ZapTown

Some artists spend their entire life making one album worth of credible music. For Adam Marsland, he did that with the 2004 release You Don’t Know Me. After a bout of musical burnout and various levels of personal and family tragedy, Marsland returns to the surface with not just one album, but a two-CD collection of all new material titled Go West (Karma Frog). The music is a testament to the last four years not just as a musician and artist, but more so as a human. Marsland looks deep into his soul and talks what led up to the release and the inner-workings of Go West.

Link: http://www.adammarsland.com/

Why the release of two albums? What was the cause for two albums worth of material?

It started off as a 12 song single album, but the first time I played all the roughs back, even though the songs were great, it didn’t work.  The bigger context, the flow, was missing.  It was like a Reader’s Digest version of a really good book.

Plus, I was on a roll.  The more I recorded, the easier it came.  Once I got to 18 songs, the album started to acquire real power.  But it was also getting too long to digest in one go, so I decided to keep writing and recording, and then split it into two parts.

First off, my sympathies for your brother and sister-in-law. You went through some incredibly difficult times and incidents during the making of this album? How did you cope and in what ways did you overcome these tragedies?

It was much harder on my mom and other members of my family.  For me, the album gave me something to focus on.  Whatever else may have been going on, the recording process just seemed to be blessed.  It felt like I had a purpose, that my path for doing this album was being cleared in some way.  My brother’s death actually spurred me to focus harder on the album, since you start to think about the things in your own life that you’ve left undone.

These things only make an album like this more poignant and precious to you. Looking back at it now, what qualities do you see out of Go West and what does this album mean to you now?

The album isn’t really about my family, or even about me, as much as it is about peoples’ self-awareness dawning as they get older.  It did, however, deeply disturb me when the scenario in “My Pain” played out in real life for my sister-in-law.  But I find that song always chokes me up singing it, not so much for her sake, but because it’s about a very deep sense of being wounded that we all can relate to.  It’s a universal tragedy *and* an individual one.  We all suffer alone and we all suffer from loneliness, and the loneliness itself alienates us.  You walk down the street, you listen to talk radio, you watch reality shows – there are people with these huge gaping wounds right there for all to see.  It’s so sad, and it’s also infuriating, because people both need compassion, and also to realize that they need to consider that they are a part of a greater human world and to get over it already.

I also was considering that my brother and I had had a similar journey coming from a socially alienated background trying to connect with ‘normal’ people.  This was an unfinished journey for him.  That’s what “Standing In Chicago” was about, linking his and my stories with the sense of repeatedly trying and failing to connect with the world that permeates the album and which a lot of people can relate to.

Two albums worth of material seems like it could contribute to musician burnout. How do you plan to escape what happened in 2004?

I made a decision a long time ago to do this music thing on my own terms, but over time I started putting as much pressure on myself as a record company would.  It’s that same dynamic that’s a trap for a lot of insecure entertainers:  ‘please like me!  What can I do to make you like me?’  And so you kill yourself to get that recognition, and you may do great work, but people still may not appreciate it, because no one likes a kiss ass or a show off, y’know?  People don’t want to give the props to someone who really wants the props, even if they deserve them.  People want to get behind the talented fuck up, the beautiful loser, the guy who doesn’t care.  That’s just human nature.

So I vowed with this album that I was going to enjoy the process, and meet my own expectations and not worry about anybody else’s.  I’ve been undergoing a process of figuring out what parts of music I enjoy, and what parts I’m fed up with, and I’m unapologetically ditching the parts I’m fed up with, because in the end, I’m only responsible to myself.  I’ve earned that.

You can get hung up on the idea of what you’re ‘supposed’ to do as a musician.  Like, an obscure indie artist isn’t supposed to do a double album and try to make a big, ambitious song cycle.  It sounds really presumptuous and pretentious and people are going to think that I made TALES OF TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS or something, but really, what do I care?  The worst anyone can do is not write about it or not buy it or listen to it, and that may well happen anyway no matter what I do,

My goal was to make an album that could compete with the best albums ever made, to work as a collection of great songs individually, and collectively to tell a deeper and resonant story.  To try for that, you have to risk falling on your face and looking like an idiot.  If GO WEST is really that good, people won’t even figure it out for years anyway because a really great album acquires that status over time and perspective.  So I thought, why not go for it?  Because people might laugh at me or think I’m arrogant?  That’s nothing new either, so might as well go for the gusto.  If some people get the message and are moved by it, that’s the best I dare hope for in the short term.  And so far, that’s happening.  So, great.

The self-belief — tempered with a little reality — is what’s important; people will always try to take you down a peg if you try to reach higher. Knowing that you’ve satisfied yourself is what counts.  I became a musician because I want to enjoy what I do every day, and I want to do good work, every day, whether it’s playing piano on someone’s record or writing a good song or just singing in pitch.  As long as you focus on that and nothing else, you can’t burn out.  It’s when you start doing it for some other reason that things go bad.

There is such a wide variety of styles and approaches within “GoWest.” Why all of the stylistic changes and how do you feel you handled them? Is there something you won’t touch or don’t feel comfortable with musically? What kept everything together?

To me, what keeps it all together is that each song answers, directly or indirectly, the previous one, and carries the ideas of the album one step further.

