The song, though a great story in Canaan’s mind, never quite cracked the Top 40.

It would be another two years before country music fans heard from Canaan again. “In that downtime, instead of sitting around, twiddling my thumbs, I went and hit the road and played for as many people as I possibly could,” he recalls.

Last July, Canaan released “Love You Like That,” and it’s been working its way up the charts ever since. Now, almost a full year later, his debut fulllength, Bronco, is out. “Part of helping find my sound was just to tell my story, and Bronco is 11 songs that do that,” he explains. “I lost my brother in a car accident, and he drove a Ford Bronco.”

The title track is inspired by memories Canaan has of his brother, whereas “American Muscle” is about hard work in different fields. “Good Kind Of Bad” is about the longing for mystery in a relationship. “I’m just trying to communicate the honest realities of being a 32-year-old dude,” he says.

For Bronco, Canaan penned eight of the 11 tracks, simply because he didn’t have time to write three more songs that filled the missing holes on the record. “I was missing a song about your stomping grounds, and so I found an outside song about that,” he says, “I felt like it was important to put something like that on my message.” At the end of the day, Canaan feels like the best song should win regardless of who wrote it. He’s filled holes on other artists’ records and was never opposed to taking pitches for his own body of work.

Because Bronco is his first album, Canaan had to really hone in and decide what he wanted to say about him-

self and the world. By the time he had the first eight songs ready to go, the single was climbing and things were moving quickly in Canaan’s camp.

After years of waiting to put out music, all of a sudden Canaan had a deadline.

“We actually finished the album on the road, and I sort of just called up my best songwriter buddies and said ‘I need songs like this,’” he recalls. “I got lucky finding those [songs] at the last minute because they were exactly what the album needed.”

The last few months have been an absolute whirlwind. He barely knows where he’ll be in a few hours, let alone the next day or next week. “It’s just a sign of it working,” he explains. “[‘Love You Like That’] is resonating with people, and they want more.” He felt that there was a place in country music for a love song without the fluff — from a “nitty gritty boy’s perspective.”

“I think the guys don’t feel like wusses singing it, and the girls appreciate the perspective that the guy has that I’m singing about,” he says.

Prior to Bronco’s release in June, Canaan released a four-song EP as a teaser. It wasn’t long after that audience members at his live shows were singing along to those songs as well. “It just feels like pressure is building. I can see the growth happening right before my eyes,” he says. Canaan will be out with Dierks Bentley all summer long and is working on solidifying tour plans for after that, though nothing is set in stone. “Get there early!” he laughs.

“People tailgate for hours at country shows, and the walk from the parking lot to the pavilion is kind of long, but I go on right at seven o’clock every night.”

Once “Love You Like That” climbs as far as it can, he’ll be releasing another single to country radio, though he hasn’t picked out which one yet.

Right now, he’s just focused on pushing Bronco and developing his live show as much as possible. It’s been a long but fulfilling journey for Canaan, and his hard work is finally paying off. NKD NKDMAG.COM

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night riots Words by SHINA PATEL Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

California-based rock band Night Riots are an amalgamation of childhood friends — Travis Hawley (vocals), Matt DePauw (keyboard and guitar), Nick Fotinakes (guitar), Rico Rodriguez (drums) and Mikel Van Kranenburg (bass) — who really bonded over music.

For the past few years, Night Riots have steadily been building up to the career they have now. It all started when they signed with Sumerian Records and released their EP Howl in January. The next month, the band embarked on their first full U.S. headlining tour. In March and April they were the main support on The Mowgli’s U.S. and Canada headlining tour.

“I think everything has sort of been a progression. And it’s all been building up,” Nick says. They seem to have been taking the necessary steps to move their career in the right direction, from touring their home state to touring the country, and from signing with a record to getting radio play.

Their previous EP, Young Lore, was quietly successful, but the fans they gained from that specifically appreciated the way they catered to listeners.

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For the summer, the band will be playing at every Vans Warped Tour stop. Since Night Riots have been on tour for the first six months of 2015, they haven’t been able to fully realize how quickly they’ve progressed. They find that it is hard to stay in tune with what is happening on the commercial side of their success when they are on tour because they are focused on putting on incredible shows for their fans.

