JULY 2017 04 STEVE MOAKLER
16 BRANDON FLYNN
38 RUSTON KELLY
a reflection on ten years in nashville and steel town
on the importance of telling 13 reasons why’s story
on cleaning himself up and finding his voice
08 TORRANCE COOMBS
22 THE NIGHT GAME
40 KEIYNAN LONSDALE
on playing good vs. playing evil and letting chapters end
born out of a need to fall back in love with music
on overcoming his shyness and becoming kid flash
14 ANTOINETTE ROBERTSON
24 RUTH B
46 GALLERY: CMA FEST
on culture, empowerment and dear white people
on safe haven and finding her way on a stage
highlights from the annual festival that takes over downtown nashville
28 JAKE MILLER
on creating his most personal and authentic record yet
CATHERINE POWELL
publisher, editor, photographer, designer, writer
SHELBY CHARGIN
IAN HAYS
OLIVIA SINGH
AUTUMN HALLE
STACY MAGALLON
ELIZABETH ZAVOYSKIY
writer writer
writer writer
writer writer
steve moakler Words by IAN HAYS Photos by CATHERINE POWELL
You can take the boy out of Pittsburgh, but you can’t take Pittsburgh out of the boy. Steve Moakler is a rising country star who should already be on your radar. The singer-songwriter has been in Nashville for the past ten years or so carving his own path. He released several albums and wrote songs for other country artists. And it was then that Steve decided to tackle songs centering around Pittsburgh and the surrounding areas- a place that has never left his heart. He released Steel Town in March of this year, being born anew. Steve was born in Morristown, New Jersey. His father was a local and that is where Steve and his family lived for the first four years of his life. And even at that young of an age, he was picking up on the music his architect father would play while working from home. “He would listen to Bruce Springsteen – a lot of Brue Springsteen. He listened to Billy Joel, Elton John, a lot of the ‘70s troubadour type of stuff.” From birth, Steve was fed a
healthy diet of singer-songwriter standards. More importantly, he was exposed to how to tell a proper story. Due to an illness in the family, Steve’s parents moved them up to Pittsburgh to be closer with his mom’s side. And it was from 4-years-old to 18-yearsold, the most formative years of one’s life, Steve lived and breathed Pittsburgh. It was when he picked up a guitar at 14 that the music bug bit him. He began immediately writing his own songs and everything revolved around music. “I began putting everything else off – sports, schoolwork. It was around 16 that I decided this is what I wanted to do. So at 18 I moved to Nashville,” he says. After two years of college in Nashville, Steve dropped out to pursue music full time. But, those two years were not a waste in the least. It was there that Steve became more inspired than ever. As he puts it, “A lot of musicians come to Nashville and put away their guitar and never pick it up again. There’s just so much talent there.”
But, this talent didn’t discourage him – it just got him more excited. Even ten years later, Nashville is still surprising Steve with the amount of incredible musicians it produces. For those who have never been, Nashville is its own ecosystem of live music that is not for the faint of heart. Luckily, he was prepared for the long road. (At 18, he had already passed up on an independent record deal at the advice of his lawyer.) For the first few years after dropping out, Steve was having a rough time. A label had not yet picked him up and he was watching friends graduate from college. “It wasn’t like I had anything major going on at that time. I wasn’t on some tour or had some hit song. I didn’t have anything. I was booking my own gigs and messaging people and venues on Myspace,” he says, “I learned a lot about myself during that time.” But the hard work began to pay off. With affordable rent, he was able to find ways to start making a living off of music. He had some success NKDMAG.COM
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torrance coombs Words by CATHERINE POWELL Photos by CATHERINE POWELL Grooming by ANDREA PEZZILLO
antoinette robertson Words by SHELBY CHARGIN Photos by CATHERINE POWELL
Antoinette Robertson is one of the most empowered women in television. Growing up in Jamaica, she came to New York to for college where she got her degree in chemistry but fell in love with acting when she took a theater class as an elective. Three classes and a monologue later, Antoinette was hooked. “I fell in love with the kind of freedom and the kind of expression that gave me,” she says. She continued to pursue acting without telling anyone; getting her degree and working as a model. She kept her lives completely separate. “No one from modeling knew I was a chemistry major, and no one from chemistry knew that I was modeling or acting,” hse says. Going from Long Island to New York constantly, Antoinette managed to pull off a double life so to speak. “I was kind of like a double agent, I want to say, which is really funny to say,” she laughs. “I just booked like random little ‘woman in this’ and student films and stuff like that.” Soon ABC gave her a recurring role on Zero Hour where she played a South African orphan. “It was