Change for Me: An Interview With Low Level Flight

We are all well aware of how reality television has wreaked havoc on the definition of quality. Reality celebrities are often nothing more than seasonal fodder and one big marketing scheme/money-making, cheap investment. Idols are no different. Right? Canadian Idol first season winner, Ryan Malcolm was thurst into a world of sappy ballads and music videos showcasing his adoration for his fans signing autograph after autograph in front of Wal-Marts. He was the perfect Canadian Idol. Quiet, modest, lovable, sweet.

But is he? After a hiatus from the Idol bonanza, he's back along with four other guys, making up the rock (yes, we said rock, no more ballads announcing he's home, or how "your heart will know" or how he went from fool to man) group Low Level Flight. The five boys, Ryan, Shaun Noronha, James Rooke, Dave Carter and Brandon Merenick sat down with us to talk about the Idol status, throwing up sea water, and Britney Spears (she's really never a topic is she?).

JXM: Low Level Flight - where does the name come from?

Ryan: We had a few other ideas in the mix, and we just sort of took a vote and said that this sort of represents the band and obviously not verbatim, but there's just really no interesting story to that [everyone laughs].

Shaun: It means, we're not shooting for the moon right away, we just want to keep it steady.

Ryan: Yeah, steady as she goes. That's a good name for a song!

JXM: Can you tell us how all of you hooked up and got together?

Ryan: I lucked out because Dave, James and Brandon were friends prior to the band. So I met James through a couple of guys I played with here and there and James filled in on a rehearsal. The first day I was like, "I want you definitely in the band because you're amazing." And he introduced myself to Dave and Brandon who rounded out the band. We finished the band probably about a month after we finished the record. The band wasn't complete until Dave and Brandon joined. We just used two guys to record. And Shaun, I knew for about three years so that one was an easy one.

JXM: What were the musical influences of the Urgency record?

James: We were listening to a lot of Canadian stuff, but anything from Mobile to Keane, to really 80's stuff. Armour for Sleep, Bloc Party.

Ryan: Muse.

Shaun: All good bands. You know I find that the band's general taste across the board is - I'm happy everytime someone pulls out an album, I'm like, "I like that. That's really cool."

Dave: It's true. We've been listening to a lot of Metric, I like Stars, like a lot of Canadian stuff. As well as Coldplay too.

Ryan: Yeah, we like a bit of everything. Brandon has a bagpipping album that he likes to play all the time. We let him do it.

Brandon: They won't let me do that for any live shows, because I do play the bagpipes a little bit.

Shaun: But they're not really a tempered instrument so they would go out of tune when you go into the high register...

Brandon: Exactly, but that's the cool thing about it.

Shaun: Is there a cool thing about them? [laughs]

JXM: Ryan: your image from winning Canadian Idol to Low Level Flight has undergone a transformation. Is this new image truer to who you are as a person?

Ryan: I don't think that the image really has changed. You know I don't really dress any differently than I normally would, I mean obviously when you're on the show you would dress a certain way. But in real life - when I came back to reality, I sort of just went back to my normal self. I've always been a fan of rock music and I've always wanted to do rock music and write rock music as opposed to poppy ballads which really isn't me. So the first record was a nice little stepping stone, and now we're in a new chapter, not only in my career but for these guys as well.

Dave: I think musically this record is a lot closer to what he wanted to do in the first place.

Ryan: Oh yeah, for sure.

JXM: Do you think you'll be alienating your original fans of your pop record with the move to Low Level Flight and its heavier sound?

Ryan: No, I mean, because luckily, I got the chance to meet about 50-60 thousand people just over the last three years, talking to people, talking to fans. As much as we don't write music for other people, we write it for ourselves, of course we're not going to write death metal, and be like "here you go," but we didn't write this with any specific genre in mind, but we knew that the music was not going to alienate anyone. I mean it's not like it's...

Dave: And if it does, then fair enough.

Ryan: Yeah, I mean we made the record that we wanted to make.

Dave: And he could only be real, and I wouldn't have as much respect for him if I knew he was like that.

Shaun: Catering...

Dave: Yeah, catering to the masses.

Shaun: I mean, we hope people like it. I mean we hope your fans -

Ryan: Yeah I think they will. I think they will like it a lot. We're not into the people pleasing business, we're into the making-good-music business.

JXM: Was it an easy transition from the pop sensibility of your solo record to the rock sensibility in Low Level Flight?

Ryan: It was, but only because of these guys. Like trying to do it on my own - I was writing for about a year and a half on my own - and it was really tough because I was still surrounded by the Idol team, as far as management and label, and it just wasn't working out as far as creatively speaking. So I knew I had to start fresh and bring in four really talented guys. Luckily for me, they've got great taste in music and they're great writers and great players so that made it easy for me. There really haven't been any struggles.

