Charlie Marks

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Here we go with the new interview.

Yes. After a break or 2,

we were we were working on some stuff to bring some interviewers on and interviewers?

No. Interviewee. Interviewee.

So There you go. And we kinda told you about this one last

episode,

and this is, Charlie Marx from Charlie Marx Music. He is a banjo and guitar picking. You didn't really throw it to me there. You need to work on that transition, friend. Bad pass.

Charlie Marks. He is a banjo and guitar picking folk singer from outside of Reno, Nevada. And I can't wait to dive into this. This is gonna be so much fun to talk about. But Charlie blends together traditional and original folk tunes to weave together heartfelt stories.

Charlie is also a poet, a writer, and an aspiring chicken farmer. So lots to talk about today. I can't wait to dive in here. Let's do it. How did you get your start, Charlie?

Thanks for having me on. So

I always kinda had this idea that I wanted to sing and play music. I was always really drawn to singing. I think I was a bit of an isolated,

maybe felt like a bit of a lonesome child. And if I sang loud enough, people would have to listen to me. And people would joke that I sounded like Bob Dylan and what they meant was please stop singing.

And, which now I'll go to bat any day, and I'll bring out whatever reporting about Dylan and show you how fantastic of a singer he is. But,

I was, like, a pretty depressed 22 year old when I was graduating college, and I saw that Coen Brothers movie inside Llewyn Davis. And I don't know if you've seen that one, but it's kinda, like,

based on the life of Dave Van Ronck who well, loosely based around, like, him as a character. He was, like, Bob Dylan's uncle during the Greenwich Village folk revival.

And, I went home, and I started learning some of these

old folk tunes. And I guess that was probably about 10 years ago now, and it took me 5 or 6 years to kinda start figuring it out. I'd go play open mics and whatnot. And,

one day, maybe 5 or 6 years ago, I I saw a music shop going out of business, and I went in and I bought a banjo. It was half off, but they'd also marked it up double. So I just bought it and thought

it was worth, like, you know, starter $200

kind of thing.

And my when I got home, Jenna, my fiance now, was like, just looking at me like

What did you do?

But for whatever reason, there's this old time style of banjo called Clawhammer. Instead of doing the finger rolls like the bluegrass guys do, I kinda almost drum on the on the banjo. It it goes back to it's an old, like, African folk style of playing that kinda made its way over to the Americas and was one of the, like, kinda foundational

instrumental styles up until

the early 1900

when

other forms of music kinda started blowing out. But I just found, like, something clicked, and everything just started rolling, and I started performing more. And then when the pandemic allowed it to happen, I started touring a lot. And for the last couple of years, I've just been on the road playing shows. I put out a bunch of albums and just try to make it happen, try to try to make it work.

There you go. That's awesome. Wow. You opened up so many doors that I wanna walk through.

I mean, first and

I mean, that that's huge for someone to pick up a sound that isn't regularly heard. So maybe that's why we were kinda drawn to bringing you on to the show and listening to your music. It's a different style. Yep.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, I think my a friend of mine who played Bandra, I'd play with him sometimes at the cafe that we worked at. And when I got the bandro, I told him, and he was like, you should learn Clawhammer. And when he said that, I think he was like

like like, what's sending me down a path that was like a little bit not a joke, but, like, he was pulling my leg a little bit.

But I was just like, this is perfect. It's like the most fun. It's traditionally dance music. Like, if you think just like having a party in your backyard, it goes perfect with the fiddle.

And there are plenty of people who do it. It's just yeah. When you think of, like, the banjo today, you think of a lot of, like, bluegrass, and you you think of a certain sound that isn't quite what I do. But it's a tradition that people have been keeping going the whole time. There's lots of amazing clawhammer bandro players, and I I kinda prefer it to the kinda bluegrass y sound. So For sure.

That's awesome.

So so I one of the things you said was

22 year old graduating

college depression.

So you so you kinda went you went through some mental

health issues?

Oh, yeah.

