Song Exploder - Monica Martin - Go Easy, Kid

Episode Date: June 29, 2022

Monica Martin is a singer and songwriter based in Los Angeles. Before that, she was based in Madison, Wisconsin, where she was part of the indie rock band Phox. She’s been a featured guest vocalist on songs by James Blake and Vulfpeck. In this episode, Monica breaks down her song “Go Easy, Kid,” along with the tracks’s producer, Khushi. She talks about making a song that’s in part about how hard it can be to make a song. And more generally, how hard it can be to let go of things we get hung up on. For more, visit songexploder.net/monica-martin

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. This episode contains explicit language. Monica Martin is a singer and songwriter based in Los Angeles. Before that, she was based in Madison, Wisconsin, where she was part of the indie rock band Fox. She's been a featured guest vocalist on songs by James Blake and Wolfpack. In this episode, Monica breaks down her song Go Easy Kid, along with the track's producer, Cushie. She talks about making a song that's in part about how hard it can be to make a song,

and more generally, how hard it can be to let go of the things we get hung up on. Remember times that we have before you got in that way? Because after... I'm name is Monica Martin. I started writing songs for an indie band that I was in, and I wrote probably 20 songs at a fairly glacial pace. But I think it's because... I know once I'm in that space, I'm going to have to interact with some deep feelings,

and I try to avoid that at all costs. That band ran its course, and over the last five years since, I started trying to get to know myself outside of the context of being in a band. I was talking with a good friend of mine, Theo Katzman. He writes a lot of songs, and, yeah, we've had many conversations about not finishing songs, or avoiding getting even in the space of chewing on our emotions to, like, turn it into words. And I'm like, wow, can you believe that we're spiraling out about this stuff? Because our jobs is, like, making three-minute ditties.

And then being like, this is silly. We're writing songs. Let's just put it out and be less precious. And then, of course, the other side of that in me is, like, how important music has been for us. like when people put things into words that we've felt, and they say it in a way that's so clear, and it's like, oh, gosh, that's so important. I was hanging out with Jacob Jeffries,

who knows the songbook really well, like Carol King's songs and Bert Bacharach, and we started writing, and we talked about the sentiment of just being confused about everything and having these moments conversations with friends like Theo, other songwriters. I love something about the between the dreams and the dumpsters. Yeah.

Talking about dreams by garbage can, like I mean, Oh yeah. Jacob knowing the classics so well was lovely. So we sat down, wrote a melody, had a few lyrics. Wait, hold on, sorry, the top of that section? I think I'm into this. My name is Cushy and I'm the producer on Go Easy Kid. The first time I heard Go Easy Kid, there was a little scratch demo.

I just felt very instinctively drawn to it. I met Cushy at a James Bay show. Me and my friend Ummer were there together and he's a very striking man. And as he was walking ahead of me and, reached out and grabbed his arm and a voice said, Sorry, sir, you're the most handsome person I've ever seen. They started chatting and for a while I felt a bit left out because I thought, oh god, see they're just into each other.

So I like shuffled off in a bit of a half to get some beers and eventually thought, no, I should try and partake in this social event and then just quickly realized that Monique was just a very incredible, hilarious, inspiring person. We meet about three months before the pandemic. And we actually were in a relationship with each other for a while and now we're friends. We're just like best friends, platonic partners for life. But, yeah, it took a few months of just hanging out

before we actually decided to make something. I remember being in the back of an Uber late at night in L.A. and just saying to her, oh, I could produce an album. I was like, I think you'd do a beautiful job for Go Easy Kid. Would you want to do it? The Whirlitzer was in there from the beginning when we first started on the track. A friend of hers had sent the chord, on MIDI to us.

We got the MIDI piano from Mateo Roberts. So I just pulled the notes around us to make the voicing flow nicely. I like the way the word he just patted out the piano and it has this subtle kind of wobble underneath the piano. So the song starts, I commit myself to sabotage. See, I can get what I want. Then I make it hard to hold on. I bit myself too sad.

