Subscribe
The Daily Grind Video
CLOSE

With a Johnny Bravo slickback and the suave of James Dean, one listen to Alex Boyd’s music and you’ll hear your favorite artists all in one.

It’s been eight years since the singer-songwrtier left his Opera studies in Michigan to pursue his career as a recording artist. He never thought that at 26 years old he would be shaking hands with Wayne Williams in the office of Jive Records, now his new home.

From acting to singing and even hockey, this Virginia-native has been on a twelve year journey and crossed many big names along the way. With an enticing single “Light Up Tonight,” Alex is working on an album and we wanted to know all about it and his rise to Jive.

Check out what the soul singer had to say about working with Debbie Allen, his hots for Mila Kunis and more in an exclusive sit-down with Global Grind.

GlobalGrind: You’ve been working since you were 7?

Alex Boyd: Professionally, I think I had my first gig at 10, but I started performing at 7, 8 years old and 10, 11, I got the bug so I had to go do it.

At 10 you started professionally singing? Because we know you also dance and act.

What was the first gig that I had? It was acting in a commercial, in a Spawn Toys commercial. You remember that cartoon Spawn? It was a cultish kind of thing. It was like an underground following. But that was my first gig in an action figures commercial for Spawn Toys.

[pagebreak]

You worked with Debbie Allen. What production were you a part of?

I did two of them with her in Washington D.C., one of them was called Soul Possessed. That’s the one that had Patti LaBelle and Pauletta Washington, I’m not sure if she was still married to Denzel, at the time she was Denzel Washington’s wife.

The next one was called Dreams which was also done at the Kennedy Center which was about a group of kids at a slumber party and we were sitting around talking about all of our dreams, and at the end of each description of all of our dreams, the entire set would transform and become the dream we’re discussing. I was in the original cast. My character’s name was Alex, I’m not sure if it was for me, but I had a good time.

What was it like being so young and working with big names like Patti LaBelle?

I think I didn’t really understand how heavy it was at the time, I just really loved to sing and perform and that’s just what I did. I had a great time. I don’t think it was until years later that I looked back and realized ‘Wow I was holding hands with one of the most legendary soul singers of all time.’ And the truth is at the time I didn’t know I was going to make a soul record, so it all came full circle. But in that playbill for Dreams, I must’ve been 14 years old, and at the end of my bio in the playbill it said, ‘Boy’s dream is to become a recording artist.’ Now 11 years later, it’s happening.

[pagebreak]

So singing has taken the front of everything that you do?

Yes, I definitely have the acting bug. I got to a point in L.A. when I was trying to launch both careers and realized that without giving 100 percent to either one you’d never get either. So I kind of had to choose one and I figured at that point in time and probably currently, I love singing more. Then I started to write music and that’s a whole other bug. I just really started diving into the artistry of crafting lyrics and melodies and collaborating with so many different talented people. That’s a whole different story.

Do you still have an interest in acting?

Absolutely. I’ve done a couple of movies, nothing you’ve seen, I’m sure. One of them is actually on Lifetime I think probably right now, it’s called Karla. It’s a true crime thriller. It’s a dark story, it’s about the Scarborough rapists in Canada. This was a married couple that would drug young girls and kill them after they raped them; chopped up their bodies, it was really twisted. Originally I was up for the rapist [laughs] I’m like ‘No, not that role.’ So I played his best friend instead.

What audition piece did you do for Duke Ellington [High School]?

I sang a Nat King Cole song. [sings] “Straighten up and fly right, straighten up and stay right.” At that time I was really into jazz standards, anything Nat King Cole or Frank Sinatra or [Chuck] Baker or Harry [Connick] Jr.

Did you blow them away in the audition?

At the time I was a 14-year-old chubby white kid from the suburbs, it didn’t really add up, hearing it and then seeing it. So I guess I did blow them away.

[pagebreak]

After that you went to Michigan. Tell us a little bit about that.

It was my second year at Duke, the vocal coaches basically told my parents if I wanted to take it to the next level then I’d have to go somewhere else. They said that I had achieved all that I could have achieved at that school. So I auditioned for this place called Interlochen Arts Academy which is a beautiful campus in the middle of a national forest in Michigan. Literally, you show up and it’s like cotton-tailed dear with a blue bird flying around his head, it’s like a f**king Disney movie. But yeah, I auditioned for them and I wouldn’t have been able to go to school there if they didn’t offer me a scholarship, it was far too expensive. And thankfully they did.

