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When Ryan Malcolm went to the Canadian Idol wrap party at a Toronto club Sunday night, newly proclaimed winner Eva Avila had more to say than just "hi."
Turns out Avila, then 16, and Malcolm, then 23, met waiting in line four years ago, for those first Canadian Idol Ottawa auditions where Malcolm scored his gold ticket to Toronto and Avila was sent home.
"She came up to me and said 'don't you remember hanging out with me in Ottawa?' " recalled Malcolm this week. "I was like 'of course, that's crazy.' "
The 19-year-old Gatineau teen has a wild ride in front of her, says Malcolm, a Kingston native and the first to win Idol. Avila wants international fame, badly, but only time will tell if Idol will propel her where three winners before her did not go. Yet even as far out of the Idol limelight as he is, four years after winning, Malcolm has no regrets.
"It was obviously incredible just to wake up and go 'sh-- that's my song on the radio,' " he said.
Though successive winners Kalan Porter and Melissa O'Neil are still signed artists with Sony BMG Music (Canada), Malcolm made just one album with BMG Music and lost his record deal when the company merged with Sony.
Home did well, he says, and he was okay with not making another album just like it.
About six months ago he hooked up with a four-person band. Low Level Flight is touring colleges and plans to put out their first album by the end of November.
"It's different when you have professional songwriters writing all that stuff, and to be honest it wasn't really my cup of tea anyways," he says. "Now I've got 100% control writing songs myself with the band."
Malcolm said he had a harder time adjusting to the limelight than to the absence of it; once Porter won the second Idol, Malcolm felt like the pressure was off.
He hopes Avila has a solid family around her, like his. They were ready to bring him back down to earth whenever he started to get too full of himself.
"It's hard to just take yourself out of yourself, and just go 'just so you know you're not that great,' " he said.
Idol did give him something else other than a certain level of fame: Cash. Since his win he's been able to live in Toronto, focus on making music, upgrade to a Mercedes CT30 from the Honda Accord he bought post-win and spend several months in South America and weeks overseas.
In winning he scored $60,000 for making his record and a similar merchandising deal. Idols can also make more on tour. "You do get to make some really good money ... as long as you're smart with your money and you don't go too crazy."
Malcolm accepts he's going to have to overcome lingering Idol notoriety when it comes time to push the Low Level Flight album.
"That's something I'm always going to have whether it's four years or 40 years," he said.
"I still get people coming up to me who are like 'are you Kalan Porter?' ... 'you're the Canadian Idol guy'. I'm like 'no I'm just Ryan.' "