See, I can get what I want, then I make it hard to hold on. Because he just like to get in our own way. It's that self-fulfilling prophecy thing. It's like, oh, I don't want to do this and mess up. And then you don't do the thing at all, which is a version of messing up. Convince myself that I'm with a mutual fraud who got lost in her own sad song. I wanted to just kind of have a almost literal representation of that with her voice kind of getting lost in this swamp. So that's a piano put through a plugin called Portal.

That helped make that piano sound like it's just kind of disintegrating or floating off. And then you get Monaco's vocal effect on the lyric. I'm just a spiritual fraud who got lost in a own sad song. And I felt like the slowing down, pitching down thing kind of like partly echoes the meaning of the lyric. In the first chorus, I'm just picturing so many nights I've had it. This particular spot, The Caribou in Madison, Wisconsin. It's beautiful. It's a small bar, amber lighting.

There's a laundromat next to it. People go smoke in the back or just hang out, and there was the dumpsters back there. We were talking out back by the guard. garbage cans about dreams that we had in the five of the year play. It's just really literal. Like, man, remember, remember this, that and the other, oh, we were going to do this and fell through and missing the mark, I suppose, yeah, missing the mark. Missing the mark of the dark.

Because after all control, it's only wrong. I wanted to have it feel like a really familiar idiom. I had one friend who anything totally messed up happens. She was like, it's showbiz, baby. But there's something very freeing about embodying like I'm such an insignificant piece in this universe. So that's a little mantra. Go easy kid. It's only rock and roll.

The next step in the song was arranging the strings. Cushy and I working out of this little studio, having limited access to players, we are considering all the different options of how to make this song sound lush. And that started with basically the samples that we found on Splice and just like the tone of. Splice is a collection of samples and sounds. and we found this string part that was so, so pretty. And I arranged them into a melody.

And then later in the process, I thought, no, we need, in addition to that, we need the best that we can get. So I used a website called Fiverr, which connects with all sorts of different people, and there's tons of session musicians on there. And we got a woman who was halfway around the world to record a viola over it. So there's all possible different types of strings on there.

He made it feel really intentional, like really lush without feeling so dramatic that it felt silly. I really love brushes on drums. I really love the way they sound. I really love the way they can bring in rhythm to a song, but still be soft and still be gentle and inviting. Later down the line, a friend of hers called Jason Goldstein, very talented pianist, came in and added a few extra piano flourishes. throughout the song. Pledge allegiance to some sad. And I do that.

So the second verse starts with Pledge Allegiance to some sanity. It comes into view for a moment or two. Then it leaves me. There are many days where you're like, you wake up and you're like, instead of like an inescapable, like, iron blanket of dread.

And you like go and you make breakfast and you're like, wow, this is lovely. And when it's there for a minute, and it's like, oh, this. And then it goes. like flutters away and you're like, damn, bitch, why'd you do this? It sucks. With some of the backing vocals, I actually just asked her to sing two tracks, just improvising

backings and humming. And she literally did that in just two takes. That's probably the breeziest part of singing for me, or like any of these sessions. It's just fun and feels more natural. I'm not having to think of words. So they just provide this kind of pad and they kind of like, we've in and out of each other. In the second chorus, it's me having a conversation with an ex.

I was talking out back with an empty man. He said, remember times that we had before you got in that way. You do feel kind of silly sometimes when you're missing out on potential bonds with like a romantic partner or you've never. missed your friend's wedding because you're touring. But touring is really special and meaningful, and the balance is hard to find. And oftentimes, the person who is a, you know, cruel ex, who's having that conversation with you is maybe not someone who really cared about you flourishing thoroughly. One of my favorite production things that Cushie did with this song was for the bridge.