Because I I did myself. I I actually hospitalized myself for 5 days for OCD.

So I know what that's like, but

what, you know, what Would you mind sharing your experience? Yeah. If that's okay. Yeah. And what did what'd you do to kinda break out of it? Because a lot of people

need to hear stories from people like you and I that are stories of victory over mental illness.

Yeah. What's a good

starting place? Because it like, as part of my sets, like, it's a lot of what I talk about and what I do. I've almost been trying to shift my sets to be a little bit not always just solely about, like, mental health, but,

because my I put out an album called Unbecoming for anybody who'd wanna kinda dive into some of my music. It's kind of, like,

my album that was about

navigating

mental health.

But I think that

throughout most of my life, I kind of I you know, growing up in the US, I I feel like we kinda get raised with this idea of, like, you can kinda be anything or do anything, but

all of a sudden, you kinda look around, and nobody is being a whole lot of anything besides, like,

well, go to college, get your job,

or just like struggle, like, yeah, like, just barely get by. And so you have all these ideas of like, I don't know. I feel like I got, I was in a spot where I was filled with, like, lots of ideas.

What's a what's a good way of putting it? When I was young, I feel like my rather

generally conservative, like

like

pro probably

Reagan

style

politics,

suburban, Midwest household.

I felt like I got to read a lot of books as a kid, and I feel like, to use a

a phrase, I got red pilled very early on in my life. Like, you're you know, I'm reading, like, Ursula Le Guin and Kurt Vonnegut and and all these authors where, like, you start to, like, feel like the world we're living in

doesn't make a lot of sense and that it's

oppressive to a lot of us and that there's not really a path forward.

I could probably do a long rant right now about how America

killed David Foster Wallace, and I'm, like, still mad about it. And

I think for me, I had a bit of this culture shock growing up in a

slightly conservative

space, but kind of, like, stepping into a lot of these, like, I don't know, like,

left leaning and spiritual

practices.

Like, I would like many other people read, like, Hess' The Dark in high school, school, and all of a sudden, I was like, the world as I know it is not what I thought it was, which is me every single day now just in a better headspace.

I'm taking a while to get to something that feels like a linear way of talking about this.

But

when I was around 22, I just

didn't see a path forward. I was about to graduate college, and I couldn't really imagine what the next

day of my life or the next week or month looked like.

All like, I've manically tried on lots of things. I randomly moved out to the Bay Area to, like, try and be a start up computer programmer and totally bottomed out and had, like,

a mental breakdown 3000 miles away from where I grew up. And

and I kinda just, like,

had this moment where

I moved. Kind of by choice, I I had the option to not do this, which I think is important. But when I was, like, 23, I I moved into my car, and that first night that I slept in my car was the first night since I was a little kid that I just

slept great. I fell asleep at, like, 8 PM,

and I normally was up till 3 AM just, like,

with insomnia.

Yeah.

And from there, I just kinda, like I don't know. I gave myself some permission to float, had the privilege that I was able to kinda float. I I travel around in my car for a while and just, like, found some cafe jobs and

and slowly, like, kinda started incorporating things into my life that felt like they worked. I feel like it took, like, 5 or 6 years to really start getting into a path that started feeling good.

And I feel like I always struggle with anxiety.

I had the privilege to go to grad school

and

I think,

wow, this is, this is a tough one to, cause it's like, our lives are very complicated and to like, think about health,

the ma our mental health, like is often this like narrative that's happening

in between the lines for if someone's asking what your life is like. And

I feel like I just didn't have a vision for like,

now I can maybe say, I feel like I didn't have a vision for what it looked like to be an adult. And by adult, I mean,

an older person.

I just mean, like

like like, to be myself

and to move through the world as myself. And Mhmm.

I've kind of fallen into a lot of,

I don't know, like, spiritual mystic things. I'm currently, like, going through this journey of, like, reconnecting with

Torah as a Jewish person and kinda taken a lot of inspiration from, like,

reading eastern

spiritualism,

and that's been, like, a big part of the journey for me. I, like, had this realization

very recently in the last year or so that I'd always been, like, kind of gravitating towards the, like, spiritual

aspects of life, and I had never given myself permission

to do so unironically

or not secretly.