“When you’re on tour, you’re kind of like in a capsule,” Mikel explains. “So you don’t get a chance to stop and say, ‘Where are we right now?’”

But every now and then, they get reminders from their family and friends. “I recently had my step-sister send me a text from Hawaii ... She was like ‘I just turned on the local radio and you guys are playing.’ So that was kind of like a little surreal,” Travis says.

Rico remembers when one of his younger cousins was buying shoes in Journey’s saw a Night Riots music video playing in the store. “She was like, ‘I’m family with famous people?’ And she got all excited,” he says.

But then they also realized that they had been surrounding themselves with good company (K.Flay, The Mowgli’s, Vance Joy, AWOLNATION, The Strokes, Monsters and Men, Walk the Moon, Passion Pit and Hozier).

Howl has been a work in progress ever since the band formed. “There are songs on it that we’ve been working on forever, but there are also songs that came out really fast,” Rico says. Upon release, the band received a very positive reaction from their fans

and the music industry in general. “I think we hoped there would be a sort of reaction, but I never really thought this would be it or this is how it would happen,” Nick says.

Their goal has always been to be successful and to reach as many people as possible, and Howl has certainly been a giant step in that direction. Their single “Contagious” has been garnering a lot of buzz, having its debut at No. 40 on the Billboard Alternative chart. What makes this song so unique and popular is the honesty behind it. “I think we strived in the recording process to not make everything sound perfect,” Travis shares. “When we first started recording music, we would be so meticulous about getting everything to sound super precise. I feel like we kind of sacrificed some of the soul sometimes.”

In a world where technology and auto-tune can make anyone sound perfect, their song sticks out among the masses as raw and real.This process has also proven to be helpful for the band when performing live. A problem that many artists face today is trying to recreate what they did in the studio on stage for their fans. The band doesn’t run into this problem because they aren’t wrapped up in sounding precise and perfect. They were more focused on the performance of the song than trying to make it sound perfect. “I think that’s what people relate to,” Travis says.

And while some may relate their synth-moody sound to The Cure or The Killers, Night Riots has a unique vibe that maybe only comes when you have known your bandmates

for most of your life.

Although this year has been jam-packed with touring, they hope to find some time to begin work on their full-length album. They hope to release it by the end of the year, but if that time frame is too optimistic, fans should expect something by the beginning of 2016.

For the full-length, they hope to express themselves a bit more than they could with their EP. It will allow them to experiment and add songs that are different from something they would normally do.

“You can only make so much of a statement because you’re limited to how many songs you can have,” Rico says. “But I feel like, as a band, we express a wide range of emotion through sound. We kind of explore a lot of different vibes. We don’t just do the same thing over and over again.”

The band has a few simple goals: reach as many people as possible and tour every continent — even Antarctica. (So, maybe that isn’t as simple as it sounds.) But the first destination on their list is Europe, specifically the U.K. (Travis traveled around England for five years, so there might be a bit of a soft spot for that location.) And they hope to make it to Asia soon — probably sooner than Antarctica.

And like many other bands, they want a number-one single. They want a platinum record. There are some lofty dreamy, but they have a passion for music and a desire to connect on a raw level with their fan base — qualities that have helped to their quick ascendance in the music scene.

Hopefully we’ll be buying tickets to Antarctica. NKD NKDMAG.COM

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AWOLN Words & Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

NATION

There’s no secret formula to success in the music industry, and with so many variables contributing to every hit song, it’s near impossible to plan for it. Aaron Bruno, the creative force behind AWOLNATION, has no idea how or why his song “Sail” exploded. He pins it down to luck, but that’s not to say he didn’t earn it.

I meet with Aaron in his green room at Irving Plaza just hours before he kicks off two sold out nights at the New York City club. There are a few excited fans already braving the heat outside in line, hoping to snag a front-row spot later tonight, but the atmosphere inside the venue is calm. Aaron himself matches the mood in the building and speaks softly about his journey as a musician. “Sail” took him on a wild ride, but now he’s knee deep in a new adventure: his sophomore album, Run. Aaron’s introduction to music came at just 5 years old.

His father played guitar around the house, but to Aaron, it seemed like a complicated and far-fetched instrument. Growing up in Southern California in the 1980s, Aaron constantly

had images of “ridiculous, selfindulging” guitar players in front of him via MTV. “It was like watching Tiger Woods play golf and just knowing you’re never going to get there so why try. That’s kind of how I felt,” he says. As a kid, guitar was just something fun to do with his dad. “There was something really cool about jamming together,” he says.