Probably like a month prior to recording this with Monica, when I'd been on tour supporting a wonderful Icelandic artist called Asgir, he'd invited me into a sauna. And I've always loved the sound of water going onto that hot rock and just evaporating. And I was like, okay, well, this time I'll just record a bunch of different takes of me putting the water on that hot stone. It feels like we could do with some kind of building sound towards this bridge.

So I pulled them in off my phone and reversed them and panned them out. And there's also kind of link because the first line of the bridge is cut through the smoke. So suddenly the steam sounds cut off and you're just left alone with her and a piano. My voice feels really clear and it feels. like a it feels like you're literally cutting through smoke. No deeper hidden wisdom, just accept we'll never know. So at the end of the bridge, Monica sings this long note and I wanted to build it up.

So I took her vocal and duplicated on different tracks, essentially to create a kind of like manual delay. And then I realized that at the very end of her take, If you just chopped the tail off it, there was this little wobble. And so I took that and sampled it, had it repeating on the beat throughout the third chorus. And then, you know, there's a little bit of a variation in the outro. Monica was struggling with the end section because it was never quite how she wanted. It just felt so musical theater that it was something for a minute.

I was like, I'm not going to be able to do this until I get different chords laid out. And then at some point, James Blake... Who's a Grammy-winning, Mercury Prize-winning, singer and songwriter and producer. James is like, oh, I'm hearing something. Can I put something down? And of course, my heart is like exploding. Like, of course you can put something down. I've known James for a while now. So when I started playing Monica stuff to James, James was just blown away.

And then I'm sort of spinning. I'm like, what am I going to do with the vocals? Monica's a perfectionist, as many great singers are. I'm often like, this sounds incredible, like you've just sung some absolute gold, and Monica's line, no, no, no, it's absolutely terrible when I need to do it again. So she recorded those leads. I'm in awe of Monica as a singer.

In 20 years, kids, you're going to look back and wish you grow, And said, fuck it's only rock and roll. I swear a lot. But yeah, I think functionally in the song, the F and the K cuts through the air, hits the ear, it does work. It feels, you know, severe in the sense that it's like how severely I need to consider letting go.

You know, in how many years pass and you feel so silly every year past, and you're like, oh, I did that same thing. I round off all my edges, I made myself small, I existed with so much guilt and worry and shame, knowing that it's a choice, a practice that we can work on. I often think we actually end up writing the songs that we need to hear ourselves the most. I'm sure there's an element of Monica singing to herself in this song as well as singing to others. I want to have a more fuck-it attitude all the time.

No one would describe me as like chill, really. But that's why I'm like, okay, we can try. We can just try to remember. It's only rock and roll. And now here's Go Easy Kid by Monica Martin in its entirety. With myself too sad. See, I can get what I want, then I make it hard to hold on. Convince myself that I'm with a spiritual fraud who got lost in her own sad song.

We were talking out there by the garbage cans about dreams that we had in the five-year plan missing the mind because after all control it's only read allegiance to some say, look I'd want to be brave with a book, I'd want to be brave with a big with an empty man Remember times that we have before you got in that viz. Because after, there's no secret, special cold. Oh, deeper hidden wisdom, just accept we'll never know. All the garbage, all dreams that we and the five it's only rock and roll. Or visit SongExploder.net.

You'll find links to stream or download Go Easy Kid. And you can watch a video of a version of this song where Monica sings it live with James Blake. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishi Kesh Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists,

and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabond, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Robe. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album

with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzuchas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website,

RishiCash.co. Or just go to SongExploder.net, slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. Song Exploder and the show's theme music were made by me. I produced this episode with Craig Ely and Casey Deal, with artwork by Carlos Lerma, music clearance by Kathleen Smith, and production assistance from Chloe Parker. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at Radiotopia.fm.

You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Rishi Hereway, and you can follow the show at SongExploder. You can also get a Song Exploder t-shirt at songexploder.net slash shirt. I'm Rishi-Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening.