Morgan Mallory

Catch up with Orange County-based alt-pop/singer-songwriter Morgan Mallory and check out his new single, "Larger Than This Life" off his forthcoming debut album, Manifesto.

What got you interested in music?

Morgan Mallory: I come from a very musical family - and when I say that I mean it was nonstop, all day, every day. My mom is a music teacher and taught out of our home, so she was constantly teaching voice from the moment I that got home from school to 8 or 9 at night. You couldn't escape it. Singing was always in the background no matter what you were doing; if I was watching Indiana Jones and eating a bucket of ice cream, there was someone singing opera in the background [laughs]. My brother was a trumpet player/band geek who later got his degree in vocal performance, and my dad is just a naturally gifted guy who plays piano like Elton John and plays guitar like James Taylor [laughs]. I was getting it at all ends, it is what I was immersed in.

Do you remember the first song you wrote?

I think around 11 years old is when I actually sat down and was like, 'I am going to write a song'. I had always messed around with different instruments we had lying around the house, coming up with little diddys, playing other people's music or learning piano when I was really tiny. I’d always wanted to do something myself, musically. One day the idea rolled into my head for this song that I've never actually released called "Don't Let It End This Way". For some reason, I had been listening to a lot of country music at the time [laughs] and I had a vague lyric idea. With the three or four guitar chords I had just learned, this country song started flowing out of me. The first verse depicts a guy going through a break up and sings the chorus 'Don’t let it end this way / just give me one more day / to right the things that I’ve done wrong…', in the 2nd verse he races off in anger and gets in a car accident - prompting the girl to rush to his aid and sing the chorus from her perspective, then the 3rd verse/chorus is from the point of view of the guy again, but in the afterlife. You see that a lot in country music, where the chorus takes on a slightly different meaning every time it’s repeated. It took about an hour or two to get the whole thing written, and I was just so weirded out. Like, "what just happened...what just came out of my brain??" [laughs], "I don't know what this means…but I gotta do that more, that was fun", and it just started me on this path. [Laughs]

Which musicians have you been influenced by?

Majorly influenced by the stuff my parents and my brother listened to. It was a lot of '70s funk from my mom, 'cause that's the music she played in touring bands back in the day, like Earth, Wind & Fire, Tower of Power, and some classic Motown stuff. The huge ones that really got me going were Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson. I remember listening to Michael Jackson on my cassette player on the school bus [laughs] at maybe 6 or 7 years old, just completely amazed; the amount of emotion that dude exhibited in a performance and his songwriting and just the vibe/groove of it. Then my dad introduced me to '70s rock and a lot of his favorite people from the '60s and ‘70s; Since he was a musical guy already and had a bit of classical training as a kid, he was always interested in virtuoso musicians like Emerson, Lake & Palmer - some of the most incredible keyboard work ever, and Jimi Hendrix - obviously a musician from outer space, and bands like Yes who were an early progressive rock band that painted these really weird, crazy, musical murals. The funk and soul stuff, with really thick/sticky rhythms, melded simultaneously in my mind with the theatrics and huge, crazy orchestrations of early prog rock.

Is there an artist you're hooked on now?

Right now, I have been obsessed with people like Kimbra and Lianne La Havas. I only recently, within the past couple of months, discovered Lianne La Havas and she is just blowing my mind 'cause she's all jazz, but she has these super funky, modern diva songs - yet she's so quiet and cute. She plays guitar and writes her own songs but has this Beyoncé-esque voice. t’s absolutely insane listening to her and imagining how she knew how to do that.

What words would you use to describe your own sound?

