Tag: Marlon Williams

Marlon Williams’ ‘Te Whare Tīwekaweka’ Is a Homecoming Like Never Before

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

When he was in his early twenties, Marlon Williams watched a series of major earthquakes flatten Ōtautahi/Christchurch, the largest city in Te Waipounamu (the South Island of New Zealand). In the wake of that tragedy, the Māori New Zealand artist ascended onto the national and later international stage as a singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor with a million-dollar smile and a golden, heaven-sent voice.

As a narrative device, it would be easy to enshrine his experiences during the earthquakes as a baptism by fire, a star emerging from the flames. However, as he puts it, “It’s tempting to say that experience fostered the folk scene here, but we’d been building something for a while before the earthquakes. When you look backwards through the haze of time, it’s easy to start telling yourself stories.” It’s a fitting reminder that things are never as simple as they look on the surface.

Now, fifteen years on, Williams is on the brink of showing us how deep things go with the release of his fourth solo album, Te Whare Tīwekaweka (The Messy House). In a similar tradition to the outdoorsy, range-roving sensibilities of his previous three records, the album represents an antipodean blend of country and western, folk, rock and roll, and mid-to-late 20th-century pop, connecting the musical dots between America, Australia, and Aotearoa (New Zealand).

This time around, however, Williams – a member of the Kāi Tahu and Ngāi Tai iwi (Māori tribes) – made the decision to step away from English and sing in his indigenous tongue, te reo Māori. Therein, his guiding light was a traditional Māori whakatauki (proverb), “Ko te reo Māori, he matapihi ki te ao Māori,” which translates into “The Māori language is a window to the Māori world.” As displayed by the album’s lilting lead singles, “Aua Atu Rā,” “Rere Mai Ngā Rau,” and “Kāhore He Manu E” (which features the New Zealand art-pop star Lorde), he’s onto something special.

During the reflective, soul-searching process of recording Te Whare Tīwekaweka, Williams found solidarity in his co-writer KOMMI (Kāi Tahu, Te-Āti-Awa), his longtime touring band The Yarra Benders, the He Waka Kōtuia singers, his co-producer Mark “Merk” Perkins, Lorde, and the community of Ōhinehou/Lyttelton, a small port town just northwest of Ōtautahi, where he recuperates between touring and recording projects.

From his early days performing flawless Hank Williams covers to crafting his own signature hits, such as “Dark Child,” “What’s Chasing You,” and “My Boy,” Williams’ talents have seen him tour with Bruce Springsteen and the Eagles, entertain audiences at Newport Folk Festival and Austin City Limits, and appear on Later with Jools Holland, Conan, NPR’s Tiny Desk, and more. Along the way, he’s landed acting roles in a range of Australian, New Zealand, and American film and television productions, including The Beautiful Lie, The Rehearsal, A Star Is Born, True History of The Gang, and Sweet Tooth.

From the bottom of the globe to the silver screen, it’s been a remarkable journey. The thing about journeys, though, is they often lead to coming home, and Te Whare Tīwekaweka is a homecoming like never before.

In early March, BGS spoke with Williams while he was on a promo run in Melbourne, Australia.

Congratulations on Te Whare Tīwekaweka. When I played it earlier, I thought about how comfortable and confident you sound. Tell me about the first time you listened to the album after finishing it.

Marlon Williams: It was that feeling of nervously stepping back from the details and seeing what the building looks like from the street. I felt really pleased with how structurally sound it was.

What do you think are the factors that allow you to inhabit the music to that level?

I’ve spent my entire life singing Māori music. No matter my shortcomings in speaking the language fluently and having full comprehension in that world, the pure physiology of singing in te reo Māori has been my way in. There’s a joy and a naturalness that has always been there. That gave me the confidence to take the plunge and really enjoy singing those vowel sounds and tuning on those consonants.

We’ve talked about this before. Part of what facilitated this was singing waiata (songs) written in te reo Māori by the late great Dr. Hirini Melbourne when you were in primary school (elementary school). 

Those songs are so simple and inviting, especially for children. They really help you get into the language on the ground level. A lot of what he did for this country can feel quite invisible, but most of us have some knowledge of the sound and feeling of the language as a result. It feels like a really lived part of my upbringing. His songs gave me a push forward into something that could have otherwise felt daunting and deep.

For those unfamiliar, could you talk about who Dr Hirini Melbourne was?

Hirini Melbourne was a Tūhoe and Ngāti Kahungunu educator and songwriter from up in Te Urewera [the hill country in the upper North Island of New Zealand]. He was born with a real sense of curiosity about the world and a sense of braveness and self-belief about taking on Te ao Māori [the Māori world] and bringing it to people in a really straightforward way. Hirini decided the best way was writing songs children could sing in te reo Māori about the natural world around us.

If you listen to his album, Forest and Ocean: Bird Songs by Hirini Melbourne, you’ll also see a lot of Scottish influence in terms of balladeering, melodies, and instrumentation. Later, he started collaborating with Dr. Richard Nunns. They’d play Taonga pūoro [traditional Māori musical instruments] and go into some very deep and ancient Māori music. Hirini’s whole career was this beautiful journey that was tragically cut short [in his fifties].

When I think about your music, I think about historical New Zealand country musicians like Tex Morton and John Grenell, who emerged from Te Waipounamu before finding success in Australia and America in the mid-to-late 20th century. 

I wasn’t super aware of that tradition until I learned about Hank Williams and completely fell in love with country music. After that, I realised there was a strong tradition back home. I guess it gives you a sort of reinforcement, a sense of history, and a throughline you can follow to the present moment.

I also think about New Zealand’s lineage of popular singers. People like Mr Lee Grant, Sir Howard Morrison, John Rowles, and Dean Waretini, who I see as antipodean equivalents to figures like Roy Orbison, Scott Walker, and Matt Monro. What does it say to you if I evoke these names around your album?

A lot of the celebration around this record is the celebrating the ability of Indigenous people – in this case, Māori specifically – to absorb what is going on in the world and make something from it. You can think about it in other terms, but I think about it in the sense of creativity. If you think about Māori religions like Ringatū [a combination of Christian beliefs and traditional Māori customs], there’s this willingness and this sort of epistemological elasticity to be able to go, “Oh, these things make sense together.” I can wield this tool. I’m going to come to it with my own stuff and create something unique and strong that is a blend of worlds. The main energy that was guiding me on this record was that tradition of synchronisation.

When do you consider to have been the starting point for Te Whare Tīwekaweka?