JXM: When Will I Learn and Say has a bit of that pop vibe to it - is it ever difficult to balance out the two genres of pop and rock?

Ryan: Yeah, I mean we're all fans of pop music and I think that comes across in the writing.

Shaun: Pop music based on let's say the Beatles, rather than pop music based on Britney Spears. The Beatles were pop music when they came out and that kind of sense of melody and harmony, that's what I mean by pop music.

Dave: And that's no dis to Britney Spears.

Shaun: No, no, no not at all..

Dave: She's going to do what she's going to do. But at the end of the day, every choice that everyone makes in the band is their choice.

Shaun: I didn't mean any disrespect to - well I guess I really dropped the baby on that question...[everyone laughs]

JXM: Your lyrics are described as being humorously dark - yet I get the sense that it has truthful undertones (i.e. Hate You). Are these things you've been wanting to say that your previous record didn't give you an opportunity to do?

Ryan: Yeah there's Turnaround, which I wrote about my brother, the drug addiction and how it sort of came to a halt when we were together at a young age, and that sort of inspired the lyrics there. And songs like Holiday, sort of talked a little bit about - you know there's no real political vibe there. I don't know, it's really what inspires me and what inspired these guys. Lyrics are a collective thing with the band and when you do that it lends itself more to the humourous side, because five guys in a room drinking beer and writing lyrics, you can get some funny stuff. Like Change for Me is obviously not autobiographical. I wish it was, but it wasn't. I think we're very dark humoured people. Some of us are darker than others I guess.

JXM: How did you come to choose to release Change for Me as the first single?

Brandon: It just has that new age, pop rock sound.

Ryan: We wanted to release a song that number one we believed in, we believe in the whole record, but this is a song we thought kicks ass, we love it, we really think this will show people what the band is, as opposed to the more brit inspired 80's synth songs, because I think that's where the band is leaning to. Like the next record will probably be even more further from the centre. That's just how we want to position ourselves as a band.

JXM: Turnaround and All That I Need are some of the softer ballads on the record. It has a bit of that Brit pop rock sound to it like Keane and Travis, which differs from songs like Holiday. Did you guys try to stay away from one specific sound?

Dave: That's just our broad music tastes coming through in our writing.

Ryan: I could listen to a mix of Sublime, Coldplay, Mobile, NOFX, Rancid, to Jay-Z.

Shaun: When we were in the studio we also had a producer that pulled it together so that it wasn't all over the map. We tried to keep that same kind of vibe and sound even though something like All That I Need is very Brit inspired where something like Holiday is more reggae, rock.

JXM: Redemption and regret seem to be reoccuring themes on the record (Save My Soul, Hesitate, For a Second). Would you be able to tell us more about this?

Ryan: I wrote Save my Soul and For a Second right when I was going through some stuff with the business really, and I was sort of at my wit's end, which I think really helped inspire me to get where we are now. It made me work a lot harder and appreciate what opportunities I've been given. The lyrics in For a Second, "for a second I thought that I was home" that basically is saying that for a brief moment in time I actually thought that [the solo] record was me. But I didn't write 90% of the songs on the record and that was something that really bothered me. Because if someone reviews a record and it gets a bad review because of the music, and the artist didn't even write it, it's like "shit!" I get screwed because someone wrote a bad song. I found myself defending someone else's work. Which is fine, but I'd rather defend my own work. And Save My Soul, again the music industry can eat you alive. You gotta have a thick skin. And I think that song represents that if someone cares to review your record, that's a compliment in itself.

Dave: Good or bad.

JXM: Your Canadian Idol status is already proving to be an aide as they are bringing in unprecedented support. The Canadian Idol message boards are abuzz with anticipation and excitement. Are you afraid that you may disappoint them with your new sound?

Ryan: No I think a lot of times fans are incredible, especially the ones that I gained from the show. And these guys have been in bands before and they bring a lot to the table as well. I think the beautiful thing about Canadian music fans and because of the Canadian music industry, we're not so commercially driven, like the US or whatever, the Canadian music listeners have such high standards that when they're a fan of something, they're a fan. They're not just a fan of "oh I love that song and not the rest of the record," and that's something we did with this record, we wrote a record full of incredible songs. It's not one of those records where you have two singles and the rest is filler. And I think they'll see that and appreciate that and I think the music on this record is better than the first record, but of course I'm going to think that.

Shaun: I think Canadian music fans too; have a bit more of an open mind to different genres and different styles. Maybe it's the Canadian mentality in general but as far as being compared to the Americans where you're either republican or democrat, we're more "let's listen to the issues first" you know? If people will listen to it and I hope we keep his fans.

