Exploring Nashville’s Music Legacy: Sean Martin of The Quarantined on Mental Health, Gratitude, and Creative Resilience

00:00:01
Speaker 1: Taking a Walk Nashville.

00:00:02
Speaker 2: Hi everyone, this is your host Sarah Harrelson of Taking a Walk Nashville. I hope everyone has been enjoying their new year, and I want to give a quick shout out to Sennheiser today on this episode, I'm using their podcast profile. Mike and I have been loving it, but today here with me on Taking a Walk Nashville is Sean Martin, the lead singer of the grungepunk metal band The Quarantined and this band sound grew through college and internet radio play in the early twenty tens and all of the members of this band are former students of the Musicians Institute in Hollywood, California. They recently released their new album, A Version two Normalcy in November, with the record being a cathartic confrontation with trauma and resilience. This band has currently amassed over ten million views across TikTok, with one viral clip earning over one million views.

00:01:05
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with more of the Taking a Walk Nashville podcast. Welcome to Taking a Walk Nashville with your hosts singer songwriter Sarah Harrelson.

00:01:19
Speaker 2: Sean Martin, Thank you so much for being here with me today. How are you good?

00:01:24
Speaker 3: Good? Thanks for having me. It's great to be here.

00:01:27
Speaker 2: Of course.

00:01:28
Speaker 3: Yeah.

00:01:29
Speaker 2: So The Quarantine your band has been active for over twenty years now. Can you tell us how you formed this band and came up with a name for it.

00:01:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, it started with really a need to you know, have something of my own, you know, to as as far as because in going to music school, you usually go there because you're like I held to get as much work as possible. I want to work as many different people as I could, and for me, I was doing that, but everything would would fall apart at some point or another, like everybody would. It would eventually meet, you know, with some impossible problem and then just eventually give it up. And sometimes the problems weren't so much impossible as they were self inflicted. But you know, that's also part of the music industry. But I knew that I had a bunch of songs and a lot of things to say, and I wanted to give it a vehicle and give it some you know, somewhere to go with the everything that I knew had happened in my life that I didn't know how to talk about the feelings that I didn't know how to express the kind of person who I wanted to be, and who I was didn't seem to be conducive to existing in the rest of the world. Sometimes it's hard to be the only one who's doing the right thing. You have to make the choice between cutting yourself off for your own mental health and desperately needing to be involved because it's an existential problem that you have to face. And I kind of feel like that's where my life has existed for a long time, like probably before the military, but the military was definitely a prime example of this, and through a lot of the therapy that I've done over the over the last twenty years since I started writing that the first songs for This, for This, for This Band, I know that I've grown a lot and learned a hell of a lot of different perspectives and ways to get to gratitude. And that's one of the most important aspects this music has brought to me is because whenever we're in a really, really bad situation, the thing that we need that we don't actually know usually know how to vocalize. When we're in the lowest, lowest point, what we really need is gratitude and perspective. And if we can get gratitude, get to someplace where we can see gratitude and perspective for ourselves with the people around us, then we have a much higher chance of getting through that suicidal feeling, that existential crisis, that between a rock and a hard place kind of situation when we get there, and that's where we can find solutions. And that's really what the Quarantine is about. It's about being thrown apart from society, thrown away from society, you don't have any access to anything. What are you going to do on your own? And are you going to come to the right answer? And that's that's really what the Quarantined is is really about. Meats.

00:05:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, And as you mentioned before starting the Quarantine, you did serve in the US Army Airborne Infantry from two thousand and four to two thousand and seven, and afterwards you dealt with PTSD following your deplointment to Iraq. So did writing this music help you navigate what you were dealing with post serving in the Army?

00:05:25
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, absolutely. You know, the Quarantine is a political vehicle as much as it is an emotional view. For me, they're both intertwined. I knew that I had to find a way to express the things that were going on in my head, and there wasn't people who I could just talk to about it. But connecting with people through music through covers has also been a very important aspect because you know, if you put a as we've now seen over the last oh, I don't know, maybe ten fifteen years or so, an explosion in covers of different kinds, like my my my favorite is the slow piano march for whatever song you know, like you'll take they'll take last resort and do it as a slow piano like a dirge you know it or some or something like that, or I don't know, something pops on like take me on you like definite, they didn't take take take on Me for a deadpool Like That's the most classic example that I that I have with this, Like they I would do that a lot, So I would I would start doing covers of the Sound of Silence, and I would start doing covers of Frank Sinatra and you know, to bring them into a grunge context. And that's that's something that a lot of audiences across the US have really responded well to. When I've gotten and performed there. So it's there's a lot of different avenues I've found to reach people through music. It doesn't just have to be in one particular genre. I'm the kind of musician that will take from any genre if it has good emotional context and content.

