Marian Hill took the stage at Crescent Ballroom Tuesday night as part of their ACT ONE tour promoting their latest LP, which contains new songs that have been tantalizing audiences, such as “Down”, which opened up the show, and “I Want You”.
The band played on a stage with backlit curtains and lights that were synchronized with the music. While Jeremy Lloyd moved energetically at his DJ station and Steve Davit made his saxophone wail, Samantha Gongol strutted and rolled seductively around the stage, whipping up the audience into a swaying happy mob. Her voice and lyrics accompanied Lloyd’s smooth beats to create a feel of sensuality and jazzy independence. I sat down for a phone interview with the band the day of their concert.
WW: How did Marian Hill come into existence?
SG: So Jeremy and I have known each other for a really long time, since middle school, actually … and then we had remained friends throughout college. Jeremy was on a break and came home — I think it was in March of 2015, and he came to me with this beat that would become “Whisky” and was like, “Hey, why don’t we try writing something together?”
JL: It was not the first song we wrote together. We had been playing with a bunch of different things over our break but “Whisky” was definitely far and away the best one.
WW: What went into the creation of ACT ONE?
JL: To me, ACT ONE was basically the culmination of the writing process that started when we wrote “Whisky” … We realized that once we got in a groove after Sway that anything that we wrote together and both loved would sound like Marian Hill for the most part, so then ACT ONE really became about, “Well, what can we do, what different things can we say, what different sonic world can we explore while it’s still in the Marian Hill world?”
WW: What’s your favorite song off of ACT ONE and why that one in particular?
JL: I can’t pick a favorite. I actually finished writing the album and spent months mixing it and getting it mastered and over the course of that they all became my favorites, so it’s truly impossible for me to pick.
SG: If you’re just talking about the performance, I love “I Want You” ‘cause it’s always really joyous to perform and fun to sing. That and “I Know Why”, actually. It changes sometimes, but that’s my favorite at the moment.
WW: Which artists would you say have most influenced the aesthetic of Marian Hill?
SG: We like to say that it’s Drake meets Ella Fitzgerald. It just sort of sums it up. Definitely compliments our “old meets new.” Jeremy can speak for his sources, but I love the old jazz singers. I love Ella Fitzgerald, Etta James, Nina Simone, I’m a huge Norah Jones fan… I mean, there’s so many.
JL: Kanye, Timbaland, (and) Pharrell are all really big influences that I realize every day. James Blake is obviously a huge influence; I think that if you talk to anybody in electronic music they’ll say him. Cashmere Cat is somebody I’m really inspired by, Lido is somebody I’m really inspired by … great songwriters like Sondheim and Gershwin and Jerome Kern are definitely also influences in more abstract ways.
WW: If you could perform with any living artist, who would it be?
JL: I’ve been dreaming about a “Lovit” verse from Drake for years, and that’ll probably never happen but I’m gonna keep holding on to that dream — I actually literally dreamt about it the other night. Collaborations? I love SOHN, I’ve been wanting to work with him for a while. Love Cashmere Cat, be willing to work with him. I‘d say James Blake, but I honestly feel like James Blake does his own thing and that’s what he’s best at.
SG: It’s funny, recently we get asked this a lot, you think I’d have one person at the top of my mind. I think it’d be just really cool personally to duet or do something with Norah Jones, make everything come full circle. I am such a big fan.
WW: Do you have any pre-show or post-show rituals, and if so, what are they?
JL: Shot of whiskey! That’s pretty much tradition of ours since our first show.
WW: Any favorite brand?
SG: We ask for Jameson’s, but really — I mean, whiskey is, Jameson is at this point just a feel-good, it’s just sort of what we get every show, but I mean — if you bring us Black Label we’ll do a shot, too.
WW: What have been some differences between this tour and your first tour?
JL: I think what’s really exciting to me is that in our first tour we were playing stuff from Sway that everybody knew, and then we were playing stuff that wasn’t out yet, that nobody knew, and it was very exciting to see reactions to that new stuff. But what’s really exciting about this tour is that pretty much everything we’re playing in the set is out and everybody knows everything.
SG: Yeah, I’d agree with that. I mean, Jeremy and I were talking about it the other day. It’s been incredible because you write this album by yourself in the studio, and you like it, and you hope that other people like it, and then to have people fill the room every night and be singing along to things that you created is one of the best feelings in the world.
Contact the author at William.Weinstein@asu.edu.Contact the columnist at Emily.Liu@asu.edu.