Dave: I find that too, even with other musicians from other countries. It's a hard town to play Toronto and many other places in Canada, because it's a really honest crowd. If they don't like it, they don't like it. They won't bullshit.

JXM: Do you think it would have been more difficult to break onto the scene without the Canadian Idol status?

Ryan: Definitely. It definitely allowed for great opportunities. I met a lot of great people in the industry and kept those relationships alive over the past three years. And that definitely helped get our foot in the door. But with everything else, I think the music speaks for itself. A lot of labels won't touch an Idol because of that stigma, and good on them. That's integrity I think, that's keeping it real in the music industry. And they're like "ok you were an Idol, but this record is really good so let's talk." You know what I mean.

Shaun: And everyone's been really good to you, like CTV.

Dave: And it's kinda cool too, in my situation - sitting back and watching. And seeing how much press is around the band. But the cool thing is, is that it's a good record. Now if it was a bad record, and he had the press -

Ryan: Oh yeah, that would suck!

Dave: That would only work against you. It's really cool that it is a good record and you have so much press so now when they say "what has he been up to?" They're going to say "hey this is actually legitimate, this is actually really good."

JXM: Was that some of the reasons to start your own label?

Ryan: I think the whole "do-it-yourself" system for Canadian artists especially, is growing. Like indie share are a quarter of the market. And I could see it keep going that way, because people are realizing that you don't need a million dollars to release a record, they don't need a huge producer to produce a great record. Like our producer, Mike Borkosky, is relatively new, but he kicks ass. He did the illScarlett record just before us and that record sounds amazing.

Shaun: And the thing about starting your own label too, is that we've got control, of all the artistic content. And that's important especially to Ryan who knows first hand what it's like to be with a major and not have as much artistic control. The majors can work out great, but for certain artists..

JXM: I've read that much of the songs on Urgency were inspired by your travels in Africa and South America, yet the album differs stylistically in terms of the use of synthesizers and electronic sounds. Can you tell me how your travels inspired the writing?

Ryan: Lyrically. And these guys have traveled quite a bit too and I think you'll all agree with me, when you're traveling and you're crazy busy at home and you need a week, two weeks or a month and you go and chill and stare at nothing you get that chance to reflect and focus. Which is what I did, I kept a journal with me in Morocco and I just wrote and wrote and wrote some lyrics. When you see things for the first time in your life and you're almost thirty years old, that's pretty cool, because you don't get to see a lot of things for the first time when you're almost thirty - well I'm 27; does that count as almost thirty? [laughs] You know what I mean? It's like when you're growing up and see the ocean for the first time that should inspire you. And when I was in Morocco, I saw just this incredible culture, I thought, I have to write.

Shaun: I remember the first time I saw the ocean too, and it was a big thing to me. I actually had to taste the water just to see if it was salty.

Brandon: I did that in LA, and Newfoundland.

JXM: Was it refreshing?

Brandon: I threw up later! But it tasted alright at first [everyone laughs].

JXM: What are your expectations for the record?

Ryan: I don't think we have any expectations in terms of numbers. You can never expect anything and it'd be foolish to pressure ourselves with that burden. There are a lot of great records that don't sell anything. But to the 150 people who bought that record, it's their favourite record, it's their number one record of all time or whatever. So I think that really, is our goal. For whoever buys that record or listens to the record, comes away from it thinking that it's a great record. That's the only thing we can ask for, we can't ask for a million people to buy it.

Brandon: That people just have an honest listen. If they listen to it, and they like, that's great, and if they don't like, just be honest.

Shaun: I would rather someone say "I don't like that record, after listening to it" rather than "I don't like Low Level Flight because Ryan won Canadian Idol." Which happens a lot.

Ryan: Until we play for them live. We've done this one show, and after this show, this big guy, looks like a biker, typically not your Idol viewer, generally speaking. He came up to me and said "I hate the show, and I use to hate you. But I saw you play, I love you guys and I'll buy every record." It's crazy because people have preconceived notion of me and what we're trying to do unintentionally and not forcefully, not to change people's perception of me, but to give them an honest look at me and my music.

Dave: This will change people's opinion of who Ryan is and it will make Low Level Flight fans. He's the frontman of Low Level Flight, and that's who he is.

JXM: For the rest of you, what was your opinion joining an Idol?

James: I'm the biggest critic and skeptic out there, and I've never even watched the show. I didn't even know who he was, my dad told me.

Brandon: But we just focused on the positives and his achievements. He's a great singer and he's a really creative guy, and he's our best friend.

JXM: Thanks so much for talking with us!

Everyone: Thank you!!