00:07:10
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, and you can connect to other veterans through your music. You're known to be a veterans' mental health advocate, and with your new album that's out now, you channel a lot of your own experiences as a war veteran and two reflections on trauma and healing and just finding purpose and chaos. So is that kind of your hope releasing this album that maybe other veterans can relate to this music themselves and maybe they can find some joy from it or ways to you know, get through whatever they're going through.

00:07:48
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, yeah. Although I will say it's not like that TV. It's not so obvious that it's made for veterans. I feel like the message is more universal than just helping veterans navigate them. That's more of a like a direct personal conversation, you know. The thing that I found in we're talking with veterans from all different eras is you have to be able to meet them on their love. The music is there to make a point. Every song that I write has a message, It has a lesson, It has a call to action for yourself, you know, something that's meant to be self reflective, that's meant to instigate conversation, if only with yourself, but I found that other people. When you start talking, other people will respond to be able to open up more about it. And these songs instigate those kinds of conversations. So the response to that I've seen now internationally with really really cool about it is the see that happen over countries' borders. You know, for example, Brazil. Most people in the United States don't know deaction shit about Brazil except for Desnaris is pretty nice, you know in the summer, like that's all that they really know, and even that's kind of wrong. So there's there's a lot to that culture that is very much about fighting the existing powers because they are unjust, because they are unfair, and there is a big push for self governance, autonomy, community coming together, spending tax dollars for the people who who pay the taxes, and creating programs for them that benefit them. That's something that's big that's going on in Brazil right now because they just threw off a dictator. They just got Jarrea Bolsonara out of power and they prosecuted him and that's a big, big deal. So especially a version to normalcy, there's definitely an asset of that in the music and I wanted to create, especially with Nemesis. Nemesis is about confrontation. It's about confronting yourself. It's about confronting yourself and what your intentions are and what your actual follow through is. What are the actions that create the end result regardless of your intention. That is an aspect of the songwriting that I wanted to bake into it that it is an existential problem that you have to deal with when you're when you're fighting a problem.

00:10:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, and in this album not only has important messages, but you recorded it at the legendary Blackbird Studios here in Nashville. It's been known to produce some of rock's most iconic records. The album, you worked with a lot of great people and it was engineered and produced by Nathan Yarborough, who has worked with the likes of Alison Chains and Corn and then also featured Zach Rapp from Dream Theater on lead guitar and violin.

00:11:22
Speaker 3: So cool.

00:11:22
Speaker 2: What was it like working with these legends on this album?

00:11:29
Speaker 3: It was okay, so this might sound weird, but it was extremely efficient. An efficiency in the music creation process is one of the most and most invaluable subtle things. So I would ask for something and I would get exactly what I asked for. That's amazing, you know. And the fact that these guys have can have the ability to hear something and go, oh, you're looking for it more blue green ish, kind of a little red on this side. I know exactly what you're talking about. Like that is fucking insane. I don't know exactly how that works. But the fact that we were able to communicate so well and to get to the result that we all wanted extremely quickly was something that you know. I've tried to record this this album three times myself, wow, three times, and I spent a solid like over the entire period of trying to record it and re record it and mix it was about five years. So eventually, once I realized, hey, I could take this to the best studio that I could find, maybe maybe I should change my plan and idea. Then I just started focusing on the best way to play every single assect and get it down to if I have to re record five seconds, how good am I gonna be at recording just that five seconds? And I mean I really went as deep as I possibly could to make it so that when I showed up at that studio I could be one take, chake the whole entire time. And eventually that's what we were doing with the guitars. But the vocals I still had to go through and work them out. But I know that I got compliments from Nathan and the cadio manager at Blackbird, and I know that I can definitely give the compliments, the same compliments to Zach and to Lewis and Jerry because they heard it. We're like, oh, I know exactly what you're looking for. This is gonna be great, this is gonna be fun. Then they would sit there and joke for twenty minutes and then be like all right already, and then hit the studio and knock it out in like one or two takes. It was fucking fantastic, And that's some great thing.

00:13:56
Speaker 2: I mean, working with this level of professionals there used to being in this studio, and it's so important to save time in a studio obviously when recording, but I think a lot of people don't realize a lot of people solo artists and bands they don't bring they don't always bring their band into the studio to record their album. They'll play with them live, but sometimes there's just a different dynamic where there's you know, studio musicians who are better in the studio than live. They're great at coming up with the parts saving time, whereas that's not always the case with the live band. So I think that's a good point to mention because it's not always like the same band that plays in the studio.

