Marshall Fassino On the Making Of “Promised Land”
Can you tell us about the inspiration behind "Promised Land" and the story it tells?
I like to say it’s a not-so-loving ode to the struggles of trying to live in our current world and reconciling the choices that got us to where we are now. It seems like these days if you aren’t a tech billionaire or an Instagram influencer the cards are really stacked against you and a lot of the time we feel like crap because of it. “Promised Land” is sort of my way of dealing with that notion. Life certainly knows how to kick you when you’re down, and it seems like the only explanation we’re ever offered is that “nothing’s promised.” So we just have to learn to cope in our own ways. Some of us are better at it than others but at the end of the day, the best policy seems to be simply making peace with all the scars we accumulate along our journey and plugging along head first into the void. It may not be a hopeful song, but I don’t want it to feel hopeless either.
Can you talk about the recording and production process for "Promised Land?"
The recording process was quite simple but tells a lot about my album that’s about to come out. I actually recorded, produced, performed, and mixed these songs entirely in my home studio. On this particular song (along with a couple of others from the record) I did have help with writing from my former roommates Keyler Matthews and Candace Brown (who performs as Candace in Wonderland). They also contributed harmonies to the final track as well.
When I first started these songs I was considering them nothing more than demos. Some of the material is almost 4 years old at this point. But after sitting on them for so long I came to the realization that I had put a lot more work into these than what normally encompasses the scope of a demo. With most every project I’ve been a part of in the past, the mentality was if we didn’t go into a full studio and record them the “proper” way with an engineer and/or producer then they shouldn’t see the light of day. This time around I decided that didn’t matter. Putting these songs out has been my way of affirming that I am capable of doing this on my own, which has been both scary and rewarding all in the same breath.
What do you like the best about this track?
The lyrics really shine on this song. I’m a big lyrics guy in general and I feel these are some of the best on the record. With so much of today’s music, the lyrical content seems almost like an afterthought. I grew up idolizing artists who really used their words to add a deep level of emotion to their storytelling. I’m a firm believer in the transformative power of music and quality lyrics play such a huge role in that. I read somewhere once that most of today’s top charting songs read at a 3rd-grade level. I’m not Leonard Cohen, but I’d like to think I’m hitting at least a 6th-grade reading level with mine.
Also, I dig the guitar solo I played on this one. Kind of reminds me of Neil Young.
What inspired you to pursue a career in music
Probably that feeling I got the first time I ever took the stage in a band and had a whole room of people feeling the same joy and elation I was feeling. Once you get that first taste it’s a hard one to shake. But then you keep going. You develop and hone your craft. You get better at being a performer. You write music you hope will resonate with people. You strive to put good art out into the world. That’s the stuff that fans the flames and keeps the fire alive. But for me it always comes back to being on stage, everything clicking with the people you’re playing with, and the audience reciprocating all that energy and enthusiasm. There’s no other feeling quite like it. I don’t know if I’ve got it in me to be a road warrior like great rock bands once were, but I certainly can understand the appeal.
Who are some of your biggest musical influences, and how have they impacted your own sound?
My taste in music is pretty wide-ranging. There isn’t much I don’t like or that I can’t pull inspiration from. About the only stuff I’m not big on is (most) mainstream Pop and Bro-Country, which is tough because I live in Nashville. I went through my punk and emo phase in high school. I was enamored with the golden age of Indie Rock in the mid-2000s. I like Rap and EDM stuff too. All that lives inside me. But as I’ve gotten older I tend to gravitate towards the stuff I guess you’d consider “classic” nowadays. I think the names most people would throw out when deciphering my influences are Tom Petty, Wilco, and the Replacements. My dad is a massive Tom Petty guy so that one seeped in pretty early on. Then as a young man finding his way through the world in and just out of college, Wilco really struck a chord with me. I’m a massive fan of Jeff Tweedy’s writing and that emotional weight he’s so good at throwing around. Later on, like any self-respecting music snob does, I dug deep into finding all the cool stuff I missed as a young person and quickly fell in love with the work of Paul Westerberg and the Replacements. To me…they are the perfect kind of band. Messy but profound in so many ways. And not afraid to take the piss out of any situation that wasn’t up to snuff for them. Like repeating a line in a song about taking pills over and over again on national television even after they had been explicitly told not to. There are so many other influences I could list but I think those ones are a pretty good distillation of what I’m trying to accomplish with my sound. There’s a pretty famous quote about only needing “three chords and the truth” to write a good song and I think that’s an excellent rule to live by when it comes to music. I’d like to think Tom, Wilco, and the Replacements would all echo that same sentiment.
