If there's any group in pop music today that can prove the road to success isn't always easy, it's the hard-working guys in LMNT. Mike Miller, Bryan Chan, and Ikaika Kahoano worked on their sound after they left the ABC-TV series Making the Band. While the show's "winners" formed O-Town, Mike, Bryan, and Ikaika hooked up with Broadway singer Matt Morrison and got to work on their first CD. But then, last spring, the quartet became a threesome when Matt decided to leave the band to go back to theater work. The guys didn't know what to do—should they continue as a trio or find a new member? It was a no-brainer when they met newest member, Jonas Persch. They stopped by Scholastic to preview their debut single, "Juliet," for us—it was released on November 13 and their CD will be out in early 2002. Now, LMNT is ready to take the music world by storm!
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Q: Tell us what happened after Matt Morrison decided to leave LMNT last May? Bryan: When Matt decided to leave the group, we had a summer tour, a Zootopia appearance, and a Macy's promotional tour planned. We were like, "What are we going to do?" But we pulled it together. We started to revamp all our songs and our choreography for the three of us, but we realized that the harmonies would sound better with four voices. We had auditions to find someone. Besides having talent as a dancer and singer, we had to see something in that person that we could connect with. After all, we would be working with this person everyday. We'd almost given up when we got a phone call from our [record] label. They had someone they wanted us to meet. As soon as we met Jonas, I think we all knew he was the one we were looking for. Q: Ikaika, how did you really know that Jonas was the one?
Ikaika: For me the most important requirement was that vocally he was a tenor up where I was. We didn't need a bass—you don't need two basses in a group, but you do need two tenors because of the high harmonies. There were people we auditioned who had the criteria of being a tenor, but they couldn't [really] hit [the high notes], and we didn't have the time to train them. I told Jonas, "Sing this and hit this," and I gave him a bunch of exercises to do. He was able to do everything that I asked. Then we had him dance. Mike and I taught him some of our old stuff to see how quickly he could pick it up, and he was quick—quicker than any of us! Q: Tell us how you came to be in LMNT, Jonas. Jonas: I've always been told that I could sing, but I was raised thinking that I should do something business-related. I got a call from a guy [in the music industry]. He said, "I heard you can sing and you've got a good look. I need you to audition for me." A girl I went to high school with [told him this]. That was my first audition ever. Eventually, we had six guys in a group called 5th Element, which is pretty ironic seeing as how I ended up in LMNT. We did about 100 shows together. I didn't know harmonies or anything when I first started, so I learned the high harmonies and started working on the low harmonies while I learned to dance. It was a work in progress! Q: This must have happened when you were very young, since you're only 18 now.
Jonas: I was 16 or 17 and it was a lot of fun. Then we left our manager and tried to do our own thing and 5th Element fell apart. We had no idea how to run a business, so we broke up. Six months later I called my old manager, and I told him how much I missed music and wondered if there was any way we could put a demo CD together. That night he got a call from this lady saying that LMNT was looking for a fourth member. The next day he's like, "Dude, you've got to audition in two weeks in New York." We didn't know what I was going to be singing. I figured I would prepare my own songs and dance routine, but it turns out they wanted someone who could sing high for songs like Journey's "Open Arms" and Sting's "Roxanne." Q: So now all of you live together? Jonas: I love it. It's my first time being away from home. That's a little hard, but it's fun and I love it. We stay up all hours of the night. Ikaika and I have talks when no one else is there. Q: What do you guys do since you are together so often? Bryan: We are four separate people, but when we come together we like to have a good time. You wouldn't think that four people who are so diverse would get along so well. Ikaika likes to have long conversations. Mike will like to go out and party and, with Jonas, we have just found this vibe. Q: Tell us a bit about your touring experiences before Jonas joined the group.
Mike: The first city we performed in was Los Angeles, California, and there were so many people! We knew something was going to go wrong because there is always that first-show glitch, but I don't think anything went wrong. Our first mall performance was Northridge Mall and our second one was in Seattle, Washington, at the Alderwood Mall. We have our lines set in the show and Ikaika's line is "What's up Northridge?" The whole week we rehearsed he said Northridge. Then we went to Seattle and Ikaika goes out there and the crowd was just crazy and he goes, "What's up, Northridge?" and the audience went silent. Q: What is the next step for you after the single comes out? Mike: The album isn't finished, so we have to do that. For the next few weeks we'll be working on the album. We have to put a new show together because we have a new member who can add to that.
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