00:14:40
Speaker 3: Right right, And other purpose that people go it is they try to write in the studio. Everything was already pre planned and so we had very much an agenda. So there wasn't much time for fucking around, you know, there wasn't much time for it. It was you're going to do this part. It very much felt like a construction project, you know, like you're gonna you're gonna lay the foundation at this point. Okay, so you're gonna then lay the walls on the inside. Then you're gonna do this, you know, all those It was very much laid out to be a house at the end, and it wasn't like we're trying to search or find anything. So especially because that was the purpose, that was the intention, that efficiency makes it just a wonderful experience, just a I'm probably gonna be chasing that high for for a long time. Like just to make an album in a matter of a week when you've been doing it trying to make it happen if for three years, is really truly an amazing experience.

00:15:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, it definitely makes it so fun to be able to do it in that sort of efficient process, and you can definitely tell.

00:15:56
Speaker 3: By the quality.

00:15:58
Speaker 2: So you recorded this album in Nashville, as mentioned, tell us about your transition to Nashville and how you ended up relocating here.

00:16:09
Speaker 3: So in twenty twenty one, I was living in Florida, and I really didn't like living in Florida. Eventually it came opportunities came around to where I was like, well, I can either try to find a place to live or just go on the road. And I decided I'll just go on the road. And I had this crowd funding campaign that I was doing for Instagram Hell and or what would eventually become Instagram Hell and One Last Chance, two songs that are Instagram Hell, is going to be released later this month, a new version that we did at Blackbird Studio. But at this time we were I was getting ready to record it in Boston with this studio called Plaid Dog Records, and I had four or five months or so where I had to prepare to go and record at Boston. Everything was set, the crawdfunding campaign was already done. It was just ready to go and record it now. And I had four months where basically all I had to do was not die. So I decided to go on an open mic tour. I went and played open mics and everywhere that I could find to play, from the East Coast to the West Coast and then back again. Then I went to Boston to go and record it, and went back to Denver, and then from Denver, I went to Deadwood, North Dakota or Deadwood South Dakota. I lived there for a little bit, then I went to Pennsylvania. Then I decided to come here to finally do the real thing of recording the album that I knew was I was finally ready to do it and you know, try to go after the the industry that's that's a Nashville Because I had already been in Los Angeles, and I'd already known that there's a lot of things that I liked about Los Angeles, but it wasn't really the place for me. Nashville seemed like a good, a good, a good place to start for for Mike music. I've I've found that there's a there's a real gratitude now for people not doing you know, just country music in Nashville. It seems, I don't know correctly if I'm wrong.

00:18:36
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, if you were thinking about Nashville in early two thousands, you would probably say forget it because it's just a country music scene. But now it's opened its stores for rock and pop and all sorts of genres.

00:18:49
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I've in the short amount of time that i've that I've that I've been around here, it seems like it's very much a musician's city, not just the country city. Yeah, everybody loves their cowboots, and if you know, somebody starts singing Shania Twain, people are gonna fucking dance. However, However, there is also a real, you know, sense of community that people want to have and are trying to build and trying to curate as well. You know, even the Session musicians were very much it was very important to them to foster the community around them. It was very important to them to you know, go to other people's shows to you know, facilitate for the other musicians who they knew when were friends and knew that were good people. That's something that they they consciously chose to do because they knew that it helped the community, not just one person like that's that's really super rare, and a in a big music community, that's really rare. I mean, there were semblances of that in Denver. But the truth was is that everybody who I was hanging with in Denver was just as poor as everybody else. Nobody really had the ability to put some real money into whatever project they were doing. They were all trying to make the best with what they had. They didn't have that access to major promotions or major marketing or major studios or a way to make their ideas greater than just them playing it live. And they would play it live, and they'd put their whole heart and soul into it and the performance was great, but it only lasts that far, and it's important to know that, you know, to have people who know the music industry is more than just creating a flash in a pan. It's about building something that has longevity and has legs and wheels if you will to be the vehicle to carry you someplace. I wanted to say in Denver, but there wasn't a lot of people who really knew and understood that concept. But when I walked into the studios here in Nashville, they were telling me, hey, fucker, this is what we're doing here, and that is that's that's awesome. That's exactly the kind of community that I that I wanted to try to embed myself and to surround myself with people who really were making a conscious effort to do something laughing with the music talents that they had and which is significant.

00:21:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the community here is so great because you know, everyone has the same goals and we're all working hard to even earn enough to be able to record that album in a studio here in Nashville. We understand the work ethic.

00:21:53
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with more of the taking a walk Nashville Podcast. Welcome back to Take in a Walk Nashville.

