ALEXIS DYAN MARSH OF DYAN
Sometimes life is so punishing, so grueling, and such a perennial test of one's inner resolve that no one would blame them for co-opting or quitting when daily challenges seem insurmountable. Yet for those determined few who can see beyond the impenetrable fog of despair and crushing reality, there lies a place, a special place where one's true desires and calling are realised. In that elusive space, a certain kind of relief and ecstasy comes which is only afforded to the true believer. That place is physical and metaphorical and is occupied by a rare few. One of those is Alexis Marsh.
As someone who has extensively worked in film and television producing scores and soundtracks, you are uniquely positioned to be aware of music in a multidimensional way. Can you elaborate on your processes when creating a score and when you are producing music. Where do the creative lines overlap and where do they diverge?
I love being surprised by a score or a song in a movie or commercial - how it can make us pay attention. Even walking through an airport or a store, music reminds me of my own heartbeat and wakes me up. If I'm upset, a chord progression or melody will turn on in my head and guide me through my feelings like an internal radio. When writing each cue or song, I'm looking for a chord progression or melody that seems like it can relay a feeling - maybe it's a sound or an instrument, maybe it's just two notes, one note, a beat, one line. Whatever it is, you can unpack it, stretch it out into however many minutes, go somewhere else harmonically, come back. Reflecting something internal that we can all relate to draws an audience, and of course, that matters for both score and song. Score, however, can't always take over where songs don't necessarily have an obligation beyond itself. I find it easiest to work to picture - the image usually has a sound, the editing has a pace, the scene has a harmony; there's a clear staring point. But I love how I can decide where a song goes, so I take whatever chance I get to write scores and then fill the rest of my time up with songs.
What were some of the events surrounding your life at the time of writing and producing Midwest?
'Looking For Knives' was about wanting to leave a beautiful life and worrying that people would assume I was a domestic-jezebel-monster. Midwest is what happened next: I left a kind man for another kind man, was pregnant before the divorce was finalized, and could not afford to live in Los Angeles. I moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, intending to get back to LA in a year or two. And we did; Sam Jones (co-producer and guitar player on Looking For Knives) and I started writing for a TV show called Animal Kingdom on TNT so I had to come back to write the season's score. But the rents were just unreachable with a baby; we'd find a place and the deposit would already be paid, etc. One landlord actually told me I didn't seem ready to commit to a lease. Boy, when a stranger tells you what you are, and they're right. So we couldn't get any traction in LA and went back to Cincinnati after the seasons ended. And the ease with which we found a building in Cincinnati - the stark contrast of LA - seemed to lay out our future. But there was something about giving up on the west coast - it felt like failure of course, but it felt like losing an identity I loved. And it hurt.
Culturally, my situation in LA - divorced, unwed mother - is not remarkable. But in the Midwest it was. It signified something unstable. We eventually found our people, but it was hard to be seen as a kind of threat, a danger, at first. It was a lonely time, and as a couple, it was hard to navigate that bit of judgement and rejection together. I had a miscarriage; had to manage punishing thoughts. And we're both musicians auditioning for work, not getting gigs, trying to figure out how to make a living in a city that doesn't have the infrastructure to support a local music industry. It was very stressful and sad.
But you keep going - and you write about it as honestly as you know how.
In what ways were you looking to push this project into new and uncharted territory?
I wanted to understand how a record was mixed - EQs, compression, frequencies - were all concepts that I had deferred to Sam. In hindsight, I just refused to study or understand how music was recorded. When we stopped working together, I was lost, but still had these songs to produce. Sam had guided me through buying all this gear for Animal Kingdom so I had the tools, just felt very inept. And for a long time, I had this idea that I just wasn't into technical knowledge. So I didn't bother reading about it, dreading watching tutorials online - and eventually, had to set up a regimen to force myself to read and familiarize myself with mixing concepts. Once I got past the discomfort of confusion, I started mixing Midwest - took it as far as I could before I asked Mike Montgomery to take over. He wouldn't characterize himself this way but he became a mixing mentor - encouraging, supportive, generous with his knowledge and resources, and also unattached to being the mixer in that he would offer to mix it, but if I went back in and took over, he would always say it was totally ok for me to finish or redo or whatever.
I also went to a Mix With The Masters workshop in France that Shawn Everett was teaching. It was all in Protools, and I felt like the only mixer asking to clarify basic mix concepts. But everyone there - there were about 20 of us - were all very supportive and kind. It was an incredible experience. I met Phil Shawel there, and he mixed the 2 versions of Midwest. He initially mixed the Acoustic Midwest, but at the time, I wanted more out of it so I took a while to re-record it all. Again, I mixed it as far as I could before I just didn't know how to finish it. The same thing happened with Pray To Me, but I was feeling by then that I could finish it. But I love working with Mike, and so wanted his ear on it. By the time I started the last track, When We Go, I wanted to mix it by myself. I still felt that urge to have someone else finish it, but knew that I needed to let it go. I took the mix as far as I could, and then decided it was finished.
With a strong sense of narrative and sonic story telling, how considered was the track listing and the musical markers throughout the album?
15 Hour Drive was the last track I wrote for the album, but after that, it's in the order I produced the songs more or less. Dark Streets was written first as I was settling into Cincinnati and noticing the differences between the cities I've lived in: LA, Toronto. The Black Lives Matter protests: My read on it was that they were accepted and embraced in LA or New York, but there was real hostility toward them in the Midwest. And as a supporter of that movement, it is baffling that people would not understand why these protests matter, and how they improve our communities by bringing people together to advocate for peace. Misunderstanding is a tyranny.
