Foxture’s music blends whispered poetry with complex arrangements that sound like Sufjan Stevens hypnotized by Animal Collective. “Circles” is a dreamy meditation on perfection, existence, and self-discovery. Lead singer Marlon Blackmon weaves the confessional amidst chiming guitars, lively piano, “Casting diamonds into the sea / convincing myself they mean nothing to me”. Marlon joined me for a brief chat about change, hindsight, and hometown inspiration.
You can buy a copy of their EP Circles here. SC: I love the second verse—“I'm thinking of all of the times / I second-guessed my humble mind / but I'm overthinking”—because of how the third line undercuts the narrator’s first lines. Can you tell me a little about writing these lines? MB: So while I was writing circles, I was coming out of an anxious state of mind where I realized that I didn't have to second guess myself. Those lyrics opening up the second verse serve as a growing point for me and my state of mind from the opening lines where I’m willing to change myself to please someone else's needs or desires. In the second verse, I’m realizing that maybe I wasn't as wrong as I felt just because my way of doing things or expressing myself didn't fit someone else's standards. SC: What was your songwriting process like for “Circles”? MB: As far as the writing process for “Circles” goes, I was wringing from a point of hindsight of past relationships with people where I was at a healthier, more independent state of mind, free of the bias and emotional wear and tear that emotions tend to bring. The instrumentation up until the bridge came first and the bridge represents yet another change in mindset—of how when you think back to the darker times, you become a bit down at your past actions, which, the entire bridge was written mostly off of feel. SC: What is your normal songwriting process like? Do you write on a schedule? Do you wait for inspiration? Do you write as a group? MB: Our normal writing technique is that I write a song in it's most minimalistic form to get the bare bones of it, and then I bring it into practice and then everyone else writes their own respective parts. After it's been a while, I’ll introduce a new song, we will perfect it and then perform it. Since we are releasing a new body of work soon, and currently writing for a full-length album after the upcoming release of a new EP, we are trying to release material in a more strategic manner. SC: How does your community of songwriters influence you? MB: I look up to most songwriters from our hometown of Winston-Salem! I feel that you can learn so much from watching other creators move around their own careers and everyone in our local scene of musicians are insanely supportive and will help where they can, whether that’s lending contacts or collaboratively working on writing or creating in general.
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Watson Village is a three-piece party with focused songs and driving arrangements. However their tune “You’re Not Alone” shies away from their controlled bombast. “You’re Not Alone” is a sparkling rumination on life, friendship, and the importance of cherishing each waking moment. Tyler Watson coos “I know sometimes it feels like the world is crashing down / when you’ve lost more than you’ve found / you’re not alone” as he’s joined by a modulated slide guitar solo straight out of All Things Must Pass. The song concludes with the ethereal chirping of songbirds in an empty courtyard.
You can buy a copy of “You’re Not Alone” here. SC: What I love about this song is that it’s about telling someone they’re not alone while the sparse arrangement seems to suggest loneliness. How do you view these tensions working in the song? TW: I feel like it's most important to remember that you’re not alone when it feels like everything is going wrong. SC: Can you tell me a little bit about these lyrics: “Our time here is short. / No one knows just when for sure / but, honestly, if anything, it makes me love you more”? TW: Yes, it's about the uncertainty of life and how it brings loved one closer together. No one is promised tomorrow, and I think it's important to remember that and show all the love you've got. SC: Tell me a little bit about the process behind writing “You’re Not Alone” TW: Well, I wrote the song one evening while feeling sad about something or another. I had just picked out the melody that day, and the notes seemed to be saying something already so the words came easily. SC: How often do you write? Do you keep a songwriting schedule? Or do you wait for inspiration? TW: I'm always working on a tune or several at the same time. I just do it because I enjoy it. I've been doing it for so long it's part of me. Life is a most inspirational journey and that's my release I suppose. SC: How does your community of songwriters influence your work? TW: The people I keep around me are 100% themselves all the time, and that is so important. They influence me to be a better person. I just want to enjoy life and make good music, and I know that's what we're going to do –as long as we can. Blood on the Harp’s two-step ballad “They’ll Never Find Me” is a anguished narrative about death and subsequent questions of spirituality. Melodic rivulets of fiddle and acoustic guitar accompany Miguel Olascuaga’s reedy tenor. The song’s bridge concludes with tearful resignation “Well, if heaven is going to cause me all my memories and tears / and make me a stranger to all my family and peers / then oh, lord, please leave me here.” Miguel joined me for a brief chat about memory, character building, and finding purpose.v You can buy a copy of the Ghost(s) Vol. 1 EP here. SC: Your songs always have these beautifully flawed characters. Can you tell me about how you created your characters in this song? MO: First off, I wanna thank you for the kind words and for this interview. The character in this song is myself, the clergy, anybody fighting with the internal fear of judgment, and the intent from the hosts who instilled those fears. SC: Can you tell me a little bit about these lyrics: “well if heaven’s going to cost me all my memories and tears / and make me a stranger to my family and peers / Oh, lord. Please leave me here”?