00:22:04
Speaker 2: When you came here, you know, you said you were doing open mics across the country before you landed in Nashville. You you were also doing videos on social media at this time. What was the clip that went viral for your band on TikTok and did you expect it to have the outcome that it did.

00:22:23
Speaker 3: No, No, not at all. So the clip that went viral was actually one of the major influencers that we partnered with had a took one of our songs and it went You got like six or seven million views, and it's it's reposted on TikTok. You can go and go and find it. We saw a huge spike in the Spotify numbers because of it, and so we made a post and said we got this song to one million people, and then that helped it get to another million people. And it's I don't I don't even know, man, Like the treason the matter is is that that kind of that kind of shit, it gets out of your hands and you just you put out a lot. A lot of this was allowing somebody to tell me what I should be posting, and that normally wasn't the process how I would do it. I would put up whatever I thought was, you know, what I was feeling at the moment, or you know, whatever I felt like doing, and all in overall, it was an inconsistent social media plan because it wasn't really a plan. It was just me using it as a sounding board for people who I thought were listening. Once I started to understand the strategies behind what you posts and how you put it out and what everything that goes around it, and all the different ways that you can promote it that doesn't have anything to do with the posting itself is kind of nutball, Like I don't know if a lot of people have done influencer marking for their songs, but it's a weird world, man, and I will say it works. It's not is very counterintuitive, I think for most musicians. But it was. It was really it was really great to see that that kind of response, and it was really consistently, you know, two hundred to the three hundred thousand or so views on a lot of the content that we were doing it. It was just the stuff that we had recorded at Blackbird Studios. We had got in the Massenberg Room or released what I call the Masson Bird Room, which is this room that has one hundred thousand one by one would spheres we'll say, that are strategically and mathematically placed in the room to make it a perfect sounding room. And it's really really amazing to be in there a lot. I mean, it's everybody's favorite room because it looks the coolest, you know, it looks super dope. So we decided to shoot the the recording of the of the vocals that we were doing in that room, and you know, it just happened to really capture people's eyes, I guess, and I have no idea how to make it happen again. Maybe we'll do it, maybe we won't. I don't know. You know, it's it's I what's really odd about it for me, and the reason why I speak kind of tentatively about it is because I wrote an a part blog in two thousand and twelve, twenty thirteen about the Try and a part of it, Part seven was about warning the community about putting likes and views as a way to discern who was good and who was not. Because I saw what was coming, which was we're gonna end up fighting with dog videos, we're going to end up competing with baby videos, and that's not that's not the point of what we're trying to do. And we have to be able to understand that views and likes are a temporary litmus tests. They are not the end all be all of somebody's existence in or they shouldn't be the end all be all of somebody's existence in the music industry. And I'm pretty sure nobody fucking listened to me, so we it's a little weird for me to get to that other side of you know, getting a lot of views and knowing that a lot of people have seen my content when before, you know, I was talking to an audience of you know, maybe a couple thousand ye And it's it's quite a it's quite a different feeling. But I know that what it really does is set the table for me to start interacting on a greater scale with more and more people. And that's really the point.

00:27:16
Speaker 2: And that's the great thing about it. You've converted so many fans online to your music that you maybe wouldn't have been able to reach through doing live music. So I think that's definitely the great thing about it. But you're also going viral in more ways than one by working towards a more perfect union in partnership with free toolove dot org. Can you tell us what this partnership is and how it came about.

00:27:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that that came around in two thousand and nineteen, I think, and it was. It's more of an alignment of goals. Free love is has a a lot of different ambassadors who represent different aspects of life. You know, each of the different ambassadors that they have have or advocates that they have, have each of their own unique story something to say. We partner on really the goals of trying to use music as a advocacy platform and to have a set of values and attentions that we embody to make a statement. You know, I've been in a lot of the planning stages and trying to get everything like in my head so that I understand all of the different moving pieces of what this whole business is. Like. I'm still coming into everything that I actually have and utilizing all of the different aspects of who I am as a person in the entertainment industry. For example, I'm going to have a meeting next week with a company that will help me write a book, and that book is going to be is going to be the first step. Because I already have multiple stories in and outlines that I've written for TV series, for movies. This is going to be the next set to get my story and message across so that people can get a true vision of where this shit actually comes from, and also as a great method for explanation of what happened and why it's important, you know. Then along with that, there's there's podcasts, interviews, and there's live you know, TikTok live, YouTube live. Then there's live performances. Then there's advocacy work, then there's music education. There's so many different avenues two share your talents across the board, and I'm still figuring out all of the different ways to go and do that. So it's been really really exciting to start seeing a bunch of different opportunities come up. Because I have a certain level of people on Spotify or a certain level of people on TikTok. To me, I see it as just another barrier that I have to overcome in order to get me in the rooms that I need to be to say what I need to say, to play what I want to play, to share what I want to share, to express what I want to express, And that's really the goal. That's ultimately, that's the goal, as long as it gets me in a room with someone and they can have an experience of understanding, a moment of clarity, a to see through something, to feel something real about this world, not just be caught up in the duplicity, in the stupidness of how everything is really really fucked up and every single part of your life seems completely organized and you don't have a fucking say in any of it. At some point you have to have a moment in which you can have a real conversation with yourself. And that's what my music is for. That's why I play, That's why I pick up the guitar and I sing. With the intention that I do and I played with the intention that I do is to get through to people and not just be superficient. I love that.