awesome because that day in acting school I had just learned a South African accent because I was bored and wanting something to do,” she recalls. This need to learn is what gave her the competitive advantage for the role, but it also seems to be what drives Antoinette to such success in her life. Her confidence is infectious as she speaks about her career that has only just begun. With a recurring role on Hart of Dixie Antoinette began to win over the hearts of comedy lovers all over America. The show was supposed to have her in for a three-episode arc, but they kept her on for 10 episodes, despite the fact that Antoinette never saw herself as funny. “I never thought I was funny, people thought I was funny. I just never personally believed it. I think comedy’s a very very difficult medium,” she admits. And although the cast seemed to be a bit concerned – constantly asking Antoinette if she was okay once she was written out – she made it very clear that not only was her confidence not going anywhere, but neither was she. Having a chemistry degree isn’t the worst backup plan for an aspiring actress, but she hardly needed it. Soon after Hart of Dixie, Antoinette continued booking projects consistently until landing her most iconic role yet: Coco Conners on Dear White People. “I’m utterly obsessed with this character,” she states. 14
Her empowered attitude seems to stem from the idea that anything people look at as a hurdle or an “I can’t” Antoinette wants to say “Okay, well I did.” Her family – filled with realtors, accountants and doctors – saw acting as her back-up plan, and while Antoinette had a plan in place to use her chemistry degree – to create skincare line and perfume – and then become the successful actress she is, she always knew acting wasn’t her back-up. Her own self-assertion also made her very aware of how people treat her as a woman in a lot of situations in life. “When I was modeling, people would treat me like an idiot. They just assumed I didn’t have any sense. Again, it’s weird because people have a tendency to just assume if you are beautiful that you’re not intelligent, and I don’t understand why they think those things are mutually exclusive because they’re not,” she says. Dear White People is one of Netflix’s biggest conversation starters of 2017. The show surrounds the lives of diverse students in a predominately white Ivy League college and has been well-received by critics and fans alike. While the show is a hot topic in 2017, and a blessing for Antoinette, it’s also raising a new type of awareness to the current racial climate constantly surrounding our culture. “I understand that sometimes the world doesn’t necessarily create art from the marginalized perspective, and given that this industry has a tendency to – and I want to say more so recently now than ever I’m starting to see people of color shine in television shows – for a very long time a lot of the shows that I always watched that I identified with, they didn’t necessarily have black people in them,” she says. In television history, often-marginalized groups are confined to their stereotypes, and the characters remain stagnant with a lack of dimension that we often find in characters who we fall slowly in love with on TV shows. It’s these diverse multi-dimensional characters that have young actors of color so brilliantly expressing their culture and connecting with people everywhere on such a deep level. For Antoinette, Coco wasn’t just a character, but an opportunity to showcase a reality that so many young, black, professional women face today. “The parallel that exists between Coco and myself would be that we’re both black women trying to navigate
this world in terms of our identities and what society assumes us to be versus who we believe we are and what we’re falling into and having to deal with everything else that comes with that in terms of the world’s perception of beauty and how we’re perceived in terms of success,” Antoinette says, “Being a black face in a white place so to speak.” It’s Coco’s unyielding need to accomplish her goals that is so easy to see in Antoinette. Funny, charming and smart are attributes that aren’t afforded to women right off the bat, but it’s the one place where Coco and Antoinette seem to truly become one. “She’s influenced me to be more girly. I’ve never been this girly in my life. I’ve always been a tomboy. I’m embracing the glam now. It’s actually kind of fun. My mother’s very proud,” she laughs. But where the difference between Coco and Antoinette truly lies is where Coco was initially looking for success. “At first Coco wanted to be defined by a man, to have her success be defined by a man. I’ve never experienced that. I think the attention that she seeks comes from the fact that she’s had a lack in her past and people have a tendency – in the hierarchy of needs – people have tendency to go after that which they’ve lacked in their adolescence or in their childhood,” she says. Antoinette grew up showered in affection and given a healthy amount – and maybe even too much – attention at points that it causes her to shy away. For her, being recognized isn’t something she constantly or