Once I settled into Cincinnati, Steady Hand became about committing to an imperfect relationship in less than ideal circumstances, but also recognizing that ever-present doubt: will we make it? Is this what I want? Feeling a bit threatened by the line 'no feeling is final' and wondering if my love would still be shifting. I was craving stability and certainty after years of going back and forth between LA and Ohio.
I was able to finish Midwest once I decided to be happy in Cincinnati, but wanted to comment on the incessant pressure to have a baby and those billboards with babies in flower crowns that feel pain at whatever gestational week. I find them to be incredibly painful, and they're everywhere out here.
As an artist who intimately understands mood and atmosphere, what is your approach and feelings towards instrumentation and selecting the right instrument, note, effect and use of it to adequately convert into a solid state, the intangible feelings you are attempting to canvas?
I use the instruments I can play for the most part - and that determines what gets played. My first instrument is alto saxophone. It was my first love and big heartbreak. I auditioned for these all-star jazz bands in high school and college that I never made it into. So punishing to just keep trying and keep getting rejection letters. But I loved playing and improvising, playing in a big band. It's still hard to admit or discuss. Playing started to feel really hard. I stopped playing for a few years while I started learning how to write for film - by then I had learned how to play flute and clarinet, bass clarinet. When I got to LA, I knew that the one thing I could offer was being able to play these wind instruments so I started adding them to scores, but a lot of directors were like, no flute. So I started playing more piano, and then guitar. Those were the sounds that seemed the most versatile - my alto just sat in a closet.
When I finished writing Looking For Knives, I wanted to put alto on there somewhere. The song is just so personal, and my saxophone feels like my heart. It felt like rescuing some part of myself, pulling myself into a shaft of warm sunlight. So finding a place for saxophone and woodwinds is just part of the work. I still love playing, and whatever struggle I had with the instrument is just gone.
I love the Prophet 6 for chords, bass, arpeggios so they're everywhere. So rich. The guitars are a Gibson Firebird Non-Reverse, a Fender Telecaster, and a Martin 000-15. The bass is a Guild M85. Going from being a jazz horn player to an indie guitar player felt very unfamiliar so I just bought guitars that looked beautiful and sounded good. Pedals can make any guitar sound interesting though so I use Empress reverb and delay pedals, and anything by Hologram. Microcosm is an incredible pedal. The amps are a JS-120 and Fender Champ for guitars, Aguilar for bass.
VIP will always be the OP-1.
There is a strong theme of landscape, the American midwest and vastness within your work. What indelible imprint has those environments had on you and the ways in which permeated their way into your latest record?
I grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba and my earliest compositions were about the landscape there: prairies, flat earth, big sky. I love living in a dense city, but driving through the country is a unique experience. There's a feeling in it - a road before you, possibilities, surprise. And you can listen to albums uninterrupted on those long drives, a hallmark of the Midwest. The conversation about rural vs. urban, coastal vs. inland and our political alliances is so wild. I thought there was something lacking in the Midwest, a reason not to move or visit, an ignorance. And yeah, maybe? I don't know that it's so clear. Before I moved, I admired the artists I read about who lived in smaller cities and still made great work. The Midwest is a beautiful place to live so as much as the lyrics may be critical of it, the sound of the record could balance that conflict.
Can you describe your self made studio and what kind of mental state you ready yourself for when composing and layering down tracks?
I wake up around 6 a.m., exercise, read, and then play piano for an hour or so. I play Bach every day. Jeremy Denk's book Every Good Boy Does Fine and his chapter on the first prelude of the Well-Tempered Clavier uncovered something. It was a kind of magic. Before, I felt that I was a saxophone player only and forever. After, it sort of cleared the gameboard for me. But it's just part of my practice now. If I don't make the time to play piano, my mind starts wandering, and I lose motivation. Playing sharpens something.
By 10 a.m., I get to work. I work til about 3 or 4 p.m. if I'm not on a deadline. My studio is on the first floor of the building I live in. It's long and narrow, but big enough to rehearse a band, record drums, fit a grand piano in. We've made sound treatments ourselves over the years, adjusting, trying different things to change the sound in the room. It's a long-term project, changing out what you don't use, getting what you think you'll use, trying, adjusting, working with what you have, and letting the music get out there.
Working with so many different artists and across so many creative spectrum, during that time have any words of wisdom been spoken to you that really resonated with you which in turn altered the way you approached your craft?
A few folks have told me that you never really feel ready, you just have to start somewhere. It's very hard when you cannot find a way forward - when you feel like you need one. Doing other things helped me a lot - I took a drawing class, started volunteering in my neighborhood - doing something else to take the pressure off my idea of myself as a songwriter only or an artist only. It helped me see the work more clearly.
Something that we ask all of those who join us at Musicology, what does music give you that nothing else does?
Getting an idea is a vital feeling. When I'm practicing, it feels meditative in this active way - I'm not doing nothing, but it's hard to think about anything else when you're playing through a structure and your hands are busy. Whenever I feel nervous or intimidated by some necessary task, playing through a song or a piece of music quiets the chatter.
And then seeing a band play or an orchestra perform, the people in the audience patiently waiting to watch other people do a thing, is an anti-war act. There's a moment when I'm in the audience and have a chance to recognize how we could all be fighting or digging through rubble together, but that we're in this space being a part of this ephemeral thing. We'll be together for an hour or two, a small moment, each of us doing what we can to not fall apart, then walk into the night, away from each other, carrying that thing forward as far as we can.