passes. Those words resonated with me all through my years as a teenager and into adulthood, "What the hell is the purpose of living and loving if one day you're going to take it all away and leave us with an ideal that suits only one ego".
SC: What was your songwriting process like for "They'll Never Find Me"? MO: When I was very young, church, along with Sunday school was the perfect daycare for children that came from troubled homes, or at least that was my experience. There was an instance in one Sunday school session that will always stick with me, the teacher was explaining what Hell was like to a room full of children and it went something like this: She walked over to the light switch, and as she turned it off darkness swallowed every face in the room. "Hell is a place for sinners, a place where nobody can save you from the intense fire that will consume your body, it's a million times hotter than our sun and screaming from those around you WHO ALSO are being tortured and burned will be the only sounds that you hear." You will enter through the Lake Of Fire, that's where Jesus throws the sinners and those who didn't believe in him when he comes back. "Nobody can rescue you, it's forever and there's no coming back, no light, no love, nothing but torture and fire. "If you don't accept Jesus and do what The Bible tells you, you will go to Hell for eternity, no one is exempt, not even you [ . . . ] Now let us sit here for a few minutes so that you can understand that this is only a small fragment of what Hell will be like." After her yelling this at us in a dark room for over 20 minutes, let me tell you, when she turned that light on, there wasn't a clean pair of underoos in the building. There is another situation that is much too painful to discuss, and for the sake of protecting what little faith any of you may have in the church, as I realize not all are the same, I'll leave that part out. Those situations are what lead to the writing of "They'll Never Find Me". SC: What is your songwriting process like? Do you keep a schedule? Or do you wait for inspiration? MO: I think—as you yourself can agree—being a talented songwriter, [songs] come when they do and not a minute sooner than that. My inspiration comes from my past endeavors and current life struggles, a melody will come to me while I'm working, while I am dreaming, and sometimes when I hear others around me talking. I have some of the most inspiring folks around me and that helps with the writing process for sure. SC: How does your community of songwriting influence your writing? MO: Have you heard Atlanta? It's one of the most inspiring cities whether it's food, art or music. With so many talented souls, I am very fortunate to share this space and learn so much from it. Photo credit: Tyler Shores Singer-songwriter Andi Rogers is a prolific musician. Her latest record under the nom-de-plume andi. is a catalog of dark narratives with augmented panoramas of drums, and pianos. “Eternal Sunshine” verses center around modulating piano chords with expansive choruses that shift time signatures held together by a gossamer violin line. The highly imaginative track is braided with andi.’s rhetorical questions “if I get beyond the path / will you pull me back? If we both forget the past will we go right back”? “Eternal Sunshine” features a bridge passage with no words save for the solitary voicing of a heart, breaking. You buy a copy of the blackout sessions here. SC: I love the dramatic difference between the clipped verses and the sweeping arpeggio-led choruses. What led to this choice for the song when you were writing it? AR: I had just finished re-watching the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and was just so emotionally annihilated by it. It's a film that's full of stark contrasts and juxtapositions (memory vs. reality, past vs. present/future, man vs. science, emotion vs. reason, etc.), and I guess that subconsciously made its way into the structure of the song. SC: Each verse begins a new question that furthers the narrative. How do you see the interrogative working in the song? AR: Again, the film really influenced me in this regard. Each verse begins with a conditional and ends with a question (i.e., "If I get beyond the path, will you pull me back? If we both forget the past, will we go right back?") Those images come directly from the film. When Joel's memories are being erased, he literally pulls Clementine along the escape route (path) with him because he subconsciously wants to take the kernel of her memory with him. I am just continually overwhelmed by this idea: that these two people literally erased their memories of each other, but their bodies fought against it. That some force brought them back together. That they knew their relationship was doomed to fall apart again in the same exact way, and they still wanted to try. That they still ended that conversation, and thus the film, by saying, in so many words, this is worth it, this human thing. That they ended with that knowledge, and by saying "OK.