ever wants. For both girls, it’s about the difference they make in the end. Speaking to her more in-depth views on feminism, on race and on her own self-realization, it’s clear Antoinette is not only educated, concise and brilliantly funny, but she’s aware of the world around her and her affect on it. “I don’t look to other people for validation,” she insists. She’s the type of woman who has proven that it doesn’t matter who you are, but what you want in life. Antoinette’s strength, and her ability to showcase in each character she plays a bit more of her independent self is the exact type of role model young women all over the world have been craving. She may not seek to be a mega-star, but to be an actress with a chemistry degree, able to be a girlfriend, a daughter, a friend and still be a proud independent woman gives light and hope to women who also want to do it all. NKD
brandon flynn Words & Photos by CATHERINE POWELL
the night game Words by AUTUMN HALLE Photos by CATHERINE POWELL
The Night Game is a lesson in never giving up. As a project that began out of frustration with both the creative process, and the industry itself, creator Martin Johnson’s journey to his anthemic new sound came with a lot of twists and turns. The musician, who credits The Night Game with his newfound love of music, had almost given up. Born in Andover, Massachusetts, Martin was encouraged to explore music 22
practically from birth. His mother, in particular, always had aspirations to pursue music, but never got the chance. “If she had one wish when I was in the belly, it was that I would learn to sing, because she never got to do it herself,” Martin says of his mother’s influence on him. The music that infiltrated his home growing up included Nancy Griffin, 1960’s folk rock, and acoustic guitar singer-songwriter type of artists. “We
had these VHS tapes of Simon and Garfunkel Live in Central Park and The Graceland Live in Africa concert, I was super little, maybe three-years old. I would sing and play along with my ukulele — and that was really the first time I remember feeling I wanted to perform.” At 3, he was already playing the guitar and ukulele, by 7, he was writing his own music. In high school, he began performing in musical theater productions, thinking he’d found his calling.
But, it was a fated night at Boston’s iconic The Rathskeller, seeing his cousin’s punk-rock band, that changed the course of his musical aspirations. “I just remember standing on stage that night, watching these guys with brass knuckles stage diving into the crowd, and thinking, ‘Man, I just want to play!’” Martin reflects, crediting his cousin’s band to what eventually put him in the center of the punk rock world. He moved away from musical theater, forming a ska band with one of his his school friends, and they started performing locally. The story from there is one that people probably already know. After playing in a Battle of the Bands competition he encountered another band that asked him to join them as their lead singer. That band became Boys Like Girls.
They booked a tour almost immediately, and Martin left behind day-to-day high school life and musical theater to embark on his first DIY tour across the country. The band took off, allowing Martin the opportunity to experiencing things he never thought he would, touring all over the world, and eventually leading him to Los Angeles. Once settled in L.A., Martin experimented more with songwriting and producing, working on tracks for other artists including Avril Lavigne and Taylor Swift. But eventually, the hyper-structured and restrictive aspects of the music industry started to get to him. Disillusioned with the creative process, Martin almost walked away from the industry completely. That is, until one last dose of inspiration hit him in 2013. “I really just wanted to make something fresh and honest, so I locked myself in a room with an engineer and started writing music,” he continues. “That music turned into The Night Game project.” “I had honestly fallen out of love with music. I was daring music to tell me to quit,” Martin says of the time right before he started the project. “I went into this thinking, if the project turns out to be shit, I’m just going to move to the mountains.” The songs created in this period of time were heavy with nostalgia and yearning, tapping into pieces of himself that he had yet to convey in his previous songwriting. He reflected on coming-ofage themes like the struggle of following your dreams, how to really love what you do, and searching for love in the wrong places. Without the backing of a label and the financial ties that typically dictate how an album plays out, Martin was free to explore music in a way he never had the chance to. To say that it was freeing, would be an understatement. “Everything I had written up to that point was a caricature of who I thought people wanted me to be,” he says of the experience. As he fell back in love with music, the music itself took on a whole new form. “I started to find the euphoria in music that made me believe in music again,” Martin explains. “I just honestly hadn’t tasted that drug in a really long time.”