That's always the hardest question to answer [laughs]. The really weird part, and this is why it's so difficult, is that my coming record is a compilation of songs that have been in the writing process for five years. This is my first release, so there's a lot of stuff that's been sitting around and was being developed during very different times in my own creative development. Some were being written when I was in rock/metal bands, some when I was teaching voice, some while I was off in LA filming for The Voice; they're all over the place. I've always paid attention to whether my melodies were “brain worms", like, is this going to be stuck in somebody's head for two or three months? I think, if there was a common thread through all of them, there's a clear importance on positive lyrics; having to do with asking yourself really difficult questions and trying to dig deep into developing yourself into a better person. Sometimes it digs up some really tough stuff, but they're important questions. Like, “Am I living my life to the fullest? Am I living to my potential? Is this person worth keeping in my life? This painful thing that I just went through, was it actually necessary and am I a better person for the experience?" Then, there's a track like "Live It Up" which is about partying through all the negative crap in life [laughs] you’re better than that! There's a line in there about repressed potential, ‘If you feel there is something you’ve left behind / a broken promise to yourself at the back of your mind / don't be afraid of the power you've held inside / ‘cause we’re all fighting for our chance to survive’. There's these little nuggets, these little life lessons peppered in.

What were your inspirations behind your new single, "Larger Than This Life"?

That can go as far as you want it to. At the surface, it's just this really positive, big, sun-coming-through-the-clouds sort of song, and is probably the most high energy rock band song I have on the record; it's like the opening of a movie. The first inspiration was a lyrical one. It was hard for me to write love songs for some reason at this time, so I was like, 'let me try to write the ultimate love song,’. What came out was this concept of, recognizing how unusually strong your bond is with somebody you just met. Perhaps you've been with them for a while and it never faded. What if you got this feeling that you fell in love with them in a previous life and you wondered how you knew them so well already? One of the lines is, 'wasn't it odd / feeling like our dreams were always coming true?’ like, have you thought about this as much as I have? Do you get the feeling that maybe we were meant to be together - not just in the cheesy sense - but literally as though the fabric of time and space depends on us being together? [Laughs] So it can be a question of the time space continuum, it can be a question of compatibility - whatever it is that you're feeling, that song should grab you if you're in love at all. It’ll play to the intensity to which you are feeling it.

Could you tell us more about your forthcoming album, Manifesto?

What I've heard from close friends and family that have listened to it is that, even though there are slight differences in genre from song to song, there seems to be a concept to it like you're following a story. It starts out with falling deeply in love and then everything in-between; Love, loss, breakup, geting-back-together, mid-life crisis - that sort of thing. It's a chronology of the past 5/6 years of my life through different relationships and existential struggles. At the very end there's a song called "Back To The Start”, that deals with just picking yourself back up when you fail, like, I get it, you're broken, let's start over, do it again, you'll get it [laughs].

Is there one song off the album that stands out to you?

Yes. I mean, "Larger Than This Life" is the one that everyone in the studio kept pointing out when I asked what they thought the single would be. Personally, I'm really excited about the next song that's going to be coming out in a couple months called "Would It Be Different". It bookends "Larger Than This Life”, which is obviously just being completely in the throes of mind-bending love, but then "Would It Be Different" is from the perspective of being left behind and wondering, how long have you been thinking this way? Would it be different if it was me who was leaving, and would you even miss me? It's probably the most stylistically 'now' track on the record, so I'm really excited to see what people do with that.

What do you hope listeners are able to take away from your music?

I hope they find themselves in it. Think back to the albums - not just songs - that really captured you when you were growing up; why? Was it because the lyrics were speaking to something you were going through at that exact moment? Sometimes you need the validation of hearing someone else put that into words and create the soundtrack to your life. Or maybe you just needed something to dance to and it made you feel good. What I really hope someone gets out of my stuff is that feeling of belonging, the validation that these feelings they've had are good. They're okay, they're worth it, and it's making you stronger.

Is there anything you would like to add?

I would say, to anyone that's reading this, that we've got a great schedule of material to release before the album even comes out. We have a tearjerker of a music video coming out for "Larger Than This Life” where we interviewed a ton of relationships and asked them to define what love is. We asked anyone that would be willing to answer on camera, so we got this wide range of interracial couples, old couples, best friends, LGBTQ couples, anything and everything. The responses we got were both hilarious and incredibly touching. The video itself is going to be really, really cool and should be coming out in the next month or so. If you dig what we’re doing, share it with everyone you know!