The literal start point was May 2019. That was the first time I sat down, had the melody and the structure of “Aua Atu Rā” and realised there was an implication in the music of what the song was about. This lilting lullaby was emerging. I’d say it was boat stuff. That was the first moment when I realised I was writing a waiata. I didn’t quite have it yet, but the phrasing was in [te reo] Māori, and I knew where it was telling me to go. At the time, I had a [Māori] proverb in my head, “He waka eke noa,” which means, “We’re all in this boat together.” I’ve always struggled with it. I believe it’s true, but we’re also completely alone in the universe.

From there, everything locked into place.

It strikes me that feeling connected could be considered an act of faith. You have to believe that it’s more than just you.

If I think about faith, I think about surrender, being humble, having humility, and going to a place I can acknowledge as new ground. I think faith is a useful word here.

Tell me about the conditions under which Te Whare Tīwekaweka came together.

It was pretty patchy in terms of the momentum of it. Once I had “Aua Atu Rā” loosely constructed, I took it to Kommi [Tamati-Elliffe], who helped me make sense of the grammar. After that, it sat there for a bit.

Kommi is a writer, rapper, poet, activist and lecturer in Māori and Indigenous Studies and te reo Māori. They perform te reo Kāi Tahu, the dialect of the largest iwi (tribe) within Te Waipounamu (the South Island of New Zealand). How would you describe them?

Kommi is a shapeshifter. I can’t work out how old they are. I found it hard to work out what they thought of me, but I knew there was this lovely softness there that belies a lot of deep thinking and some real sharpness. They’re very enigmatic as a person and a creative entity. One time, we got drunk at a party and talked about some work they were doing on phenomenology through a Te ao Māori lens. We were talking about that and making the most crass puns imaginable. There was this dichotomy of high-level and low-brow thinking that felt really playful.

What you’re telling me is you felt safe with them?

I guess. That’s all I can hope for in a collaborator.

Let’s get back to Te Whare Tīwekaweka. 

After I’d been sitting on “Aua Atu Rā” for a while, my My Boy album came out. In retrospect, you can also hear a lot of the direction that eventually went into Te Whare Tīwekaweka was already starting in My Boy. That took off for a bit, but all the while, I was back-and-forthing on songs in [te reo] Māori with Kommi. They’d send me lyrics all the time and I’d play around with them without really committing anything to paper.

Once I was near the end of touring My Boy, I started to turn my attention back to Te Whare Tīwekaweka. Then I agreed to let the director Ursula Grace Williams make a documentary about me [Marlon Williams: Ngā Ao E Rua – Two Worlds]. I thought, “Right, they’re filming me, so I better do what I’m saying.” Part of the intentionality was that the documentary would frame it into a real thing and make it happen. There was nowhere to hide.

Across the album, you sing about living between worlds, love, the land and sea, the weather, solitude, and travel, often through metaphors that invoke the natural world. Why do you think you gravitate towards these themes?

On a very basic level, I’m a very sunnily disposed person in terms of the way I comport myself. I feel desperately in love with people in the world and feel terrified of losing people, situations or understandings. These are the things I think about. The fact that I write songs like this is my outlet for ngā kare-ā-roto [what’s going on internally] and my darker side. I like to be warm and friendly in how I deal with people, but a little bit more severe when it comes to matters of the heart.

What do you think it has meant to make an album like this right now in Aotearoa and Te Waipounamu (New Zealand)?

Personally, I have a sense of achievement from having built something in that world. It also does something for my sense of family, in terms of representing a side of them very publicly that hasn’t always been accessible to them. There’s a lot of Kāi Tahu dialect on the album, so in terms of iwi, it feels good to put something on the map that speaks directly to the region. At the same time, this all sits within a very heated and fractious national conversation. On one level for me, it’s by the by; on another level, it’s great to have Māori music accepted into the mainstream. Whatever the political conversation going on is, if you can compel people with music, you’re really winning the battle on some level.

Taking things further, what do you think it means to be presenting Te Whare Tīwekaweka to a global audience?

Most places I go overseas, there is a sense of goodwill and excitement about marginalised languages being platformed. There’s a broader appetite due to people having instant access to a range of music through the internet. The threads you can draw together now are so vast and ungeographically constrained that I think people’s Overton window of what they’ll sit with and take in, even without knowing they’re not fully comprehending it, has shifted. I think people are generally either really open to that or completely shut off, which is something I don’t personally understand.

We can’t get around talking about Lorde singing on “Kāhore He Manu E.” It felt like she really met you where you were standing.

This speaks to the album in general. It was about bringing things to where I was standing. I didn’t want to jump into anyone else’s world. I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted her to sing on it. In the past, she kindly offered, “If you ever want me to sing on something, I’ll do it.” I could hear her on it from the moment I started writing it. There have been a few songs like that which have been very easily labored. They don’t take much writing and are always my favorite songs. It was important to me to get her involved in a way that wouldn’t be a post-hoc addition. She had to be part of the stitching of the record itself.

How do you feel in this moment, as you prepare to see what happens next?

I’m just excited to get these songs out into the world and see what they morph into when I start getting on stages and seeing what they do in a room. That’s going to change the way they feel and the way they want to be played. The second creative part of it is getting to the end of the tour and realising that the songs have become completely different from on the record. That can be a fun thing. Sometimes, it leads to remorse that you didn’t record them in the way they’ve gone. Other times, you realise you’ve completely ruined the song and gone away from what was good about it. I’m excited for the deployment.

Well, there’s always the live album.

Exactly.

Photo Credit: Steven Marr

Kacy & Clayton and Marlon Williams Find Two Versions of the Same Music

Posted on by Editor

Fans of roots music are likely already familiar with the work of singer-songwriter Marlon Williams and the folk duo Kacy & Clayton. Williams, who hails from New Zealand, released his self-titled debut in 2015, capturing listeners’ attention with his sepia-toned alt-country and his distinct voice, which drew comparisons to Roy Orbison. The Canadian duo Kacy & Clayton have been fixtures of the roots scene for more than a decade, with their most recent album, Carrying On, earning critical acclaim upon its release in 2019.

The acts combined their talents for Plastic Bouquet, a new album born from their mutual respect for one another’s music. Recorded primarily in Kacy & Clayton’s hometown of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, in late 2018, the album is a lively, intimate snapshot of three talented musicians who thrive on both playing off one another’s differences and digging deep to find common ground. BGS caught up with Williams and Kacy Anderson to talk about songwriting, learning from your collaborators, and just how cold it gets in Saskatchewan.