“The Outfield” was one of those songs. With equal parts longing nostalgia and celebratory anthemic qualities, the sonic musicality of it speaks to an underlying positivity. Despite the fact that it’s about a woman that won’t let him into her world, the hints of a 1980’s Bruce Springsteen-esque vibe and the uplifting, pop-infused beat immediately made it a standout track— capturing the attention of critics, fans, and other musicians. “It’s been an incredible outlet for something that’s really honest and real, and means something to me. I’ve been totally blown away by the response to it,” he says. One of those responses included a personal invitation from John Mayer to join his summer tour, where Martin will finally get to put his performers hat on again. “With ‘The Outfield’, I wasn’t really interested in giving that situation power by telling the story to the world,” he looks back on the songwriting process. “But it felt like it was too good to not let that story out into the universe. So, this process was really about getting over those kinds of fears and just allowing things to happen.” The songs from his time in the studio have turned into an album, one he wasn’t sure would see the light of day, until “The Outfield” changed that. Without a marketing plan or label in place, he plans to release the album one track at a time, giving listeners the chance to immerse themselves in the songs one at a time. As for finding the confidence to fall in love with music again and give it another go? “People feel like they need someone to cosign that something is good. Artists just want someone they trust and respect to say, ‘you’re doing something good,”” he continues. “I’ve felt the same way, but being able to have the self esteem to tell yourself that it is good, is so important.” “If you have the balls to step out on stage and sing in front of ten people, let alone thousands, you know if you’re making something good or not,” he stops to think about it before he adds. “Who even knows if this thing I made is good or not, but it made me fall in love with music again, and that was really the point.” NKD NKDMAG.COM
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ruth b
Words by ELIZABETH ZAVOYSKIY Photos by CATHERINE POWELL
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One quick glance at Ruth B’s online presence is truly a snapshot of her life. While the images speak for themselves, the captions to her photos potentially speak even louder. Her Instagram biography reads “baby you’re my safe haven”, an allusion to her recent album titled “Safe Haven”. On May 5th in a post announcing the release of her album, Ruth writes “to anyone who has walked into, out of, or by my life; you are the music in me. Thank you. This is Safe Haven. I hope it takes you somewhere.” “The last year has been really fast, but it’s been really fun. I’ve got to
it’s about a breakup or falling love. It’s more so about going from 19 to 21, so there are a lot of different concepts and characters and phases. It’s just about growing, I guess,” she says. And it’s that exact sentiment that echoes on songs like “If This Is Love” where we see Ruth asking a poignant question in the song’s hook: “If this is love, why does it break me down?”. While the lyrics describe characteristics of a typical breakup, Ruth’s question is one of understanding heartbreak and learning to navigate not only love but the world. In regards to the album’s title, she says, “‘Safe Haven’ is the second to
relating to songs by singing along at a show. “There’s a song on the album called ‘Unrighteous’ and it’s really dark, about heartbreak. I think I was at my Atlanta show and there was this 5-year-old girl sitting in the very front and she knew all the words to that song, which was really cute but also really funny because she’s 5 and singing about having her heart destroyed,” Ruth laughs, “It’s so cool that people are getting songs and wanting to memorize them at five. I remember if I memorized a song at 5 it was because I really liked it.” With a portion of her fan base being younger adults, Ruth’s conscious of
“Knowing that there are young girls that looK up to me is another reason why i live life the way i do.” go on tour, go to a lot of cool places, and put out an album. I’ve been working on the album for about two years. I was always writing it, I did it all of last year and summer, so it’s been in my life for a long time,” Ruth says just hours before her sold out show at LPR in New York. Following on the high of “Lost Boy”, the single that caught the attention of over 56 million YouTube viewers, Ruth is excited to see how reception for the new album plays out. “I’m so thankful for that song and all it did, and I’m excited to see where these songs go as well. The album is really diverse. I wouldn’t say
last song on the album and it’s one of the last ones I wrote for it. When I was trying to figure out what to name this thing, I thought these songs have become my safe haven over the last few years. It just made perfect sense,” she says. For Ruth, songwriting has always been personal to the point where she regards songs as diary entries. “You write a song thinking it’s for you and about you and no one’s really going to get it and someone messages you saying ‘I went through this, I get how this feels.’ It’s a good reminder of why I do this.” Perhaps the strongest reminder of resonance is fans
being a role model, but ascertains that she lives life for herself. “Knowing that there are young girls that look up to me is another reason why I live life the way I do,” she says. While she’s amidst a tour now, she holds fond memories of her first encounter with touring as an opener for Alessia Cara last year. “It was amazing, I loved it. That was a huge part of me falling in love with performing. On this tour people have told me that the first time they ever heard about me was at the Alessia concert,” she says. Ruth learned a lot from Alessia on that run, and tries to apply the knowledge to her own