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Brandon Stansell

Catch up with singer-songwriter Brandon Stansell, look for his new EP, out now, and watch the music video for gorgeous title track "Dear John".

What got you interested in songwriting now?

Brandon Stansell: I've always been a singer and I have always been around songwriters but, for some reason, I just never really felt like it was something I could do and I don't know why, but I knew that it was obviously something I wanted to do. I think the biggest issue was that I never really felt I had much to write about [laughs] so I, a few years ago, went through basically my first big breakup, and it just made me shift gears a little bit and it gave me all the content I needed so I used that as a jumping off platform. Now, it feels pretty second nature to me, like something I should've been doing this entire time but, yeah, that's how I got started in writing. I went to school in Nashville and a bunch of my friends are songwriters down there - super talented, good people - and they were also really, really helpful in sitting down with me initially and helping start the process, so that was really nice, too. 

Which musicians have you been influenced by?

Well I grew up listening to country and that's where my passion is, but I listen to a variety of things. I still listen to a lot of country music and I've always [laughs] been influenced by more female country than I was ever really influenced by male country, but Vince Gill was my favorite male country singer, I think that his voice and his music has really influenced a sound that I like and that I like to hear pieces of in my own. Then, just, across the board, I listen to a lot of independent music and I do listen to pop music, but it's really older country that I feel like, when I go into the studio and I have songs that we're laying down, I feel like I reference older music.

Do you remember the first album you ever had?

[Laughs] Yeah, the first CD that I ever got was Amy Grant's Heart In Motion [laughs] oh, which is amazing, because I still love Amy Grant to this day, but she was the first record that I had. I used to jostle between three CDs that my parents bought me; I had that one, I had one of Reba's first albums - which I think is really funny - and then I had Mariah Carey's Emotions record [laughs]. So, between the three of those, that was what engendered my initial sound at 6 years old, it came from inspiration from listening to that hodge-podge of music.

How would you describe your own sound?

I think that, from the way that I write to the way that I sing and approach music, I think that it's country, but it's just a very simple and honest way of writing. I write from personal experience and it's less about how commercial a song can be and more about putting a feeling down on paper and then into production, so when I go into writing sessions, I come in with ideas of things that are on my mind to write about and things that I feel I need to do and want to say and share, so that's how I approach it. I feel like the end product of that is this sound that is country but also, because I listen to music outside of country music, is influenced by people like Brandi Carlile - I love her, I think that she's in my vein of what I like to listen to and what I feel influences a lot of my songs - and newer artists like Sam Smith - I think he's great and he's got a great sound, not necessarily a liking to my own, but I definitely feel like I hear pieces of him come through - and then I double back into music that I grew up on; like I said, I listened to a lot of female country, I reference people from Dolly Parton to Lee Ann Womack in just anything from instruments that I want to hear included to the vocals that we lay down, so I'm really all over the place [laughs]. It's amazing to me that people actually listen to the record and that they like it because it is a hodge-podge of a sound, but I had some really great producers in Nashville and a really good team of musicians there and they helped reign in all of the crazy [laughs] that I brought to the project and helped me put out something that I'm really proud of.

Could you tell us more about the inspirations behind your single "Dear John"?

This was the last song that I wrote for this particular project. With the EP, I had this series of songs that I wanted to write, so it's a bit conceptual in that nature, that each song is a journey through and "Dear John" is a bookend to that. I flew to Nashville and I had planned on doing a five song EP and then I realized that the whole point of making this record was this therapeutic letting go process of this person that I had been with for so long and I realized that I hadn't quite written that song yet so I wrangled a couple of writers that had been on other songs and we sat down and I came in with, basically, the first verse of the song written and then we sat down and, in an hour, we just banged out the rest of it and it was just easy and perfect and exactly what it was meant to do.

