Introducing Take 5 — a new series on angelamclean.ca introducing you, through just five questions, to ones to watch who are killing it in their respective fields.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Please take a minute to read the linked article, which was published just under two months after this interview, before you proceed. More Take 5 interviews are available on my blog.
Turn up your speakers: Toronto-based singer-songwriter Langston Francis is having a moment.
Prior to recently graduating high school, Langston had already amassed an impressive list of accomplishments — a successful debut EP roaming, an ad campaign with Roots, national radio play, sets at Canada’s biggest summer festivals, opening slots for artists like Hayley Kiyoko and, most recently, his first stateside show. “The moment that I have is here right now and I’m always aware of the fact that it might not be here tomorrow, so I’ve got to seize the opportunity,” he says, an observation more relevant than ever in the midst of our shared global experiences in quarantine.
Kicking off the rollout for his sophomore EP due out later this year, Langston just dropped his new single “Waste My Time,” a flavourful summer-ready track about giving into temptation despite knowing exactly how things are going to end. With much more music to come, I caught up with Langston over FaceTime to get the inside scoop on staying creative, overcoming Instagram Live fears, the new wave of local talent and more.
Happy release day! “Waste My Time” serves as the first taste of your upcoming EP and your first release of 2020. How are you feeling?
I’m so excited. I mean, I didn’t go on a hiatus in terms of creating things, but I released my debut project (in 2018) and then I only put out two singles — “Throw It Away and “Peaches” — for a large chunk of time. I’ve kind of been teasing at stuff for months, because I had this single done but we wanted to get the EP pretty much completely done. It’s kind of hard to put it all into words, but it’s a warm feeling. Coming up on past releases I had a little bit of anxiety and nervousness thinking about how it was going to be received, and I’ve let a lot of that go in the sense that I’m just happy to share the music with whoever wants to hear it. I’m so happy that I have my art because it’s something that I can enjoy by myself and create by myself and still share with others from essentially the comfort of my house.
What really wastes your time?
People are always joking on the label calls about this. Someone will be like, We don’t want to waste people’s time! I think for a lot of my life, it’s been the transit system — just the way I’ve spent a lot of my time freezing my ass off waiting for buses. Also, I spent 13 hours in a Cuban airport one time. The flight was delayed two hours more every two hours. We weren’t allowed to leave the airport, there was no food, the debit machine system was broken so we couldn’t take money out and we didn’t have any pesos because… well, I don’t know, me and my friends were just irresponsible teenagers. At one point they were like, We’re giving food out to everyone for free! It was just a hot dog bun and a can of Coke. We were like, alright, bless.
How has the creative process changed for you in quarantine? Have you felt a desire to be more experimental and productive, or is the isolation leading to creative block?
It was interesting; in the beginning, I definitely felt stir crazy due to the lack of human contact. When I’m writing, I like to draw from experiences in my life and it’s tough when you’re just staying inside and everything you’re seeing on the news is so negative. But I’ve figured out how to adjust, especially as a lot of producers and writers have been working via Zoom — which sounds like it would be difficult but surprisingly it’s been really nice. Also, I’ve always struggled with telling my story and showing my personality online. I’ve always been encouraged to do more of it, but I sometimes find that I just care so much more about doing live shows and releasing music and that was what I was so focused on.
Being in quarantine, I started this Instagram Live series where I play some songs, chat with people and then bring on a young creative on the come up. The first one I did recently was with this producer Jenius. He’s 18 and has produced for Travis Scott and a lot of pretty established artists, so it was really cool to talk about creativity in quarantine and answer questions from people about how you navigate the industry at a young age. I never really live streamed; I was always awkward talking to the camera. So, I think one pro of being stuck inside is it’s opening my eyes to exploring different mediums to connect with the fans. Hopefully even if one person feels like they got some knowledge or inspiration from hearing us talk, then that was a success.
What have you missed most about playing live shows and how hard are you going to go at the first gig back?
I had a couple of shows announced and some other stuff behind the scenes that we were lining up that I was massively anticipating, especially because I have this new project and I felt like I’d really gotten to a point where I was able to just enjoy the shows and be in the moment. From what I’ve heard I don’t think there’s going to be international touring on the larger scale for probably a lot of 2021. At the same time, I was actually just talking to a friend and we were thinking about how, especially for shows in Toronto, we’re spoiled sometimes. We have all these incredible acts playing large and small venues and it’s so accessible and for a lot of Canadian cities, artists just don’t come there. So, I think when we’re able to tour again, for artists and fans both the appreciation is going to be crazy.
I saw photos of the first social distancing concert and yeah, I didn’t really get that. I was also thinking, how did they break even? It was weird though, the fact that we both know it from that post that kind of went a little viral and obviously I imagine that’s not what they were intending – for everyone to kind of clown it — but if it was something that they did to live stream or just let a few fans in then that’s cool. It’s hard to say what’s safe and what isn’t.
Self-titled EPs don’t mess around and are typically more raw, authentic and revealing. What can fans expect and how would you describe your musical growth?
With my first EP, I had no idea what the project was going to be called when I released the first single and I was kind of taking it step by step. I describe this EP as more sure of itself, and I’m more sure of the songs. People might hear “Waste My Time” and I wouldn’t want to say that the whole EP is totally like that because we also have a big, epic, almost shimmery pop track, and then there’s a track that explores more of a rocky feel. I’ve also got my first feature on the project, which I’ve never done before and is really exciting being that we’re both Toronto artists. There are actually a lot of really cool artists coming up from Toronto right now that are around my age. I feel like since I was 15, 16, starting to drop music, I’ve gotten so much love and acknowledgement from people that I looked up to, and now seeing this new wave of young teens and early 20’s people coming up has been really dope.