SC: Tell me about your normal writing process. Do you keep a songwriting schedule? Or do you wait for inspiration?
AR: I've tried to keep a schedule, and I just can't. It's corny, but I can't force it. Something overwhelming has to happen, or I have to have the time to sit down and access something that's happened. I call the latter "capsule writing"—breaking open a capsule and accessing the emotional memory of the body. SC: How does your community of songwriters influence your work? AR: I love going to see other musicians play in town, but if I'm being honest, I can't say that it influences me much. If anything, I'm influenced by other poets in my community more than I am musicians. I don't write songs much with other people, with the exception of Colby Wright, who's my other half, musically. When I write for my solo project, it's just me frankly being a little bit extra. Colby comes in and brings something else to it—a technical and polished element, a level of sophistication, and a really intuitive knowledge of what it is that I am going for, which can only come from working with someone for over a decade. In the case of this record, Marlon Patton also came in afterwards and brought a largeness, just a huge textured sound, to the record. I am nothing—and my music is nothing—without other people in that respect. Pocket Buddha handmade country-punk is percolated with an inventive array of diverse instruments and compelling arrangements. “Aeroplane” is a swaggering acoustic shuffle led by Darien Woodlief that features mandolins, banjos, and the bop of a Rhodes keyboard. Woodlief uses the repetition of “thinking about an airplane” in his narrative to muse on the potential for change through escapism that urges through each moment. Pick up a copy of “Aeroplane” here. SC: I love the repetition in “Aeroplane”—can you tell me a little about how you view the use of repetition in this song? DW: I could hear the band singing the long “Aeroplaaaaaaane” in my head almost immediately so that's where that came from—the repeating in the verses—well, maybe that was lazy, I don't know. It just came out like that!
the banjo sound without the banjo work. So, yeah—banjo for lazy guitar players. I ordered one from Gold Tone and this progression literally jumped out of it the first time I picked it up. Then Ken Mixon suggested the variation of the melody that is the 3rd line of the verse. I was in the thick of the grad school deluge and the idea of escape via flight or checking out mentally was very appealing at this time.
SC: Tell me about your normal writing practice. Do you write every day on a schedule? Do you wait for inspiration? DW: Well, to be honest, I don't have a normal writing practice. I've gone through phases. I just finished grad school and there was so much reading and writing involved that it seemed I didn't have a great deal of energy to devote to writing. My writing has always been inspired by my collaborators. I wasn't really actively writing when I met Julia Englund in my first year of grad school. She said "Hey, I sing and write songs, I'm going to send you one." I was so bummed out because she seemed so casual and self-deprecating about it that I couldn't fathom it being good. But I was blown away by her voice and her words. So we ended up, along with the aforementioned Ken Mixon, writing a number of songs together. She then moved away and I eventually met up with Ali Arant, who also sent me songs that blew me away. I told her I was producing her record and I did. We co-wrote a number of songs for that record and some since then. At one point a few years ago, hungry for inspiration, I started a songwriters group that gave a biweekly topic and everyone had to upload a song about that topic or using that phrase. So I got a number of tunes out of that, which lasted about four or five months before life intruded. SC: How does your community of songwriter peers influence your work? DW: Oh man, as a musician I am blessed to be surrounded by amazing songwriting and musical peers. The ones I've mentioned that had the pleasure to write with and the ones I've been fortunate enough to play with, like Kelley Mclachlan from Post-Timey String Band and the Prairie Willows and Mario McClean. And others, like Todd Mathis and Chris Compton, whose songwriting I'd put up against anyone, not just locally. These guys inspire me and scare the shit out of me, both of which can be useful tools for a musician. to edit. |
The Sound Connector is an online magazine for songwriters. We feature songwriting challenges, monthly interviews, and the opportunity to discover new songwriters. We are interested in all things related to the craft of songwriting. Do you want to be featured on The Sound Connector? Send us your songs!
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