Dear John was a working title for the project the entire time and I had every intention of changing the title of the EP into something that was a little less on the nose - 'cause my ex's name was John [laughs] - so I needed something a little less on the nose, but we finished writing this song and I was like, 'okay, so what do we call it?'. They were like, 'I just feel like you have to call it "Dear John",' and I was like, 'I do too,' and so we had written this title track and kept the name and it just all felt right and like something that I needed to do. The inspiration for that song was, basically, the final letting go; it was the idea that things are done and it's sad but you gotta move on and you want nothing but the best for the other person too, and I think that's personally how I felt and how I feel and something I wanted to convey and I think we did it, so I'm really happy with the way it turned out.

How would you sum up the Dear John EP in one sentence?

Breakups suck [laughs].

No, I think that anyone that's gone through loss can relate to some facet of something that is a part of that record because it really does journey through beginnings and that infatuation stage all the way through heartbreak and ambivalence and hatred [laughs] and remembering them, and then there's the final letting go and moving on, so I think that it's very human and I think that most adults have experienced something like that in their lives. There's something there for people to relate to, whether you're gay, straight, or whatever your orientation is, I think that there's something there that you can listen to and feel connected to. That wasn't one sentence, but that's how I would sum up that EP [laughs].

Is there a single song from the album that most stood out to you?

When my friend Trent, who directed the video, came to me, he wasn't set on doing one song, he just said, 'I really want to shoot a video for a song from your record, I want you to pick it and I want it to be the one that you feel is reflective of the project and something that you would want to do,' and so that's the one I picked and I think it is. It's the most special to me just because it sums up the whole record, but I'm also just really proud of the way that it came out; it feels very old school to me in the way that we wrote it. I initially had written it to - like I said, I came in with the first verse - I wrote it to a LeAnn Rimes song. I had this melody stuck in my head, she had a song called "What Have I Done" that came out 5 or 6 years ago; love the song, it's written in a similar way, but I had kind of written my lyrics to the first verse over that and I wanted to follow that same format of a song just 'cause it does feel very simple but poignant and kind of old school country and I just really, really like that. To answer your question [laughs], I think that "Dear John" is the song that I look back and feel most proud of and I'm happy that we got to put it out and have other people hear it.

What do you want your listeners to take away from your music?

It's hard to say. People are going to take away different things but I think, specifically, and for me when I finished this project, one of the things that kept coming back to me was that - again, breakups suck [laughs] - they're terrible whether you're gay, straight, or whatever and I don't think that that's talked about very much. When straight people divorce that's really sad and I feel like they're consoled and it's really taken seriously, but this was a long term gay relationship that ended abruptly and I felt it was treated like it didn't matter as much and, after writing the project, I think that if anyone felt that way that was close to me, they realized that this was a hard thing to go through and it's no different than a straight relationship. Breakups really are tough, regardless of sexuality, because your heart has been broken and I think that that comes through and we very purposefully didn't use any pronouns until, literally, the last line of the last song of the record; I think that again helps people just listen to it and relate, not make any assumptions. It was important to me to make that a part of this project, just so that I feel like, if there is another person like me out there listening, they feel like they have a voice and a voice in country music that's not really there. I don't know, that question's hard [laughs] because what people take away is deeply personal, but that is a thought that I had after finishing the record.

Is there anything you'd like to add?

I'm trying to make a little shift; I'm working on a new project. I'm actually working with Erik Halbig, who produced Ty Herndon's last record. Ty is a friend of mine; we were neighbors in Nashville and we've stayed friends throughout the years and Ty was a big country singer in the '90s and came out publicly a few years ago and so he's like the gay country act, which I think is really fun and awesome, but his producer is taking on my next project, which is really fun. So, I'll be in Nashville later this month writing and then recording some time this Summer, so probably another EP type project, but I'm excited about doing that. We're going to try to make a shift, make this one a little less depressing [laughs] but we'll see how it goes.