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JAKE MILLER Words by OLIVIA SINGH Photos by CATHERINE POWELL
ruston kelly Words & Photos by CATHERINE POWELL
Ruston Kelly was that guy in high school. You know, the one that listened to bands you’ve never heard of and pulled out his guitar at parties? That was Ruston. But now, as an adult, he’s turned those hobbies into a career – and one that’s truly taking off. Ruston was born in South Carolina, but moved every two years. Eventually, after years of bouncing around both with his family and on his own, Ruston settled in Nashville. He had first picked up the guitar at 14 after his dad, a seasoned steel guitar player, taught him how to play. Music was a huge constant in his life regardless of location. Shortly after high school – after a stint working on a chicken farm in North Carolina – Ruston started Elmwood with some friends and after their first gig, scored a booking contract with Paradigm. They were playing 200 shows a year for three years straight. “That was when I discovered drugs,” Ruston says, “And I was always the person to take it way too far.” He began to develop a drug habit, and unrelated to that habit, left Elmwood after three years because he didn’t love the music they were making. While on the road with Elmwood, he started writing songs that were more in tune with his current vibe, and he wanted to pursue that. After leaving the band, Ruston’s drug habit increased and he found himself in quite a few bad relationships, and was living in the Curb Records writing house on Music Row in Nashville. He spent six months there before getting kicked out, and then started taking his first steps towards
getting clean. Shortly after he signed a deal with BMG and felt like things were starting to look up. “And then I just couldn’t get my personal rhythm right,” Ruston says. Eventually, he went to rehab and cleaned himself up, and it was then that things started to change. That was roughly two years ago, and now Ruston is out promoting his latest project: Halloween. The record was a few years in the making, but it came to completion in a little over a week. He put it out this past April and the single, “Black Magic” will be impacting radio later this summer. But Ruston is already looking forward, and has already completed his next record – Dying Star – which will be a full-length. “Halloween is the prologue in my life story, and Dying Star is Chapter 1,” he says, “I definitely feel like now, being clear-headed, my truer voice is coming out even more.” He’s extremely proud of the record, and out of the 18 songs he wrote for the record, he was able to squeeze 14 onto the tracklist. The tentative plan is to release a new single at the end of the year, and then release Dying Star in early 2018. When it comes to writing for a specific body of work, Ruston feels he has a “spidey sense” when it’s time to stop writing, and when a song is done being worked on. Dying Star was completed over the course of a few days. “Generally, if it doesn’t hit me or strike me, then it doesn’t go on,” he says, “Which is why I think I can finish things so quickly.” His process is so quick that when his publisher warned him before signing his contract that he’d have to write 36 songs a year, he laughed –
admitting that he could do that in less than a month. While Ruston’s music is considered more singer/songwriter or folk, his Nashville-base keeps him in close proximity to country artists – many of whom are being creating music that doesn’t necessarily fit in the traditional country box. “Country is the sluttiest genre in the world right now,” Ruston says, “It’s a format that’s figuratively opened its legs for anything to just come in. It’s kind of annoying, actually, because there used to be a cool thing – ‘genre bending’ or ‘crossover’.” He cites Dolly Parton’s crossover success years ago, as well as Taylor Swift’s more recent genre jump as authentic. “I think that an artist can cross genres, and should. They should never put themselves in a box,” Ruston says, “It’s the listener, and the consumer and the market who puts things in a box. And that’s who I blame for some of the trash that we have currently that’s being called country.” Ruston is aware that there are country elements in his music, and he’s been billed on some country festivals, but he’s adamant that he is a folk artist. For the rest of the year, Ruston will be extremely busy out on the road – aligning himself with artists from different pockets of the industry. He has hopes for some headlining shows within the next year, but that wouldn’t be until next summer. For now, he has dates stretching into the fall and will then be getting married to fellow singer/songwriter Kacey Musgraves in October. “Life is so much larger than your career,” he says. NKD NKDMAG.COM
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keiynan lonsdale Words by STACY MAGALLON Photos by CATHERINE POWELL
CMA music festival Photographed in Nashville by CATHERINE POWELL
Luke Bryan
Cole Swindell & Dierks Bentley
Kane Brown & Lauren Alaina
Michael Ray & Randy Travis
Garth Brooks
Brett Eldredge
Old Dominion
Danielle Bradbery
Hunter Hayes
Kelsea Ballerini
Blake Shelton
Jessie James Decker
Maren Morris
Sam Hunt
Florida Georgia Line
Maren Morris & Thomas Rhett
Lady Antebellum
Chris Young & Cassadee Pope
Cam
Keith Urban
Kalie Shorr
Chase Bryant
Miranda Lambert
KelseaBig Little Ballerini Town
Brad Paisley
Lauren Alaina
RaeLynn
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