BGS: Before we dig into the new music, how have you both been doing this year, particularly with COVID-19 and how it’s affected the music industry?

Anderson: I’ve had to develop a personality and interests aside from music and touring. So that’s been trying. It’s actually been a great time.

Williams: We down in New Zealand have had a pretty lucky run of things, in terms of the actual impact of the virus. We’ve sort of been living in our fantasyland down here. It’s pretty easy to pretend there’s no such thing as coronavirus in New Zealand. I’ve learned how to cook a bit more and I’ve been going to the beach a lot. It’s been quite nice.

I know you’ve toured together in the past, but I’d love to hear, in your own words, about how you met and developed your musical friendship.

Anderson: We met in Saskatoon, at the airport.

Williams: Kacy picked me up in the middle of a cold night. And we started singing.

Anderson: Just right there in the airport.

Williams: To take it back further than that, I was on tour in Europe and was listening to music in the van, as you do when you’re on tour. I heard their music come up on Spotify and it was really exciting for me to hear. So I reached out to them and asked if we could make some music, so we did. Fast-forward to Christmas of that year and I was in Saskatoon and it was real cold and we made music.

Anderson: It was very cold for Canada, even. It was in the -40s. But I just pretended like it wasn’t so bad, and Marlon went along with it. I was gaslighting Marlon like crazy.

So was it during that initial visit that you decided to make Plastic Bouquet? Or were you just tinkering around, seeing what would come of some joint sessions?

Anderson: I think we wanted to just do a little bit of music together. But then it made more sense, since Marlon was already coming, to make a full-length album.

Williams: We just loved that sound. It was like, ‘Here’s two and a half minutes of music. And here’s another. And another.’ Eventually, after enough time doing that things start taking shape into an LP.

Anderson: ‘LP’ is short for ‘long playing.’

As far as putting the songs together, did you come together with your own songs to share with one another, or did you sit down and write them from scratch as a group?

Williams: We sent songs back and forth pretty much as they ended up on the album. We didn’t really do much real 50-50 collaboration. We came with nearly full-formed things, got approval from each other and then there were only a couple of moments that there was real songwriting collaboration. Kacy just kept writing bangers and I was trying to keep up. I had to reach deep into my kitty to find some.

Anderson: I really had nothing else to do.

With those moments that you did collaborate on songwriting, how did those experiences compare to writing your own individual material?

Anderson: I don’t know, but I do know that Marlon made me sing “baby” for the first time. I didn’t want to fucking sing it. It’s the only thing I remember wanting to change. Can we just get rid of this “baby” line?

Williams: We’re both used to collaborating. Kacy writes with Clayton a lot, and I’ve done a lot of collaborating with this guy Delaney Davidson down here. We’re both used to the give and take of the collaborative experience, so that made it a lot easier.

Marlon Williams and Kacy Anderson

When it came time to record the tracks, were you recording as you went? Was that part of that same December 2018 visit, or was it something you worked on after the fact?

Williams: We smashed out the bulk of it then and there. These guys have an amazing band so we just really leaned into it. The whole sound was within the studio. We did meet up the next year in Nashville during AmericanaFest and finished it up there. But we pretty much went song-by-song and plowed through it.

Anderson: Yeah, that’s the only way I can handle it.

Williams: Those guys do most of their stuff live, and for me I was like, “Let’s just take time.” But it was real nice for them, since they have the confidence in each other and the familiarity to be able to just work through them so naturally and organically.

Anderson: I was bossy with them.

What were you bossy about?

Anderson: I hate redoing things. Marlon is more caring and precise.


From what I’ve read about the album, a big part of the inspiration creatively for you was the fact that you come from such different roots, both musically and culturally, as well as living in different hemispheres. How did you find that your backgrounds were able to complement one another?

Williams: I think Kiwis and Canadians have a complementary sense of humor, which is most of the battle, really, especially when doing something like recording. You have to use humor as a way of navigating situations, so that was a nice thing. Then we have the same love for the same music. The joy of the process was finding two versions of the same kind of music, coming from different cultural spaces and geographical spaces. That’s the kernel of the album, that discrepancy and familiarity and where those two things meet.

Anderson: I think that was a perfect answer.

In the same vein, what are one or two things you each feel you learned from working with each other, whether it was about music or something else?

Anderson: Just some guidance in the singing department. Marlon is like, “Sing this instead, this one note.” And I’m like, “Okay, fine. I will do that.” I’m not so used to singing arrangements. I was spiteful, in a sense, but then listening to it I’m like, “Yeah, that makes sense. That’s the part that he wrote, so I had to sing it.”

Williams: For me, I’m used to being the main singer in a room. I think being the second biggest voice in the room was a really interesting and a very helpful experience for me, and one that I didn’t know I needed to have. Working out my own place in the background sometimes was a really valuable lesson, I think.

Anderson: You were flexible in the key department. That’s what I appreciated. You can sing in any key. So when I’m like, “I only know how to play this song in a certain key, so we have to use this key,” that made everything easy.

Given that it’s been a couple of years since you wrote the bulk of the album, and since you couldn’t have anticipated the world you would be releasing the album into, how has your perception of the project evolved, if at all?

Anderson: I’m just thrilled that it’s coming out. We tried very hard. Hopefully people can listen to it now and enjoy it. It’s nice to share it finally.

Williams: It’s been so long, in terms of where we’ve got to as a society in that time. The album feels like a little paper boat on a big ocean squall. But it’s all the more exciting for its fragility.

Anderson. The paper boat theory. I like that.

Photo credit: Janelle Wallace

BGS Top Albums of 2018

Posted on by Editor

This year, as we revisit the albums that resonated with each of us, we may not find a tidy, overarching message. However, the diversity herein — of style, content, aesthetic, format, genre, perspective, and background — demonstrates that our strength as a musical community, or zoomed-out even further, simply as humans, indeed comes from our differences. To us, these 10 albums are testaments to the beauty, inspiration, and perseverance we found in 2018.