00:31:33
Speaker 2: I couldn't agree more. I think that for me, that's the whole purpose of music, And as musicians and people in music, we should be advocates for other people and their stories and their voices. So I think that's great. If people want to see the Quarantine at an upcoming show or follow you. Where can they find you?

00:31:54
Speaker 3: You can find me on social media TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, a website, the Quarantine dot Com. You can find us on YouTube as well. We've got you know, we're developing all of our social media more and more. So give us a follow and a like on any of those things. Send us a message through our website and we'll we'll, you know, get in contact with anybody. That's great. But you know what I mean. Great.

00:32:26
Speaker 2: Well, my last question a famous question I always like to ask every guest who's on taking a walk Nashville, Sean, do you have a favorite place that you like to take a walk in Nashville.

00:32:38
Speaker 3: You know, I actually haven't gotten around to walking much in Nashville, but I will say this. When I first got to Nashville, I went to a place where I'm sure you know, called Painter's Allen. It was up off of Broadway and there was It gave me the same feeling that I had walking down Los Palmas in Los Angeles, like a little grungy people say on the outside smoking cigarettes. You don't know who the hell they are, and there's you know, four or five venues and every one of them is just popping off. And I went in there and, you know, just hung out there for a while and realized that there was an open mic at one of At one of the places, I forget the name of it, they had a situation where the mic was they would pick five musicians, pull them up on stage, and make them, you know, pick a song and play. And so I went out there and I was already well versed in this entire contest, because that's exactly what we did for lpw's and Musicians Institute. So i spent three years doing this already, so I'm completely ready to go. I know exactly what to do. I'm prepared to have all my stuff, you know, ready to go. I'm I'm ready before everybody else is on stage. And we go and play eight no Rest for the Wicked, and it was very, very surprising for the majority of the audience because they'd never really heard somebody play guitar, and because I play it fast. I play it like a rap rock song, not like a just city and grooving that kind of thing. I'm trying to push it forward like a punk song. And the audience response was fantastic and It was really a great experience in talking with the band leader, the house band leader and asking them all about Nashville. So I would say when that was the first little walk that I took in Nashville. So that was the very serendipitous just walk that I happened to take in Nashville, and it landed me already in knowing that, yeah, I should probably come here.

00:34:43
Speaker 2: And say yeah, I love Yeah, I love printer Zali. There's so many great bars there, places to see live music like alley tabs, a lot of great boogie bourbon and blues and jazz restaurants and places to see live music there. I love it. And it doesn't feel like you're quite like downtown off Broadway. But a little fun fact, in case you didn't know, Printer's Ali used to be Brothels back in the day in Nashville before they converted it to live music venue. So it definitely has its own kind of.

00:35:18
Speaker 3: Charm. I guess, yeah, it kind of looks like that. Yeah, you can see some history in there, and like you know, you go to Portland. Portland is the same thing, like all all all the buildings along the waterways are old, old buildings and they all used to be brothels. Yeah, a lot of some that are like vegan brew house restaurants now super nice, used to be brothels. Like there's a real there's a real fun history and it's and it's really like you you go there and it's like, this is a little different. This isn't you know what what is Brad Paisley's you know, super stage, this is this is a little bit more grungy, and it's a little bit more of my speeed, you know I liked.

00:36:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's definitely more grungy as its own little charm. Oshawan. Thank you so much for being on Taking a Walk Nashville today. I hope everyone will check out your new album, Aversion to Normalcy.

00:36:16
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me. It's been awesome.

00:36:21
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Taking a Walk Nashville with Sarah Harrelson. Please check out our other shows produced by Buzznight Media Productions, Comedy Save Me and Music Save Me hosted by Lynn Hoffman, and Taking a Walk hosted by Yours Truly Buzznight. All shows are available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and are part of the iHeart Podcast network