It was an interesting experience; we had 400 students from 60 nations around the world so most of them used English as a second language. It was an amazing experience. If I wasn’t at the ballet one day, I was watching the orchestra or going to see the theatre presentation or checking out the most recent art exhibition. It was living and going to school at one of the best museums in the world.

How did opera help to refine your singing talent?

It’s great to have that base as a singer, to understand how to manage your vocals so that you can consistently put on a show regardless of whether or not you’re sick. To understand how the relationship between your diaphragm and your vocal cords and your minds really works, because the voice is the most mentally driven instrument in my opinion. There’s times where I’ve been completely under the weather, could barely even speak, but because of my technique that I learned I can still put on a show. So that’s been a huge benefit to me. I did have to unlearn a few things because the thing about opera technique is that it becomes a bit of a religion and in pop music there’s certain yelps and screams and things that you want to do that aren’t technically healthy for your voice.

So if your vocal chords have been trained in such a way to just not sing that way, then you have to unlearn a few things and that’s what I did. It took me a couple of years to really find my own sound and stop listening to the way that I sounded. I was always listening to how I sounded; we’re our worst critics. Eventually I stopped listening to that and I started paying attention to the way that it felt and started being a little bit less self-conscious about my tones and I think that’s when I really found my tone, rather than a tone that I was copying.

[pagebreak]

How would you classify your sound?

I think soul has always been a huge element, regardless of what the production behind my voice has been. I’ve definitely tried a number of different genres and I think that we’ve been successful in creating a sound that is truly a hybrid of all of them. Somebody last night at the showcase pulled me to the side and he was like ‘Man, there’s like ten of my favorite genres in one of your songs.’ I can’t really tell you how we did it. I think Andy, my producer and I kind of beat our heads against the wall for so many years trying to figure it out what was great. He’s such a perfectionist. Until there’s nothing about the song that bothers him, he’s not done with it. “Light Up Tonight” was version 77, there was 67 revisions of it and we didn’t give up on it for over 2 years. It served us well I think.

How did you meet Andy Rose?

Andy Rose played in a jam band with a lawyer that I worked with named Gary Greenburg who I’m still close with. Really good guy in L.A., he worked with me through a number of failed deals for nothing and supported me for many years. I was in between deals and he said ‘go meet this guy.’ And we met and it was definitely a rocky start to say the least. Artistically we clashed. I was so far in the pop direction because I had developed so much attention on MySpace, almost a million plays. A large portion of that was with this poppier, more electric stuff that I was doing, that’s why you have these mentions of the male Lady Gaga.

That’s not really accurate but it was definitely more quote un-quote mainstream as to what you hear on the radio now. So I was holding on to that because I felt like the numbers on MySpace were going to get me a record deal. I didn’t realize writing real songs and giving real performances are what get you a record deal. I think more artists need to recognize that and start doing what comes from their heart rather than what comes from a webpage.

[pagebreak]

“Light Up Tonight” came from the top of your head?

Yes we were jamming. I remember Andy was sitting at the Hammond organ and I’m at the other side of the room and we weren’t really looking at each other. We would just get lost in this room of sound. His studio is filled with so many instruments. And the Hammond organ fills the room with this vibe. It’s undeniable. We would jam out like that and his daughter actually calls me the ‘doo doo guy.’ Not doo doo like that, but because we would jam out and I would get on the microphone and I would spit melodies on random sounds. Sometimes I would just channel lyrics that would just come in and flow out and that was one of those times. ‘The way you shine so bright girl you could be my light house.’ I don’t know why I said it but it was in the midst of me singing these melodies of scats and runs, things that weren’t even words. And that stuck out and he stopped playing and looked at me and said ‘sing that sh*t again.’ That originally was the hook of our song. [sings] We decided it wasn’t strong enough and we came up with “Light Up Tonight.”

Does it always work like that when you guys are making tracks? Do the words come first and the melody follow?

It can come a million different ways. Maybe I’ll have a guitar riff that I bring in and we’ll modify that riff and bring in a chord change that I didn’t think of and then we’ll come up with a melody, or maybe I’ll go home and listen to a track that he’s made. We don’t typically do beats. I definitely spend time writing to beats and tracks from other producers, but what that does is it just puts you in a cage. There’s only certain things you can write to a piece that’s quote un-quote finished. ‘We’re handing you a beat, write to it.’ Well thanks for tying my hands behind my f**king back. So like to write a song with real instruments and if it’s captivating with one voice and one instrument then I think it can be produced in any genre any way you like and still be as captivating.