Rayland Baxter, Wide Awake
His career-launching musical epiphanies happened on a retreat in Israel some years ago, so Rayland Baxter’s decision to isolate himself in a contemplative space to write Wide Awake had precedent. The venue this time was an abandoned rubber band factory in rural Kentucky where a friend was installing a new recording studio. In that quiet, Baxter wrote songs about the noisy world beyond the cornfields, with perspective on its tenderness and absurdity. Later in the studio, his posse set the deft verses to enveloping, neo-psychedelic, Americana rock. Social commentary doesn’t have to plod, as the Beatles proved, and Baxter is farming similar terrain with vibrant melodies, saucy beats and a voice that’s entirely his own. – Craig Havighurst

The Dead Tongues, Unsung Passage
I didn’t expect The Dead Tongues (aka Ryan Gustafson, guitarist for Hiss Golden Messenger and Phil Cook) to be my most-listened-to record of the year. But Unsung Passage is an album I find myself returning to again and again. The ten songs form a sort of travelogue for Gustafson, and you can hear the influences and rhythms of other cultures drifting throughout. It’s the rare record that’s both comforting and complex. –Amy Reitnouer Jacobs

Del McCoury Band, Del McCoury Still Sings Bluegrass
Named after his debut record, which was released fifty years prior, Del McCoury Still Sings Bluegrass seems like a painfully obvious, on the nose title for a record, but upon deeper inspection we realize that, because the album was built on his signature ear for songs and his unfaltering trust in his own taste, it is an immediately digestible statement of McCoury’s worldview. At this point in his long, diverse, uniquely successful career, most listeners would give Del a bluegrass authenticity “hall pass,” letting the more innovative, less bluegrass-normative moments herein by without a blink, but Del, from the outset, avoids letting himself fall into that paradigm. He chooses songs because, well, he likes them, and he doesn’t concern himself with what is or isn’t bluegrass, he just creates music that he enjoys to make with people he enjoys making it with. It’s a simple approach that may border on simplistic, but the result is a resoundingly bluegrass album that doesn’t concern itself with the validity of that genre designation at all. Which, after all, is bluegrass to a T. — Justin Hiltner

Jason Eady, I Travel On

Jason Eady, I Travel On
A fixture on the Texas touring scene, Jason Eady offered his most satisfying album yet with I Travel On. First off, he enlisted Rob Ickes and Trey Hensley for these sessions, giving the project a bluegrass groove with plenty of cool Dobro licks and guitar runs. Second, Eady wrote from the perspective of a man with some miles on him – the album title isn’t a coincidence, after all. His expressive country baritone is made for slice-of-life story songs like “Calaveras County” and “She Had to Run.” At other times, Eady looks inward, drawing on themes like mortality, gratitude and contentment. I Travel On may not be the most obvious album for a road trip but it’s certainly a worthwhile one. – Craig Shelburne

Erin Rae, Putting on Airs
Her velvety, maternal vocals and the subtle, understated alt-folk production vibes of Erin Rae’s Putting on Airs might initially disguise the millennial-reckoning being wrought through these songs and their topics; from top to bottom Rae’s brand, her musical identity, defies comparisons with any one era of music making and songwriting. Her talent oozes through her writing, her melodic hooks, and her musical and rhetorical fascinations, which together in this song sequence feel like they epitomize a microcosm that contains all of our generation’s — and this particular historical moment’s — angst, but without feeling simply capitalistic, opportunistic, or “on trend.” Instead, her viewpoint is decidedly personal, giving us a window into her own individual reckonings — with her own identity, with mental health, with family relationships, with being a young southerner in this modern era; the list is potentially endless, determined only by each listener’s willingness to curl up inside these songs and reckon along with Rae. Which is the recommended Putting on Airs listening strategy espoused by this writer. — Justin Hiltner

High Fidelity, Hills And Home
It’s in the nature of bluegrass to forever be casting backward looks at the giants of the music’s early years; nothing wrong with that, but when those who do it get aggressive about how they’re playing “real” bluegrass, well, that’s another story. High Fidelity’s eyes are firmly fixed on the musical past, but they’re also a modern, mixed-gender band who aren’t afraid to let their music do the talking — and what it says is that there’s a lot more variety, not to mention pure joy, in the under-appreciated gems of old than you might think. – Jon Weisberger

Angelique Kidjo, Remain in Light
It’s not simply a remake of the Talking Heads’ 1980 landmark, but a stunning reimagining by the visionary Benin-born artist Kidjo. She doesn’t merely repatriate (er, rematriate) the African influences that fueled TH’s revolutionary stream-of-consciousness masterpiece — which opened the door for many to discover the wealth of those inspirations — she considers and explores the worlds that have emerged in African music in the time since, all brought together via her singular talents and sensibilities. Remain in Light was arguably the album of the year for ’80, and so it may be again for ’18. – Steve Hochman

John Prine, The Tree of Forgiveness
No album this year brought me as much pure joy as John Prine’s latest. His first collection of new material in over a decade —which is way too long — The Tree of Forgiveness shows him in fine form, tossing out clever phrases and humorous asides that add to, rather than distract from, the low-level sadness thrumming through these songs. From the Buddy Holly bop of “I Have Met My Love Today” to the percolating existentialism of “Lonesome Friends of Science,” from the rapscallion reminiscences of “Egg & Daughter Nite, Lincoln, Nebraska, 1967 (Crazy Bone)” to the almost unbearable heartache of “Summer’s End,” every line and every word sounds purposeful and poignant, culminating with “When I Get to Heaven.” Prine sings about nine-mile-long cigarettes and bars filled with everyone you’ve ever loved, and it’s one of the most inviting visions of the afterlife set to tape. I hope he’ll save me a barstool. – Stephen Deusner

Jeff Tweedy, WARM
The album lives up to its name. Following last year’s quieter Together at Last project, Tweedy now hearkens back to his country punk roots from Uncle Tupelo, and makes a perfect accompaniment to his must-read autobiography, Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back). The new music reminds of his strength as a master songwriter and his place as one of the most tender and raw performers of a generation. It might have almost slid under the radar with its release at the end of November, but it definitely belongs on our year-end list. — Chris Jacobs

Marlon Williams, Make Way for Love
Mere seconds into hearing Marlon Williams croon the opening greeting of his song “Hello Miss Lonesome” in 2016, I knew I’d found a euphoric talent. After poring over his debut Dark Child, my greedy ears immediately wanted more, and this year finally brought that much-awaited second helping. On Make Way for Love, Williams moves away from the rootsy Americana that defined his first album, and leans into darker, baroque explorations that nod to Scott Walker and Roy Orbison in equal measure. Exploring heartbreak — from the puerile but pacing “Party Boy,” to the seething “I Know a Jeweller,” to the pitious “Love is a Terrible Thing”— Williams dips into the jagged crevices that naturally appear when the heart cracks wide open. – Amanda Wicks

 

Committing to Reality: A Conversation with Marlon Williams

Posted on by Editor

Marlon Williams staked his name on grandiose vocals and an adventurous sound stoked by the Americana fire. When the New Zealand singer/songwriter began touring the States behind his 2016 self-titled debut, his ramped-up “Hello Miss Lonesome” showcased a breathtaking sustain in that it quite literally took Williams a good deal of breath to hold the opening “Hello.” Yet, on his sophomore album, Make Way for Love, he sheds those theatrical moments to pursue a different sound. Williams lets his voice break, searching out quieter moments reflective of his inner anguish, as he worked his way through myriad passions: jealousy, possession, self-loathing, and the one fueling them all, heartbreak.