Fast-forward to middle school: Aaron began putting together bands. When he was 12, he started a punk band with a kid in his town that knew how to play drums. They started trying to create their own songs, which Aaron felt was easier than trying to emulate what he was seeing on TV. Music quickly became the thing Aaron cared about most.

“I knew that I could do [music]

better than I could do anything else. Not that I thought I was good, but for myself I was good,” Aaron says. “I just understood music more than anything else. It made the most sense to me.” His punk band turned into a hard rock band, and when he was 18, he decided to stop screaming and start signing because there was an influx of bands getting signed out of his hometown. “We started to take the idea of songwriting much more seriously,” he says.

As far as AWOLNATION goes, Aaron feels as if everything in his life has been training for this project. Some of the song ideas that AWOLNATION has released had been in Aaron’s head since he was a little kid. His band Home Town Hero signed with Maverick ReNKDMAG.COM

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cords — a sub-label of Warner Bros. Records that Madonna started. He quickly notes that he never met Madonna during his time on the label, but he did smoke a Cuban cigar with Jay Z when his band Under the Influence of Giants signed with Island Records. But it was very clear to Aaron at the time, and even more now, that a major label is not the best fit for him. AWOLNATION has been signed to an independent label — Red Bull Records — since the beginning of their career, which made the success of “Sail” even more of a surprise.

“I kind of just feel like I won the lottery, or got the last golden to ticket from Willy Wonka,” Aaron shares. “I think we all in the band feel very lucky and humbled to be in this position.” “Sail” was Aaron’s foot in the door to the mainstream music business, and now he is considered a successful artist, which is a feeling he’s still getting used to. He’s always had confidence in his songwriting skills, so it’s an added bonus that people have reacted so positively to his work.

When it came to putting together Run, Aaron knew it would be impossible to match the success of “Sail,” which has been certified platinum six times over. “I don’t know how it happened, it just did. It’s just a really honest song that I wrote,” he says. With Run, he just wanted to write and release songs that people could once again relate to — but he also wanted the record to sound massive. “I wanted people to be affected by my music, similar to how I was affected by music 34

growing up,” he explain. “So many different records changed my life, or helped me get through an obstacle in my life.”

He has a very vivid understanding of music’s influence on all aspects of life — even outside of entertainment value.

“Music is everything to us. It’s the way we dress, it’s the way we think, it’s the way we talk to ladies, it’s the way we talk to guys … It’s the friends you have,” Aaron says.

There’s a saying in music that goes “You have your whole life to make your first record and six months to make your follow-up.” But throughout all of his musical endeavors, Aaron had only released debut albums. So he felt the opposite was true. “When it came time to make an album where I knew I was going to have millions of people actually anticipating it coming out, that gave me a different kind of mentality and a different kind of confidence and patience,” he says. He felt that he had an opportunity to make a “strange, freak-out follow-up” that also had the potential to be extremely successful. “I walked this line of going almost too far — and probably going too far in some cases — but all along wanting to make an album that can appeal to everybody,” he says.

Because of the success of “Sail,” which Aaron wrote, the label didn’t even ask to hear Run until it was completely finished. They trusted him fully and gave him all creative control. “Some of the bands you hear on the radio today, they have people that write those songs for them, and that’s a

strange thing to me. I would have a hard time singing someone else’s words,” he relates.

“It’s a very personal thing for me.” Fortunately, or maybe naturally, the label liked what they heard when he turned it in.

While Aaron knows that, by the end of 2015, he’ll have to start writing a third record, right now he’s focused solely on Run. “This record took a lot out of me. It’s a very personal and vulnerable record,” he explains.

He’s been enjoying performing these new songs live and learning the best ways to make them sound better each show. Right now, he’s taking things one day at a time.

While Run has only been out since March, Aaron already feels as if he’s accomplished all his goals with it. The single “Hollow Moon (Bad Wolf )” went to number one on the Alternative charts — something Aaron thought would never happen because he thought it was a strange choice for a single to begin with. The second single, “I Am” is doing better than he ever thought as well.