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Olivia

Catch up with pop singer-songwriter Olivia and listen to her new single, "Outshine The Stars", from her forthcoming EP.

What got you interested in music?

Olivia: What got me interested in music was, I think, at a young age, I just loved listening to music and the idea of being on stage and performing for other people; yet, when I first did it, I was very nervous and I was almost going to back out of doing it but then, after I did it, I felt exactly how I thought I would feel. I think that just listening to other people following their dreams got me to want to do something like that and follow my own dream.

Do you remember the first song you wrote that you were happy with?

The first song that I wrote that I was super happy with would probably be my Christmas song, "Christmas For Two". Before that, I wrote all my own songs by myself and they weren't bad for when I was young - I was probably twelve when I wrote all of them - and they're not your typical kind that relates to everyone, some of them were kind of random, and then I grew into myself, as an artist, and came up with much better songs that suited me and that I loved. When I wrote "Christmas For Two", I think that was the moment I realized, like, 'ooh, I'm getting better at this,' and I wrote it with two other people, so we all got to help each other out. It was really fun.

Which bands or artists have you been influenced by?

I really love Ed Sheeran. I love the way he writes his songs because it's a story from start to end and that's how I wanted to start writing my music, it's a story and it's a whole path from start to ending, and I really love how he does that. Vocally, I also love Sam Smith; I think he's amazing. And Norah Jones, because she was one of the first people that I would listen to and sing her music - at shows and stuff - and she is awesome and I love all her songs; I like the whole jazziness of them.

Who do you have in your playlist now?

I love listening to Justin Bieber right now, I actually think his new album is really awesome. I still listen to Ed Sheeran and Sam Smith except, right now, I'm trying to sway myself out of more sad music because I used to listen to a lot more mellow music [laughs] but I'm getting into Spring break spirit and listening to some upbeat songs by Hailee Steinfeld and stuff like that.

What words would you use to describe your sound?

My own sound, I think, would be more of a singer-songwriter/pop, because of course I'm a pop musician and now I consider myself one - before I didn't really - but I still like to have those singer-songwriter aspects in my music. 

What was the inspiration behind your single, "Outshine The Stars"?

So, for "Outshine The Stars" I wanted to write a song that was to let people know that there is hope and that they're okay in the world and not every bad thing that happens is going to make or break them; it's just one bad thing. Of course there'll be plenty of obstacles in your life, but if you look past them then you can see that - like I said in the song - you can outshine the stars, and that's what I wanted the message to be, to let people know that they can outshine the stars if they put their minds to it.

Is that single indicative of what we can expect to hear on your upcoming EP?

Yes, it's going to be on the EP and I'm really excited about that too because it's probably my favorite song out of all of them, but I love my other songs and I'm really excited to hear all of them together on one EP; it's going to be really cool.

What do you hope your listeners and fans can take away from your music?

I hope that they can love it as much as I do and that my songs inspire them and make them feel something, because I know - like "Outshine The Stars" that things can get rough in life but I want to have a song out there that reminds those people that there are brighter days. I have another sad song on there, but it's a hopeful sad song and I want people to listen to those songs and see that life is good and that it's not always bad and I want them to listen to those songs and leaving them remembering that they heard those songs and that's what I hope. I hope that they love them like I do and that they feel good about it.

Is there anything you'd like to add?

My single, "Outshine The Stars", just came on pre-order on March 16th, so if you wanna get your hands on that you can and it'll officially be out around the 26th of March and my EP is coming after that so, yeah, stay tuned and be excited.

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Kennan Moving Company

Catch up with Oliver of Kennan Moving Company and look for their sophomore EP, New Colors, out now.

What brought Kennan Moving Company together?

Well, it's a solo project in the sense that I write the music and it's my band, so the other members are people who I've met and hired to play with me. But, really, it's not like everyone's a hired hand; we're all close friends now, but it's my project.

Which musicians have you been influenced by?