Heartbreak, as a theme, seems to be the modus operandi for many a singer/songwriter. If they’re not singing about love, they’re singing about its opposite. While Williams wrote his debut through the perspectives of several characters — letting their voices form a barrier to keep his true self private — Make Way for Love takes a different tack. The songs detail his breakup from fellow New Zealand singer/songwriter Aldous Harding. (Interestingly, Harding appears on the penultimate song, “Nobody Gets What They Want Anymore.” The duet, a conversation between former lovers, hangs with a haunting echo of all they’ll never be able to say to one another.) But beyond that overarching subject matter, Williams tackles issues of communication — how seemingly impossible it is to convey an entire truth to another person, let alone oneself.

If Williams was influenced by alt-country and indie folk on his debut, he shows threads of Roy Orbison, Scott Walker, Anohni, and even Jeff Buckley on Make Way for Love. “Can I Call You” begins with an antiquated piano, its keys plunked one by one in heartbeat fashion, before Williams practically pleads the title. One of the album’s standouts, “I Know a Jeweller,” touches on his former sound while nodding at turns to surf rock. With Orbison-like vocals, he demands with a voice oscillating between hope and despair, “Make me a ring for the one who is too afraid to try.” Heartbreak may be old hat for singer/songwriters, but Williams uses it to spin a new thread for his musical development. It is, at once, a man looking around at the wreckage, and a glimpse at a promising musician who’s finally letting his guard down and allowing listeners to get a touch closer.

Your debut involved so many characters and narrators. Besides the heartbreak radiating from the center, why did it feel necessary to peel back those narrative devices and insert yourself more personally this time?

I think the word “necessary” is a very on-the-point description. That’s really how the whole process felt. I didn’t feel I could be so removed this time around, and circumstances were such that I just felt compelled to make a record that was pretty much entirely coming from a personal point of view.

How did you handle the business of confessing and revealing just enough without giving too much of yourself away?

It kind of felt like a crime of passion, you know? I hadn’t really written a song at all in nearly two years and then, in the space of just over three weeks, 15 songs came out. There were ideas that had been floating around in my head for a long time, but there was a fear or reticence about committing them to any sort of reality. It really just happened and I sort of woke up a few weeks later with blood on my hands, and I didn’t know what had happened.

Do you think, if it hadn’t happened that quickly, you might’ve overthought that process more than you let yourself at first?

Yeah, it feels like I sort of blindsided myself. I have always had that relationship with songwriting, where it’s done very frantically and out of fear, really, and I’m left with the results. There’s not a lot of discipline or intentionality going into the way I do it.

I understand that underlying fear, though. You know you have to get it out, but the process can be so overwhelming at times.

Yeah, I don’t listen too closely to myself, so I came out with all these songs, and it wasn’t until right at the end of the process where I realized sort of what I was doing and how personal a body of work it was. I found myself having to choose to make this commitment, this, “Well, I’ve gotten so far with all these songs, is this the right way to do this?” I realized that I had to take the plunge and just commit to it.

It reminds me of the Polar Bear Plunge, where people dive into the icy water so quickly they don’t feel the pain.

That’s the artistic version of that, yeah. [Laughs]

I’m curious if there was any kind of emotional truth you were hoping to unfold over the course of this project, but maybe you weren’t even aware of it until it all came about.

Yeah! I really think it was a means of processing and as real a therapy as anyone ever receives.

Your first album contained such big vocals — both in terms of the volume and also your ability to sustain a note. This is quieter and more introspective for good reason. How did you see your voice serving this project?

I feel like, with this album, I wasn’t writing vocal parts; I wasn’t consciously trying to crack little vocal tricks. All the vocals are serving the song first, so my voice ends up in different and interesting situations that it wouldn’t normally end up in because some of these songs, I guess, represent feelings I’ve never had. “I Didn’t Make a Plan” is just, “This song feels like it wants to be sung down here.” It’s not a part of my personality, but this is what the song wants to do, so it’s what I’ll do.

There are so many styles taking place on this album. What were you listening to ahead of time to shift your mindset away from what you’d recorded in the past?

A lot of stuff. A lot of Scott Walker, obviously. That intensive vocals and tone that’s slightly off and darker than the more obvious Roy Orbison and …Well, obviously Scott Walker is a strange dude. Trying to listen to stuff that really brings my own sense of what I do, of what I’m capable of doing, and how I want to use my voice and present songs. It sort of shifted.

Make Way for Love has been touted as a heartbreak album, but of course any kind of label can be restrictive in a sense. Did you find yourself pushing past those limitations in any way?

The term “heartbreak album” sort of smacks a little bit of sensationalism into it, in a way. But also I’m really curious and really enjoy watching the album squirm under the moniker of “breakup album.” It’s interesting when you give labels to things how you see … I heard someone refer to it as a heartbreak album, and then I listened back to the album myself, and it’s a really interesting re-learning process for me as the album is heard by more and more people.

The song “Nobody Gets What They Want Anymore” is beautifully bleak. Have you reconciled yourself to living with that understanding?

Well, look, that sort of resignation is not eternal nor should it be. It was in the context of the subject matter of the album. I’d sort of come to live with that, I guess. [Laughs]

You can be happily melancholic, as they say.

Yeah, exactly. You can wear sadness well, and it’s fine.

Most of the album is written from a certain perspective, but “Nobody” turns into a dialogue. Why choose to have another character speak on the matter?

I found myself in a unique position of being able to give a voice to … if we’re speaking frankly, there aren’t many breakup albums that are engaged with the subject that the album is about, and kudos to Aldous [Harding] for agreeing to do that. We always had that sort of thread running through our relationship from the get-go, so it didn’t feel that weird to potentially do that.

What was the recording process like?