The AWOLNATION community, as Aaron calls his fan base, is celebrating the record. “I feel like I did it,” Aaron says. “And not to mention I’m still blown away by the success of the first record … I feel very satisfied.”

With tour dates stretching into the end of September, Aaron is taking steps toward reaching his ultimate goal: to be the best live band in the world. If his high-energy, sold out performance at Irving Plaza is any indication, I’d say he’s well on his way — whether it’s with luck, hard work or both.NKD

AIMEE CARRERO Words by STACY MAGALLON Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

Lincoln Heights. Greek. Baby Daddy.

Young & Hungry. These are only four of the popular television programs listed in Aimee Carrero’s acting arsenal. Did I mention she’s also going to be the voice of the first Latina Disney princess?

You would have never thought that the ABC Family actress was once set on law school.

Born from Dominican and Puerto Rican parents, Aimee was raised in the Dominican Republic for a few months before settling down in Miami, Fla. She began acting when she was a teenager, but she graduated from the Florida International University with a degree in International Relations and Political Science. Law school was next.

After taking the LSATs, Aimee realized a few things: her career path was expensive and she was only 20 years old, with decades of possibilities ahead of her. “I told myself that if I could pay my bills with only acting jobs, I’d stay an actor,” she recalls. She moved to Los Angeles and found an agent shortly after. Within her first year in California, she managed to book seven jobs. “It was unheard of,” she says.

While living on the West Coast, Aimee worked as a bartender to pass the time. It was there that she found new friends before booking a role on Cartoon Network’s Level Up. The singlecamera live action comedy was shot in Vancouver, but it only lasted one year and two seasons.

While filming in Canada, Aimee began to ponder her options. “I was living in a different country, working on a sitcom, and I didn’t know anything about acting,” she says. So she began reading plays and started to daydream about a theater career in New York City.

In 2012, she made her off-Broadway debut in the Atlantic Theater Company’s What Rhymes with America. “I stood on that stage with a Tony-Award nominee and two Yale graduates,” Aimee says. “I proved to myself that I had the chops and could do anything.”

After her time off-Broadway, Aimee moved back to Los Angeles to plow

the fields of her four-year long acting career. She worked on an episode of ABC Family’s hit comedy series Baby Daddy before landing a major recurring role on another sitcom on the network.

“I auditioned for Young & Hungry but never got a call back,” Aimee says. The head of casting at ABC Family personally singled her out and asked whether she auditioned. Having already done so without a follow-up, Aimee fibbed. “I lied and said I hadn’t,” she laughs. “So I auditioned again and got the role of Sofia.”

Young & Hungry follows entrepreneur Josh (Jonathan Sadowski) and food blogger, Gabi (Emily Osment), whom he hires to be his personal chef. The series follows the pair and their friends after the couple’s one-night stand. Aimee portrays Sofia Rodriguez, Gabi’s best friend, roommate and banking intern. While longtime actors often fall into a cadence, Aimee believes her naivety guided her in the portrayal of Sofia. “She is exactly the kind of woman I want to be,” she says of her character. She is headstrong and driven, though her internship consists of fetching coffee for clients. “I didn’t know how to play Sofia at first,” Aimee says.

She did, however, find hope in her character — a woman with her own agency and ambition whose main goal in life wasn’t to find love. “After I first read the script, I was like, ‘This character is mine.

This is my job.’”

While working alongside sitcom veterans Emily Osment, Jonathan Sadowski and Kym Whitley, Aimee realized she was the only one who hadn’t worked on a multi-camera sitcom. Fortunately for her, she was encircled by a cast who welcomed her warmly. “I felt so protected and surrounded by professional people who have a great time acting,” Aimee says.

While working on Young & Hungry, Aimee also scored a history-making gig. Earlier this year, Disney announced the introduction of its very first Latina princess, Elena of Avalor. Aimee just so happens to be the voice of said royalty.

She was on a beach in the Dominican

Republic when she received an international call from her manager. Prior to this phone call, Aimee never booked voiceover work. To say she’s overwhelmed is an understatement. “It’s an honor to be in the company of Disney’s many historic figures, but I haven’t really processed it,” Aimee says. “If you do, you can’t do the job.” She’s more eager to get the job done, take a step back and gloss over her accomplishment. Elena is not Puerto Rican or Dominican or Mexican.