[pagebreak]

How did Wayne Williams get your demo?

I was promoting my stuff online and I was getting these bloggers to write about it. I went to the Hype Machine, it’s this music blog and they list the top thousand bloggers in the world. I was just hitting up all these bloggers to get them to write about me and they started writing and I started reposting on Facebook like check this out. And an old friend of mine that I hadn’t seen in years named Peter [Maxwiler] who was a stylist for Maxwell at the time he said ‘Hey man, I really like this. Can I give it to Maxwell’s managers?’ I’m like ‘Yes of course, go do it.’ And that Tuesday, 3 or 4 days later, I met my managers, the following Tuesday I was signing with Jive in New York. So it was from my managers for sure. I have a great team behind me, these guys support me and they promote the hell out of me.

Wayne’s worked with the likes of R. Kelly and Will Smith and Joe. What’s it like being that next best thing coming from Jive?

Am I the next best thing? [laughs] It feels great to have somebody finally really give the attention I feel like my material deserves to have. You’ve got to keep believing in yourself in this business, nobody’s going to hand it to you. Like I said, Andy and I spent plenty of years beating our head against a wall trying to make the best music that we could. That’s the wrong description. It makes it sound like it was an awful experience and it wasn’t. It was incredible. It was the most enlightening part of this experience to me, was the creation of the album and writing songs. It wasn’t signing the deal, which don’t get me wrong was amazing. We’d never be able to afford our horn section or our strings or John Fry, Grammy-winning mixer, Herb Powers who mastered it. All these guys have Grammys. I’m sitting here looking at their credits and I can’t believe they’re mixing my project. My favorite songs ever were mixed and mastered by these guys. So definitely it’s been a life-changing experience, one that I’ve been proud to be a part of.

[pagebreak]

Last night (at your concert) you played the guitar and the organ. Do you play any other instruments?

I’m learning drums. [laughs] I can keep a little pocket beat, I’m no Justin Bieber though, look out. He plays the drums well, he’s a talented kids.

How long have you been playing?

I picked up the guitar ten years ago, I’m kind of self-taught. I was studying music theory so I understood chord structures and the difference between a major chord and a minor chord. The first song I learned was “Stairway to Heaven” which is so typical for any guitarist. I would modify the chords that I learned in that and start writing my own songs. I picked up a few other chords from other players along the way.

Who did you listen to when you were falling in love with music?

Who didn’t I listen to? It depends on what month it is. Right now I’m so into Natalie Mane’s cover of “God Only Knows” by the Beach Boys which ended the finale of Big Love. If that’s not on my radio, it’s “Sitting Sideways” by Paul Wall. It runs the spectrum.

What is something that most people don’t know about you?

Did you guys know that I was a hockey player for a long time? That was my other passion. And skateboarding. I had broken my ankle so many times trying to ollie down 15 stairs. If I wasn’t singing or playing hockey I was injuring myself on a skateboard somewhere. I was a big skater for a long time, that was really fun.

Have you ever gotten into a hockey fight?

Oh yes, that was a big reason that I played it. I wouldn’t get sent to detention if I was punching somebody in the ice.

[pagebreak]

What was your favorite and least favorite part about being on FAME?

My favorite part was that it brought me to L.A. and put me on the path that got me here. I don’t think I have a least favorite part about it, I think everything that happened on that show was meant to be and really beneficial. I did a magazine interview after it happened and I was cocky, 19 years old and everywhere I go I’m signing autographs, thinking that it’s written in stone and some record label’s going to come and hand me a deal. Now I see how wrong I was. But I said I’d rather make it on my own accord than off some bubble gum talent show which is what I called it. And I was probably a little bitter at the time because I didn’t win, but guess what, I made it on my own accord. I didn’t know it was going to take 8 years.

Last night you blogged a picture to your mom, is she your biggest fan?

Absolutely. I always wanted to be on stage but there were certainly days when I would’ve much rather gone skateboarding than gone to an audition. One of the most important ones was for Debbie Allen that my mom was like ‘No you’re f**king going to this audition. You’re not going to hang out with your friends.’ And that’s when I got cast in Soul Possessed which turned into a series of wonderful things for my career. She’s been so supportive of me for 12 years now.

Do you have a celebrity crush?

Yes, Mila Kunis. She’s sexy.

Did you see her on the MTV awards with Justin?

No I didn’t look. I think Justin’s hit all my celebrity crushes. I’m like ‘Come on bro, leave some for the new guy.’