It was detached and weird. It was one of the last songs we recorded, when we were [recording] in California. I had my parts all done, and then the last thing we needed was her part, but she didn’t record it for another couple of months. She did her part while she was in Cardiff and Wales, and I was in Portland, and we sort of talked it through on the phone. It was a very fitting way to do it.

No kidding, especially considering all the themes of communication that run across the album. To have this significant moment run across time zones and continents …

Exactly, yeah. I would’ve rather we’d done it in person, but it kind of fits.

Speaking of communication, have you thought much about the ongoing struggle to communicate with yourself, and what you’ve learned as a result of this album?

I need some time to think about that one. It’s big.

Save the big ones for the end.

Real big one, yeah! I do feel how I imagine people feel when they’ve been doing a bunch of therapy, where therapy is about picking away the scabs and having a good look at the wounds. I have this weird, manic ecstasy from thinking that you’re confronting these sorts of things. It’s like I’m an alcoholic, and I just want to tell everyone how great AA is. That weird ecstasy that comes from drastic perspective shifts.

I’m just trying to be slow with it and learn to be alone softly and without any pomp and circumstance. I’m having a really interesting and exciting time, where I am starting to feel some sense of individual completeness, which is kind of a new feeling for me.

And a hopeful one, too, I imagine. How do you slow yourself down when you talk about writing an album so quickly? It seems like it’d be tricky to make that momentum shift.

Yeah, it’s tricky, because you make something so quickly and then, by the very nature of what you’re doing, you have to spend so much time talking about it and pouring over it, and I believe you end up inventing the truth afterward. For that reason, I’m either discovering it or inventing it, as I go along. It’s constantly shifting in my hands. You need to be thoughtful and have some degree of slowness and a sense of space and respect for what you’re doing, at that stage.

Lastly, what kind of strings do you use on your guitar?

That’s a very functional question after …

I know!

I just use the Martin Retro strings when I can. Actually, the second album I recorded with an acoustic guitar — an old, beat up one — that I found in the studio because I forgot my guitar.

Oh my goodness. Yeah, and I guess you can’t go back for that once you reach California after leaving New Zealand.

I was kind of stuck.

It sounds beautiful on the album, so good find. That’s lucky.

Aww, thanks. Well, it was a shitty guitar, but sometimes shitty guitars are the ones you want.

Photo credit: Steve Gullick

BGS Class of 2018: Preview

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At only 11 days old, this year already looks to be a stellar one for roots music. From Marlon Williams to John Prine, Sunny War to Bettye LaVette, artists young and old are making some of the best records of their careers, and it is a thrilling thing to behold. Here are some of the releases that our writers are most excited about you hearing.

Brandi Carlile: By the Way, I Forgive You

Marlon Williams: Make Way for Love

Anderson East: Encore

HC McEntire: Lionheart

Courtney Marie Andrews: May Your Kindness Remain

John Prine: TBD

Gretchen Peters: Dancing with the Beast

Sunny War: With the Sun

Lindi Ortega: Liberty

— Kelly McCartney

* * * * *

Stick in the Wheel: Follow Them True

Belle Adair: Tuscumbia

Julian Lage: Modern Lore

Red River Dialect: Broken Stay Open Sky 

Jerry David DeCicca: Time the Teacher 

Ed Romanoff: The Orphan King

Haley Heynderickx: I Need to Start a Garden

Various: The Ballad of Shirley Collins OST

Bettye Lavette: Things Have Changed

— Stephen Deusner

* * * * *

Brandi Carlile: By the Way, I Forgive You

First Aid Kit: Ruins

Lucy Dacus: Historian

Anderson East: Encore

Kacey Musgraves: Golden Hour

Jack White: Boarding House Reach

Darlingside: Extralife

I’m With Her: See You Around

Calexico: The Thread That Keeps Us

Sunflower Bean: TBD

— Desiré Moses

* * * * *

Anderson East: Encore

Marlon Williams: Make Way for Love

First Aid Kit: Ruins

Loma: Loma

Femi Kuti: One People One World

Joan Baez: Whistle Down the Wind

S. Carey: Hundred Acres

They Might Be Giants: I Like Fun

— Amanda Wicks

* * * * *

Jack White: Boarding House Reach

Brandi Carlile: By the Way, I Forgive You

Ashley McBryde: TBD

Brothers Osborne: TBD

Joshua Hedley: TBD

Traveller: TBD

Bruce Springsteen: TBD

Courtney Marie Andrews: May Your Kindness Remain

John Prine: TBD

Kacey Musgraves: Golden Hour

— Marissa Moss

* * * * *

High Fidelity: TBD

I’m With Her: See You Around

Ms. Adventure: TBD

Hawktail: TBD

Missy Raines: TBD

Jeff Scroggins & Colorado: TBD

— Justin Hiltner

* * * * *

Sunny War: With the Sun

I’m With Her: See You Around

David Byrne: American Utopia

Hawktail: TBD

Jamie Drake: TBD

Bahamas: Earthtones

Fruition: Watching It All Fall Apart

Darlingside: Extralife

— Amy Reitnouer

Marlon Williams, ‘Vampire Again’

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In the age of Instagram, everyone looks as if they’re constantly having the time of their lives. Traveling to sandy beaches and being #blessed. Leaning casually against a wall in a small, increasingly hip city — preferably with a mural. Smearing avocado on toast, while poor butter looks on. It all seems glorious, glamorous, and free … except, beneath all that shimmer and sheen, it’s not. Not even close. We’re all so worried about being perfect, about being caught in the act in a less-than-presentable way, that having fun and being ourselves, just for the sake of it, is going the way of the wooly mammoth.

Marlon Williams wasn’t too worried about what anyone else was thinking when he ventured out one Halloween in Los Angeles in a vampire costume (to a screening of Nosferatu, nonetheless), only to find himself in a room of people who didn’t even bother to dress up. It’s an experience he turned into his newest single, “Vampire Again,” that puts on full display the unique way that the New Zealand native melds a smooth, Roy Orbison-style croon with a quirky theatricality. “Everybody’s looking like they’d wished they stayed insideand they were watching Frankenstein in their beds and on their phones,” he sings to a steady snap. “Not me, baby. Tonight, I’m really living.” “Vampire Again” is about just that: learning how to put aside appearances or self-consciousness, or what other people might think (online or off), and just start really living once again. Williams’ melodies — and his capes — are out a-swinging, and we should be, too.  