Disney wanted this character to appeal to the broadest audience possible. “I just want to see my culture represented,” she says.

The network describes her as “a confident and compassionate teenager in an enchanted fairytale kingdom inspired by diverse Latin cultures and folklore.” Elena will make her debut in 2016 on the Disney Junior show, Sofia the First. After the debut, Princess Elena is expected to have a spin-off series later that year.

Voiceover work may not have come to mind when Aimee moved to Los Angeles, but it’s definitely another talent to add to her arsenal. This is, as she calls it, “The journey of being an actress.”

Between filming Young & Hungry and prepping for her role as Princess Elena, Aimee admits there is a challenge in finding a balance. Young & Hungry takes six hours per episode while the voiceovers take about 30 minutes — and she can show up in her pajamas. Aimee’s biggest difficulty yet is saving her energy.

“You need to know how to take care of yourself and your body and how to stay healthy,” she says.

Her most recent work, The Last Witch Hunter, co-starring Vin Diesel, will be in theaters this October. Afterward, she’s set on auditioning for more roles and keeping her career on the move. For someone who once believed she couldn’t make a living by entertaining people, Aimee has proved herself wrong. None of it is easy, but it gets done. “I guess I’m just really busy,” she says. “But if my biggest problem is that I’m too busy, then bring it on.” NKD NKDMAG.COM

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brett dier Words by JORDAN MELENDREZ Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

In high school, Brett Dier took a ferry from Nanaimo, Canada to Vancouver two hours each direction three times per week. The fare was about $100, but now, more than five years later, the four-hour roundtrip commute was all worth it.

The 25-year-old Canadian actor was venturing to the mainland for auditions, and since then, he has scored roles in The L.A. Complex, Ravenswood and now The CW’s Jane the Virgin.

His acting career began in the sixth grade, when he started participating in school plays. In the seventh grade, he even landed a lead role in a play called Honk, a performance about a musical duckling and in which he played the cat that was trying to eat the duckling.

“I’ve always been into entertaining,” Brett says. “I just loved being the center of attention, to be honest.”

He worked five days per week all throughout high school to help pay for the ferry so he could attend auditions. When he graduated high school in 2008, Brett moved to Vancouver full time. For about a year and a half, Brett worked at a restaurant and auditioned, taking every acting job he could find.

In 2013, he landed a big break as Luke Matheson on ABC Family’s Pretty Little Liars spinoff series, Ravenswood.

He moved to Los Angeles shortly after to be closer to his girlfriend, Haley Lu Richardson, whom he met on the set of Ravenswood. Shortly after, he landed a lead role on Jane the Virgin, a show based on a Venezuelan soap opera.

The CW series has been renewed for a second season and will return to the network in the fall.

“It’s very different and quirky,” Brett says about the show. “Plus my character was pretty interesting because he had to be vulnerable and strong but also madly in love and willing to risk everything. There was so many things that I had to play.”

Brett notes that his parents and friends regularly watch it, and have commented that they still would if he wasn’t in it every week. “It’s one of the

shows where you’re not just watching because you have someone in it that you know,” Brett adds. “It’s actually a show that they enjoy and they look forward too, which is really cool.”

Brett’s character, Michael Cordero, is the (sometimes) love interest of Jane Villanueva (Gina Rodriguez), who is accidentally artificially inseminated.

The catch is, it’s not Michael’s baby — it’s Rafael Solano’s (Justin Baldoni).

Michael is a multi-faceted character, with a complex personality, which has been a struggle for Brett to play. “Every single person on the show, I have a different vibe towards them,” Brett explains, adding that his character is loving toward Jane, standoffish toward Rafael, awkward around Jane’s mother, Xiomara, and well, “with Petra it’s like I have to play I can’t trust this bitch.”

(And really, can anyone?)

“Everything was falling apart for him,” Brett says about Michael in season one. “So hopefully season two you can actually see a brighter side to Michael, see more of the relationship with Jane or his friends or something.”

He also hopes for some plot points to occur: Jane deciding who she wants to be with, the baby coming back and the family interacting with the baby.

But the storyline for season two is still up in the air.

In some respects, Brett says that he and his character are similar. “In real life, you’re different with everyone,” he notes. “I have to kind of change myself just a little bit because I’m not as comfortable with them, you know what I mean? I have to figure it out.”