As for the variety of different styles, to me if you’re going to do a double album, you’d better wander around a bit, or else what’s the point?  Even if you have a great lyrical idea, if the music all sounds the same, people are going to get bored. But I will stand behind every single track on the album as a great SONG, regardless of how it’s presented.  What I won’t do is waste the listener’s time.  I’m not going to do a big long space jam that has no point behind it other than to show off my guitar playing or something like that.

However I may present them, all of my songs have certain things in common:  a pop-oriented melody; a lyrical viewpoint that looks beneath the surface; a commitment to not bullshit people or do something that doesn’t serve the song.  I have a fairly unique singing voice.  I may try this or that style, because I like a lot of different types of pop music, but I don’t know too many people that write the way I do, sing the way I do, or have my particular worldview.  Having your own voice is what’s important to me, not adhering to one specific genre.  The greatest bands have always wandered around and experimented but you always know it’s them.  I think you can flip to any song on Go West and tell it’s me.  I may try this or that style out but I’m not trying to fill anyone else’s shoes.

Despite the darkness that led up to this album, they are songs that end up in a positive scope. What are some of your favorite moments on Go West or during the making of it?

There were so many.  I loved doing the background vocals on “Two Children In A Bed.”  Evie, Teresa and I just did them on the fly in about 40 minutes, just sitting in three chairs with a laptop on the mic, doing more and more campy ’70s session chick bits.  The random backing vocals on “This Is Hard,” which were totally unrehearsed.  Stuff like that.  Doing the lead vocal for “Stranger On The Town,” one of my favorite songs anyone’s ever done, I was jumping up and down behind the microphone, just wailing, because I loved the song so much and I liked my vocal, so it was like doing karaoke for your favorite song.

There was a lot of “hey, let’s try this!” on the album and it mostly worked. I enjoyed everything about making it, actually, except that the recording process itself is isolating.  That part I don’t like…being alone editing tracks for days on end.  It’s fulfilling but at a certain point you need to go have a beer with your friends.  But it probably helped in writing about the isolation of the characters in the songs.

Why the title “Go West?” How does that concept and relationship to the idea of Westward expansion and a “better life” in spite of its sometime disillusioned quality in regards to the historical reality of that statement reflect with what is going on in the albums?

I don’t think it has any direct relation to Horace Greeley saying “Go West Young Man” back in the 1800s.  “West” is what’s within you, finding your inner power through acknowledging and accepting your own weaknesses.  It’s not really a story of expansion as much as it’s about introspection.

Come to think of it, it’s the opposite of that classic idea of “going west” because the idea is as you get older you realize you aren’t the only person in the world, that you occupy a certain amount of space and that you have to live with other people, whereas in the 1800s, the idea was that we had unlimited room and resources, which in some ways has bred us as Americans to be a little anti-social…the rugged individualist and all that.

I read where the albums transgress and tell a story. How does this transition between the CDs?

The first CD is more about your 20s, and blundering your way into the world, not realizing how green and self-centered you are.  It ends on a growing note of self-awareness and self-doubt.  The second CD starts with the idea of repentance and trying to live your life with a moral purpose, although that isn’t any easier as it turns out.  The second disc correlates more to being in your 30s.

Is this your most accomplished time as a writer and musician? How do you feel about yourself in the scope of things, the risk, and the struggle?

Absolutely.  When my hearing was messed up a few years ago I really had to compensate a lot to keep playing.  When we did “Long Promised Road” my left ear was like a blown speaker most of the time, my hearing was distorted.  Imagine trying to do five part harmonies like that!  It drove me up the wall and made me a real cranky prick to be around – my band are the most patient people in the world — but I did it.  So when I figured out what was wrong and my hearing problem cleared up, and also after I started doing a lot of sessions, I found that my playing and singing was just completely kicking ass, because I was used to doing it with all these impediments, and now it was easy.  It was a really heady feeling because it all just came so naturally and quickly.

I feel for the first time like I know my own worth and I’m not afraid to be me and let people praise or damn it as they wish.  At the same time, I have a very realistic and pragmatic attitude.  People don’t necessarily care if you made a great album, or have a great gig.  They have their own lives.  You are a very, very tiny part of that.  I’m very good at what I do, but I ain’t all that.

So I see my job is to be a working musician and do the very best work I can do, and take pride in it.  Some people are into that and support it, and hopefully more people will in the future, but you can’t count on that.  You just have to do what you do because it’s what you do.

Go West has all the allegorical references of re-birth and renewal? After Go West do you feel refreshed and how is this album representing the future?

I honestly don’t know.  I wanted to make “Go West” so that if it was the last album I ever made, I could rest my case with it, or if it wound up being five years before I could muster the resources to make another one, that it would give people plenty to chew on in the meantime.

My only goal right now, besides outliving my poor mom who has seen enough death and destruction lately, is to continue working and growing as a musician…I’m fine doing that in any number of ways, depending on how much demand there is and my ability to make a living at it.  So to some extent, my future depends on what other people want me to do.  I’m happy to do whatever, playing my own stuff, doing sessions, backing other people, or all of the above.  I just don’t want to go broke at it or burn myself out doing it.

I can say this, though: I hardly play any of my earlier material now.  When I perform, it’s almost all stuff from GO WEST, and people just connect with the songs instantly in a way they never have before.  From that alone, I know I hit a new plateau with this album.  So it’s like starting over in that respect.  After all the recording I’ve done, to be able to just get by on your new stuff, and have that kind of experience presenting it live…that is so exciting to me.