MIXTAPE: Henry Wagons’ Aussie Faves

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Welcome, and thanks for letting me be a musical Dr, Frankenstein. What a fun surgery it was making this beautiful monster virtual cassette!

Please sit in a comfortable recliner, gently raise the footrest, grab the nearest scruffy dog with a slanted smile, and pop it on your lap. Have someone close bring you a whiskey cocktail and dig in.

Here are some of my favourite new tunes from my home turf of Australia and its surrounds. All the songs are still fresh to surface, having come out over the past year or so. I have these tracks echoing through my hallways at home or dampened by the soft passenger door in my tour van or rattling the speaker cones in the studio when I do my show Tower of Song on Double J Radio. I really hope you enjoy my little pick of the ripe and sumptuous fruit from the underside of the globe.

Marlon Williams (NZ) — "Strange Things"
We open proceedings with a prodigious talent. A good man but, in his music, an evil choirboy! This tune is beautiful and very weird, which is one of my favourite combinations. The stuff of inspirational nightmares.

Leah Senior — "The City Is a Stream"
A lilting melody that can potently hypnotise. Her writing and her vocal can evoke the most potent lullaby that can send you into a powerful Snow White-like sleep that only a kiss can wake.

The Murlocs — "Young Blindness"
This tune creates a boogie-driven psychedelic vortex I like to descend into and come out dressed in a silver cowboy spacesuit.

Jess Ribeiro — "Kill It Yourself"
There is a great sense of nonchalant danger in this tune. There is something about Jess’s voice that makes me want to obey … even when she is telling me to kill something.

Alison McCallum — "Have You Seen Your Mother Baby Standing in the Shadows"*
I recently stumbled onto Alison McCallum’s classic work as a ball-tearing vocalist back in the '60s and '70s. Her music was re-issued to digital for the first time only this year, and my balls were suitably torn. I’m a mess. 

Chris Altmann — "Good Morning Mr. Coffee"
Chris is a prodigious Americana songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, with a inbuilt swing and sublime playing empathy. He played everything on this caffeine-fueled number. I listen and imagine a world in which there are several of Chris, and I think it would be a better place.

Eagle & the Wolf — "Mama, Son and the Holy Ghost"
A great new rugged duo poking their heads over the burning horizon and offering you a drink. Their music video for this song is probably the wettest I’ve seen since the closing scenes of Nelly’s “Hot in Here.”

Melody Pool — "Love, She Loves Me"
This is an incredible and brutal expression of anger and frustration at the ways of love. A reminder that the world of romance can take casualties. Some truly excellent cursing … F-bombs in the perfect places.

Nadia Reid (NZ) — "Call the Days"
Another incredible talent from, as we Australians say, “across the ditch” in New Zealand. A voice to melt the shepherd's heart, and a subtle drone of strings to herd all the animals in the field.

Ben Mason — "Suburban Cowboy"*
This is an amazing deconstruction of the whole inner-city, balcony-dwelling, vintage-shopping, moustache-waxing, typewriter-tapping, urban alt-country scene. Being guilty of elements of the phenomena at times, I know he is completely right about it all … and I love it.

Gena Rose Bruce — "Good Thing"
The title says it all: It’s a good thing. Gena has a voice that sucks you in and perfectly places you atop the swell of the welcome guitar jangle.

Robert Forster — "Let Me Imagine You"
Always a mastermind at obtuse charm, Robert Forster sits you down across from him at the dinner table and starts pulling faces and slaps you across the nose with his witticism (and Twitticism!). A man still atop the songwriting tree post-Go Betweens.

* Not available on Spotify

Photo credit: Taylor Wong

On Love and Loss: An Interview with Tami Neilson

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The Venn diagram crossing "traditional musicians poised for breakout in 2016" and "based in New Zealand" yields, unsurprisingly, only one name: Tami Neilson. Gifted with a voice that summons Patsy Cline's ghost, hair high enough to make Dolly proud, and a style lifted straight from the Saturday night stage at the Grand Ole Opry, Neilson's most recent records — the just-released-in-Canada Dynamite and New Zealand-only Don't Be Afraid — time machine back to the era of classic country with a few sidesteps into Sun Records-style rock 'n' roll, blues, and soul.

If this all seems unlikely from a nation whose biggest musical exports have been Lorde, Crowded House, and, er, Flight of the Conchords, that's because it is. But Neilson, who has won multiple New Zealand Music Awards, as well as the prestigious APRA Silver Scroll for songwriting (in 2014, the year after Lorde won), has paid her dues on the long, dusty trail.

Born in Canada, Neilson spent most of her tweens and teens touring relentlessly across North America as part of the Neilson Family, an old-fashioned gospel family band featuring her late father Ron, her mother Betty, herself, and two younger brothers — Jay and Todd. Having moved to New Zealand in 2007 for love and marriage, and, eventually two young sons, it's only now that Neilson is making her first steps to plug back in to her past life.

I want to start with an "Origins of Tami Neilson" question. From a young age, you were part of the Neilson Family, a touring family band. Would it be fair to say you had a nomadic youth?

We were just a pack of gypsies, really, the Neilsons. I look back now as a parent, I think, by taking their kids on the road full-time, my parents were either the bravest people I know or the craziest. But we definitely grew up on the road full-time and that was normal to me. Being in the same house with a dog and a white picket fence and the same friends your whole life, that was just so exotic to me.

Did you used to play in prisons with your family?

We did. That was when we were quite young. Mom and dad would bring us in, and Todd, my youngest brother, was probably four or five. I would have been about nine or 10. We would go in and dad would do his comedy, and he and mum would do a talk in the prison, and then we would get up and sing gospel songs as a family. I can remember my mom saying to my little brother, "Todd, when mommy and daddy are on stage, you stay with …" the Salvation Army lady or whoever had brought us in. "You don't go anywhere by yourself." And without fail they'd be onstage singing, and mom would see him get up and go up to a prisoner: "I need to go potty." She'd be mortified. So there were some heart-stopping moments on the prison performances.

Is it true there was a point where you and your brothers had to busk to earn money to survive?

Yep. In Midland, Ontario. On the main street. To make money to eat.

I know the town of Midland. It's not a music-friendly cultural hotbed. I can't see that being a gainful experience.