But for the most part, Brett had to realize that he and Michael are not the same. “Michael isn’t me, at all, so I can’t add too much of myself in there or else it will just change Michael. I was getting to a point where I just really wanted to be comedic,” Brett shares.

“So it was good to come to the terms that I couldn’t have that.”

Michael is the first character Brett has played for an extensive amount of time: 10 months. “You actually start

caring for the person,” he says. “Like when you read the script and you see something bad happen to him you actually get affected.”

While he is learning how to play a character for an extended period of time, Brett is also acclimating to the change in scenery: award shows. Jane the Virgin was well-received by fans, so many cast members attended the Golden Globe awards (where Gina won Best Actress in a TV Series, Musical or Comedy). “I was in the bathroom, and Robert Downey Jr. came next to me,” Brett remembers, adding that he didn’t speak to him, but he did talk to some of his idols: Benedict Cumberbatch and Steve Carell — not for long, though. As an up-and-coming actor, Brett admires other TV shows and movies such as Breaking Bad, The Office and Warriors with Tom Hardy and Nick Nolte.

Despite some people recognizing him and calling him Michael on the street, Brett has been able to maintain his real persona on social media, where he has taken to communicating with fans.

“You can also show people who you really are, kind of thing. In my case I’m kind of nuts,” he jokes. “I don’t want to hold back anything. So this is my chance to show people I’m nuts.”

Not only is he nuts and a considerably successful actor, but acting is just one of Brett’s many talents. When he was younger, he attended a French immersion school, so now he can speak the language fluently. He also can play the piano and guitar, and he taught himself how to breakdance by watching YouTube videos.

“I used to dance in subway stations,” he recalls. “Then I got some friends together in Nanaimo to do it around.

And we made a little crew, and I used to battle people and stuff.”

Brett’s creativity, goofiness and spontaneity make him curious about how much he can let loose in a future role.

“I want a job that will give me 100-percent creative freedom because I feel like that’s when I’m most comfortable, NKDMAG.COM

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when I’m [improvising] and doing whatever I can do,” he says, likening his dream role to something similar to Will Ferrell’s improvisation. “So I’m waiting for that to happen. But that hasn’t happened yet.”

“It’s just like, freedom. That’s what I’m looking for right now,” he adds.

“That’s what I’m really excited to do.”

He had a role lined up that required a physical transformation — some additional weight and facial hair — but it fell through. But that kind of job is still on his radar. “I just want to change what I look like, be a different person,” he shares. “That’s what I love about it, acting, you get to be different people.”

And while he cannot talk too much about some other things in the works, Brett and his Jane the Virgin co-star Justin are working on another realityscripted show for The CW. And it’s “going to be something that hasn’t been done. It’s very different.” And Brett has even written for it, which is a change of pace. However, he is still primarily focused on acting.

“Right now I’m really trying to focus on acting and becoming a better actor, which takes up a lot of time, for sure,” he says.

With his limited hiatus (he returns to the Jane the Virgin set in August), Brett is going to enjoy some muchneeded family time and a possible trip to Aruba with his girlfriend. But then it’s back to business.

Even with his past experiences and multi-talented background, Brett still is waiting for that one defining role that many actors have; the career-altering part. “To be honest, I haven’t found the role that’s going to push me into the thing that I can do the most, I think,” he says.

“So the role that I’m looking for will come one day,” he adds. “But I’m enjoying the things that I’m doing right now.”

For now, we get to watch him finetune his acting skills. But when the role does come to him, Brett — and everyone else — will probably know. NKD NKDMAG.COM

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rudimental Words by BRITTANY LANDAU Photos by CATHERINE POWELL

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The British band Rudimental is nothing like you’ve ever heard before.

Revered for their live show, it’s no wonder that at only their second show, they had a crowd of 8,000. “For anyone who hasn’t seen us, our live shows are imperative to what Rudimental is about.

Not even musically, but culturally as well,” DJ Locksmith says. Locksmith, along with Amir Amor, Piers Agget and Kesi Dryden, make up the core members of the group.

The four grew up together near Brighton, a town on the south coast of England. They spent their time listening to music, playing football and playing around with music production. When they started, they received air time on pirate radio stations, or illegal radio stations, in London and kept creating music, as well as keeping everyday jobs.