There are influences that go back a long time, like I'm a huge fan of '60s rock and roll, RnB, and soul music: Jimi Hendrix, Otis Redding, Janis Joplin, that kind of '60s hippie music was a huge influence when I was a teenager. I was also really into Radiohead and LCD Soundsystem, but that kind of stuff was more when I was in high school and college; formative years. More recently, I listen to a lot of different things. My favorite record I've been listening to the last couple weeks is the new Thao & The Get Down Stay Down record or I've been listening to the new Lucius record a lot which I love, so it's really a melting pot. 

Do you remember the first song you ever wrote?

Oh god [laughs]. Vaguely. I couldn't even tell you what it was called. Actually, no, I do remember, it was called "It Ain't Easy". I started playing guitar when I was 17 and I pretty much started writing songs immediately, mostly because I was so bad that I couldn't really even play covers of other people's songs [laughs] so it was easier to write my own. 

What words would you use to describe your own sound?

We call it indie soul. We definitely draw a lot on soul music, RnB, and rock and roll, but it has a lot of modern touches. The band I play with varies depending on the show, like, at our last show, it was eight pieces, so I play guitar and I sing, and then we've got electric bass, drums, keyboard, saxophone, trumpet, trombone, and a backup singer, so that lineup is a very classic lineup for a soul or RnB band, but the sound we're using, like my guitar sound or the keyboard sound, are more modern and we put them through modern effects pedals, so those are the sounds you wouldn't have heard from an old soul RnB band. A lot of the lyrics in the songs are things that wouldn't necessarily have been in a '60s soul song. I mean, obviously, I talk a lot about the same things as other artists do - love, loss, heartache - but I also talk about problems with my family or thoughts on religion, atheism, and subjects you wouldn't find in a normal soul song, so that's why we call it indie soul. A mixture of old soul style and more new soul touches.

Could you tell us more about your new EP, New Colors?

Our first EP that we put out about a year ago, I didn't have a band when I wrote those songs, so that was just whatever was coming out and then we just figured out ways to play them for the band, but these songs were really the first songs that I wrote for this band; I already knew who would be playing the drums or the bass. Stylistically, I was able to write for my band, which is important because now I know what everyone's strengths and weaknesses are. Thematically, the songs are all coming out of that time right after college so, for myself - and I know a lot of people - it's a very confusing time because you really experience real life for the first time, not having this simple life of a student where you go to class and you do your work and you know exactly what you have to do. A lot of it's about that confusion: I'm trying to figure out what my life is about or what I want to be doing. A lot of feelings of being overwhelmed by how complicated life can become, feelings of sadness about where the world is at right now, and really starting to see the bigger picture of New York or America or the whole planet in the 21st century.

How would you sum up New Colors in one sentence?

New Colors is a young man really opening his eyes for the first time.

Now that the EP is out, is there one song that stands out to you that you're most excited to be sharing with your fans?

It's difficult to pick one because they're all a little bit different. Part of that is that what I try to do is make different songs that will hopefully appeal to different people, like a person who likes one song might not like another, or vice versa. I think "Charades", for me, was the song where I really realized that that sound could work for me, kind of a funky soul sound. It really worked for me and was satisfying and worked really well for my band; I think we play that kind of music very well, so that song was definitely a little bit of a turning point.

What do you hope your fans and listeners are able to take away from your music?

I mean, obviously, I hope they can relate to it. I hope they can see themselves in it, which is what I get from the music that I really like. It's someone else putting a feeling that you maybe didn't know how to describe into words. Basically, I really just hope that it maybe addresses something that a fan is thinking about or feeling in their own lives and just letting them know that I've been there and other people have been there and you're not alone.

Is there anything you'd like to add?

This is just a part of a continuation and we're about to have another show in a couple weeks on the 26th at The Lively. Also, we're filming a short film right now and we're about to go back into the studio to start recording another record and you should keep following up with us because we're just beginning and we're going to be releasing a lot more cool music and, hopefully, it just keeps getting better and better.

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