No, it was not gainful. But it did the trick for what we needed, at the time. At that time, we had just come off the road after a really bad management experience — we had basically lost everything due to our management and went back to my mom's hometown to lick our wounds, as a family. My dad plunged into a deep depression because he held the full weight of responsibility on his shoulders, and we all started looking for jobs. At that time, he didn't want to pick up a guitar; he didn't want to be anywhere near music because he felt that he'd failed us so abysmally. So my brothers and I went out on the main street every day and busked. Fifty bucks was a good day. We'd put it on the kitchen table and give it to mom and we'd get groceries until we could all find jobs.

If that isn't an authentic country music tale of woe, I don't know what is.

That's country. It doesn't get more country than that.

Do you have a band because of an earthquake?

That's actually not too far from the truth. I hadn't thought of it that way, but yes, I definitely have a producer [Delaney Davidson, Dynamite co-producer and part of the duo Delaney Davidson & Marlon Williams]. I was on tour when the earthquake in Christchurch hit. I knew the Eastern, who are a band from Lyttelton, and the venue we were supposed to play at was flattened. It had crumbled and caved in. There were just bits still standing and my poster was still in the window.

A few days later, I called Adam [McGrath] from the Eastern and said, "I'm supposed to be doing a show there" — of course, nobody's going to shows across the entire country because everybody's devastated by this news — and they were doing these pop-up acoustic shows. There was no power at all in the city. They're doing shows in parks around the city to boost the morale and lift the spirits of all the people who were living in mud and crumbled ruins. So I got in touch with him and said, "We're going to be in town, we've got instruments, let us know where you're playing and we'll come play with you." He texted me the details of the park they were going to be playing in, so we rolled up and I'm like, "Are we in the right place?" and then I saw this tall, skinny beautiful man with a white cowboy hat on looking like the ghost of Hank Williams. It was Marlon Williams (who has guitar and vocal credits on Dynamite), and next to him was a very serious, grumpy-looking guy with piercing blue eyes, and that was Delaney Davidson. We went to a barbecue after the show and really connected there. It's one of those things that's really burned on to your memory when it's in the midst of something so surreal.

To do the music you do in the style you do it, it's a very conscious decision. You've got a very traditional image, but it feels very authentic. How do you define the music you make?

The music side of it, it's Americana. It's not just country, it's not just blues, it's not just soul. But so many of those artists weren't. Johnny Cash, Elvis, the Staples … all of these people were just a hotbed of all of those genres.

Speaking of Johnny Cash, did you tour with him?

We opened for him at the Merritt Mountain Music Festival.

Did you get to talk to him or anything?

There's a story to that: The night before the gig, we had had a fire in our motorhome. Our motorhome caught on fire when we were driving to the gig. We had finished a gig in Kelowna, British Columbia, and got in the car to drive to the festival the next morning, so we were going to drive to Merritt that night. After a gig, if we were driving in evening, I would always change into my jammies in the motorhome to be comfy.

So we're on the road and these people are signaling to roll down the window, and we all thought that they had seen the show so we're waving back like this big happy family in the window. Dad rolls down the window and they're like, "You're on fire!" And dad's like, "Thank you, thank you." "No, you are on FIRE!" And we looked out and there was black smoke just billowing out the back of the motorhome. So we all got out and all of our clothes were ruined. Our instruments were stored underneath so there was smoke damage — they stunk, but they were still playable. All I had was my pajamas.

We rolled up to the festival the next morning, they gave us all festival t-shirts, and I opened for Johnny Cash in my pajamas and a t-shirt. So, yeah, my dad and my brother chatted with him, but I was too completely humiliated by the fact I was wearing my pajamas to talk to him. I was a teenager and you're just so concerned about being cool. I was just totally mortified. Of course now you're like, "Who cares?! Go back!" But when you're 18 and you're mortified, nothing matters except the fact I was wearing pajamas.

Is it true Roy Orbison held you as a baby?

Yes, and it actually makes me cry that I don't have the photo of it. That would be the cover of not just one album, but of every album I've ever put out. My dad was playing in the same venue as Roy and dad said, "Can I please get a photo of you with my daughter Tami?" Dad said Roy just lit up holding me. I can still remember the photos in our photo album. I was in this little white dress and this little bonnet. Then I took them to school for show-and-tell when I was a kid and stupidly lost them. I can still see them in my mind but it breaks my heart.

Dynamite has some songs specifically inspired by the birth of your children, whereas your newest album, Don't Be Afraid, revolves around the death of your father. In the last few years, you've experienced a really heavy, really full cycle of life.

It's definitely a lot of living in just a couple years. So I think that impacts so deeply on you as a person that you're never the same, so my music will never be the same. It will always be colored by, not necessarily grief, but the experiences of the death, of parenthood, and all those things. But love and loss are what country music is about, right?

And earthquakes and prisons and motorhome fires?

Oh my God. When you put it that way, I'm going to be writing about it 'til the day I die. I've got so much material. It's always a little bit daunting to think about what's next, especially because the latest album is something that's so deeply me and exposes me and it's the most vulnerable I've ever been. So you can't think about that too much and, when it's the next step, then you just take it. Otherwise, you get sucked up by earthquakes and fires and prisons.

Photo credit: Justyn Denney Strother

3×3: Marlon Williams on iPhones, Ice Cube, and the Many Glories of Loretta Lynn

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Artist: Marlon Williams
Hometown: Christchurch, New Zealand
Latest Album: Marlon Williams
Nicknames: Woolley Fish

 

Williams incorporated. What a woman

A photo posted by marly Marly Marl (@marlonttwilliams) on

Your house is burning down and you can grab only one thing — what would you save?
My mum. Or my dad.

If you weren't a musician, what would you be?
Very drunk.

How many unread emails or texts currently fill your inbox?
Unread texts: 0. Unread emails: 5,095. Don't hate.

 

#hecallsformeandnotforyou #therehearsalfilm

A photo posted by marly Marly Marl (@marlonttwilliams) on

What is the one thing you can’t survive without on tour?
Rubbish iPhone games.

If you had to get a tattoo of someone's face, who would it be?
I don't know. Who do people normally get? Jesus? Probably Ice Cube.

Who is your favorite superhero?
Probably Colossus of X-Men fame. He's just a no-nonsense dude with a hefty punch.

 

Snap!!

A photo posted by marly Marly Marl (@marlonttwilliams) on

The Simpsons or South Park?
I love them both but The Simpsons family have always been there for me. How many seasons now? 26? Still so good.

Dolly or Loretta?
Loretta. Always Loretta. Loretta and Conway. Loretta and George. Loretta.

Meat lover's or veggie?
Meat lover's. Unless it's too full on. Keep your bacon for the breakfast table.

Photo credit: Martin Martini