After almost nine years, they got their break with “Feel the Love” and have been consistently growing since then.

“With the success of ‘Feel the Love’ and ‘Waiting All Night,’ which were like, two worldwide number ones for us, we had to tour a hell of a lot, so we’ve been all over the world,” Amir explains.

This allowed the band to record in studios in various parts of the world, including New York, Jamaica and South Africa. “It’s been amazing because you get to draw the energy and culture from each place you go to,” Locksmith says.

Rudimental were also able to work with artists that they might not have been able to work with otherwise. “We managed to work with Nas in New York. We worked with Donald Fagen from Steely Dan, which was a bit of a dream. We worked in L.A., as well, with Ed Sheeran and loads of other people,” Amir says.

They’ve collaborated with so many artists throughout the years that they decided to start their own recording label, Major Toms, to showcase the amazing singers they have found. “On the first album Home, we discovered some unsigned singers and they went on to become really big in their own right, such as Ella Eyre and John Newman,”

Piers says. “What happened for us after that album was that we were touring with them and eventually, they’d go off and do their own thing. So we thought for this one, it’d be great to actually keep a continuous relationship with the singers and bring them into the fold properly.”

“We’re just letting Major Toms be the hub for all of this creativity,” he continues.

“This new generation of music, a platform for them to come through through our audience.”

As for the guys, Rudimental has plenty of creativity by themselves. “The connection between us when we’re in the studio is something pretty special. I think it’s definitely when we make the best music, when we’re all there together,” Kesi says.

Their process in the studio is fairly simple: They go in, play around with their instruments and channel the general feeling of the room that day. “If we’re a bit annoyed that day, you’re gonna probably get a bit of an angry song. If we’re in a good mood that day, you’re gonna get a lovely, emotional, happy song,” Piers explains.

We the Generation, their second album, is set to be released Sept. 18, and the band will continue to tour throughout the year. “The second album, we found, was just flowing out of us,” Locksmith says. “And the soul and funk and reggae aspects really shined through.”

Rudimental use their live performances as their biggest creative outlets. They started as an electronic music group, but they knew that for their live shows, they would have to bring another element: live instruments. Not only does every member play a few different instruments, but they have a backup band that they consider a second family. “It’s a real eclectic kind of cross between Sly and the Family Stone and Massive Attack, and also, in the club, it’s got a rave feel to it because of our background,” Locksmith says, referring to the soul group and hip-hop duo.

Piers adds,“People started to latch on to that and started to feel what we feel when we’re on stage which is joy and happiness that we’re doing this.”

After their major success with “Feel the Love,” it might have been easy for Rudimental to get caught up in other people’s perceptions of the second album, but they have always been a band that prefers to be involved with every aspect of their career. From writing the music to choosing the featured artists, it’s always been about being themselves.

“We never liked working in the past where we’d send a song off to someone and they’ll vocally bring it back to us,” Kesi says. “It doesn’t feel effective, it doesn’t feel organic, and I think that will rip the heart and soul out of what is special about Rudimental.”

However, being themselves wasn’t — and isn’t — always easy when people are sometimes turned off by creativity.

“There were so many closed doors for us when we were doing drums and bass with jazz influences and soul, and loads of vocals on it,” Piers says. “It’s so easy to get diluted by the wants and needs of other people. You have to be really stubborn.”

Obviously, being themselves is working well because you can find Rudimental at major festivals, including Bonnaroo in Tennessee, Governors Ball in New York, Lovebox Festival in London, and Wildlife in Brighton, a festival that they created with Disclosure. “We’ve known each other for many years now, so we decided to put together a festival for ourselves to get the artists that we like to perform,” Locksmith explains. Artists found on the bill this year included Nas, Mark Ronson, Wu-Tang Clan, and of course, Rudimental and Disclosure.

The band doesn’t plan on slowing down anytime soon. “Our albums are a snapshot of how we feel at the time and how we’re progressing as individuals and as a group, so continuing to make music and push those boundaries with making music is our goal,” Piers says.

If you still don’t understand what Rudimental is all about, you will understand after seeing a live show. “I guarantee if you see us live, you’ll leave with a smile on your face,” Amir concludes with a laugh. NKD NKDMAG.COM

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