This article was published on 08/23/2011 on http://eugenedailynews.com/2011/08/23/running-into-luck-roshan-maloney/ and is re-posted here with permission.
Nancy Glass – EDN
Most 10-year-old boys like getting toys. You know, something to play
with; Tonka Trucks, toy cars or maybe a toy gun; something to spur the
imagination. Not singer/songwriter Roshan Maloney. But then again,
Roshan Maloney was not your typical 10-year-old east Indian born boy.
Born in 1986 in Hyderabad, India and relocating to the United States, to
Eugene in fact, when he was a few weeks old. At the age of 10, his
parents got him a piano. Maloney says ”
It was fun for about a
month, then it became a chore. I absolutely hated it. After
completing high school, I started playing piano again, and never put it
down.” Growing up as only child, Maloney says, his childhood was
“pretty normal” and he never really got into any trouble
. “I was
kind of lonely kid- I usually dealt with it by escaping into my
imagination. That’s probably why I live in my head so much as an adult” he tells me. In addition to piano, Maloney learned to play the guitar as well as the
melodica, and he’s working on a cool way of incorporating it into his shows.
Roshan Maloney
With the unenviable position of being the guy all of his friends came
to as a sounding board, Maloney says music was/is his form of therapy.
“I
was always the friend that friends would confide in. Yet I could never
really talk to anyone, or share how I really felt about things. When I
found music, it was like a whole ‘nother world opened up for me. It
definitely started off as a kind of therapy.”
With
The Black Keys in his iPod today, Maloney likes
all kinds of music depending upon his mood. “I feel like I go through
different seasons of genres. Weeks will go by and I’ll just have
hip-hop on my iPod. The next day I’ll start feeling “socially
conscious” with a “stick-it-to- the-man” attitude, so I will spend a few
weeks listening to indie rock. Then I’ll spend some time digesting the
empty calories of whatever is top 40 at the time. But at the end of
the day if I’m humming a song after hearing it once on the radio or in a
friend’s car…that song is definitely making it on the iPod.”
From such songwriting icons as
Smokey Robinson and
Stevie Wonder,
Maloney draws inspiration from his heroes consistent ability to write
incredibly powerful songs. “Those guys were churning out hits that were
decades ahead of their time.” He also is in profound awe of today’s
current artist
Bruno Mars. “He is doing crazy things
right now. He’s writing hits for himself, but more impressively he’s
writing hit records for other people. He wrote Cee-lo Green’s “
Forget You”, he wrote Matisyahu’s “
One Day”, he also wrote “
Wavin’ Flag” for the world cup last year. He’s really an Incredible songwriter.”
Bryan Thompson, Jeremiah L. Scott with Maloney
The elusive element of inspiration is often times a curse for musicians; however, not so for Maloney.
“I pretty much write songs about how I feel at any given time. With
that being said, usually the best songs have come from a place of
heartache or during some difficult time. Take, for example, the song off his latest EP, “
The Black Dress“ “Mr. Entertainer.” Maloney explains;
“I
wrote Mr. Entertainer after a string of failures. That song has an air
of arrogance to it, but it’s inspiration was quite the opposite.“
Having thrown away a couple of really big opportunities, he was feeling
like he had really blown it. He recalls, “I invested all my emotion
into these opportunities and after continued heartbreak I started to
build these walls so I wouldn’t care anymore.” Like all of us when
things don’t go our way, or when failure’s fingerprints end up all over
us somehow, Maloney found himself going through the motions; never
feeling like he was good enough. In his own words, he says “it was a
poisonous way to think. I didn’t want to live my life like that. I had
to either change the way I was thinking or choose a different
profession!” So on drive home one night he wrote the story of “
Mr. Entertainer“, a song about believing in yourself even when you have no reason to believe.
Keenly,
Maloney ever so slyly tells me “until you believe in yourself and
believe in your own potential it’s hard for anyone else to.”
Getting it out of your head and down on paper isn’t as easy as it
sounds. Not only is inspiration critical, you have to just let the
feelings and emotions bare themselves without the nit-picking element of
self-criticism. Maloney tells me how he goes about writing a song, and
how, most of his songs are really, never finished. “I usually start
with an idea of what the song will be about; a feeling that it should
convey. Then I start playing around with different chord progressions
until I find a sound that I like. With incoherent lyrics I start
scatting out melodies. Once those pieces are put together, I pick up the
pen and start plugging in lyrics.
Then I spend the next year
picking apart the song. I never consider any of my songs done. Even
after they’re on the album, I hear things I still wish I could change.”
The Black Dress EP
Yet new material is ever-present with the singer/songwriter. “I’m
constantly writing. I have a lot of songs on deck and on paper. But for
the time being I’m really focusing on this album, “The Black Dress”
EP. Released in May of this year, this EP contains 6 original songs,
including the piano driven title track. The song “
Mr. Entertainer”
illustrates Maloney’s (apparent) ease with being in the spotlight.
You’d never believe this man ever got “butterflies in his stomach”
before his performances.
Stage fright is something almost all musicians find ways of
overcoming. Thankfully, Maloney got some good advice early on in his
career that really works for him. ”I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get
nervous before shows. I had an acting teacher in college tell me that
everybody gets butterflies, but the trick is to make those butterflies
fly in a row.”
And making those butterfly’s fly in a row is exactly what Maloney
does on stage in his live performances. Full of energy and engaging he
hopes his songs will connect with someone in the audience, “
When
I get an email from someone I’ve never met, telling me that they made a
connection with one of my songs, it makes everything else worth it.”
The quintessential show man at heart, Maloney claims to maintain a
measure of truthfulness to what he does… a sense of undeniable honesty
in his songs. And much like a freshman in the school of the music
industry, one of his biggest hopes is “That it’ll always still be “me”
up there. The moment when I’m on stage playing and I’m completely
transparent and whoever is listening can see me for what I am…that’s a
cool moment. It makes all the other uncertainty worth it.”
Maloney at work behind the camera
Not only an accomplished musician, Maloney is also recognized as an accomplished actor. He explains
“I
think music and film go hand in hand. They’re both storytelling and at
the crux of who I am…I’m a storyteller. When I was kid I got to play in
the yard and make-believe cops and robbers. Now, as an actor, I get to
do the same thing. I was always interested in art. I used to
draw all the time. I would make home movies out of clay characters that
I would create. That reminds me, I need to ask my parents for those
tapes…and then burn them so they never make it onto YouTube!”
While Maloney may be worried about clay characters hitting YouTube,
he’s quite content on the bigger, silver screen. It was his work as
Hayden Levit, in the film short “
Balloons Float to Heaven,” which garnered him the Best Supporting Actor award at the 2010 Fox Film Festival.
Not so surprisingly, it was through his connections as an actor that his music video “
Run Out of Luck”
got made. After shooting a pilot last year for a web-series called
“Planning to Fail (Spectacularly)” he became good friends with the team
that put it all together. At the time, he was tossing around the idea
of making a music video to Bryan Thompson, the director. “He heard the
song and loved it. He and his team, Revolver DMS, made the video. It
helped their reel and I got an incredible product. Very much a
win/win. We were lucky enough to cast Portland model, Jillian Rabe of
Jillian Rabe, LLC as the girlfriend and the rest was history. The
concept and the execution was all Bryan.”
Maloney and his band
With a schedule that would make the workaholic look lazy, Maloney is
always on the go. “If I had free time I would sleep more. I daydream of
sleep.” But if he were to sleep at all, he tells me one of the
scariest things would be ” I’ll wake up, look back, and realize that I
wasted the best years of my life chasing an impossible dream.
Or
that one day I’ll have done everything I can do to climb the ladder
just to realize that it was leaning up against the wrong wall the entire
time.“ A fear that we all can relate to regardless of our age or our profession.
Maloney believes that life should be lived with passion and a love
for the people around one. To that end, he’s a consummate professional
in that he believes “in whatever you do, do it with all of you.” He
adds, “my hope is that when people come to see me perform they can hear
that in my music, and see that when they see me.”Despite the fact that
it’s only his name on the posters these days, his band is critical to
his success. ” I’m fortunate to have really great musicians for friends
and band mates. His band, consisting of Kyle Cunningham plays lead
guitar, Ryan Charboneau on bass, Stephen Temple on drums and David Smith
on guitar is a like a family.
“We all grew up together in church, fight like brothers, and genuinely have a strong bond with one other.”
Vowing if he couldn’t do music or act, he “would probably go
somewhere tropical and sell bananas” Malone isn’t about to stop creating
finely crafted well written songs, engaging music videos or dramatic
acting roles anytime soon. If you’ve not seen him yet, he’s playing
next at “
Flock the Village 2011”
at Crescent Village on Friday, September 9th, the huge kick off party
for the 2011 Oregon Duck Football season; Roshan’s hometown team.
You can check out his website at
www.roshanmaloney.com
.38 SpecialBeach! Music! New Carnival Rides!