Right. So now I get on stage and I bewilders me sometimes, but I'm, like, talking about, like, a story from the Ramayana to explain why

why I'm about to sing a song to you and the river symbolism in the boot. It's, like,

wild. Like, it's kinda strange to be that person now because I think I was always supposed to, but it's so different than what anyone could have asked me to have been in this life. And I think that's what can be really hard when it comes to mental health is, like,

in my view,

our mental health is just a reflection of how close we are to being the person that we actually are.

Does the person on the inside match the person on the outside? And are are people because people's expectations of you are like a weight that gets put on.

I was gonna say that. Do you think that,

you know, possibly

your issues

could have stemmed from like our society of being,

you gotta go to school. You gotta go you gotta go get a job right after college. You gotta go be this computer guy because that's what all the rich people were doing, you know, things of that nature. It's like a

it's like people are putting this

expectation on you.

Society is putting this expectation on you, and they don't even know you. Well, I think it's even, like, more folded in than that because

it almost becomes you have a disassociation with self. Right? Like you're like, this is not who I want to be, but Right. Society as a whole is pressuring me into it. Yeah. I gotta go to school because everybody in school has told me that I gotta keep going to school. Yeah. But you're like, no. No. No. No. No. No. No. That's not me. Let me figure out me and then come yeah. That's powerful, Charlie. Seriously, that

to understand that you need that in your life at an early age, that would that's powerful.

It's like

you know,

independence

of your mind and what you wanna do

isn't talked about enough. Everybody is funneled into these boxes, you know? Yep.

And

then once we're funneled in there, we feel like we have to stay in that box.

And that's not good for you.

No. It's it's not good for anybody because when you find yourself in a box

I don't wanna get, like, too far off because I I have another thing I can't escape through. But when we get funneled into boxes, when we kinda look at the world and, like, all of the, like, chaos going on, it's you can almost see, like, the boxes fighting with each other. Oh, yeah. The the

like, I mean, we can Factions. Right?

Yeah. Faction. But it's it's like a box of your spirit and your but not to, like, go too far down that one, but it made me think of when

I I was a postdoc at the University of Nevada, Reno

up until about a year and a half ago.

And almost 2 years ago now,

my partners have me down because I was having mental breakdowns every Sunday. Sunday scary

standard stuff. Oh, yeah. For sure. It was turning into the Monday

meltdowns,

and

we just had this

talk where she basically told me to write down everything that I

wanted out of like, what I wanted my day each day to look like, what I wanted my life to look like. And as we kinda went through that, it was, like, very clear that all of those pressures of, like, go to school, get this job, do this thing

weren't

fitting right or weren't allowing the things that needed to happen to happen.

And so I'm very lucky, I think, to be

rather young and to like go through a lot of these growth. But I also like, don't know if I would have come to this place without the support of a partner. Not that it, I think, has to be like a, like, romantic

partner who is that person for people, but I think

being community with people who support you and actually care about you and not the idea of you is

very Gee. Very important. For sure. No. There's 2 things that you said there. I mean, I think writing, like, people who journal, it helps people with anxiety. Absolutely. That is one thing that they tell you to do, right, is to write down an emergency plan or write down something that brings you to a sense that you're

back in control, quote unquote,

but also to have the support system. So

that's absolutely I think everything that you should do, and it sounds like you found that almost organically.

Yeah.

I think I'm very fortunate. I've made the joke about being red pill very early in life. I, for whatever reason,

was lucky that I feel like I

always had a decent compass for

not getting dragged too deep into the mud, even when I was really deep in the mud.

And

but, yeah, it fortunately also found part

yanks me out.

I know. We know what you mean. Oh, yeah. For sure. For sure. For sure. Well, I wanna jump back to the idea of you being are you currently in Reno, or is that your hometown?

What how does Reno fit into

Yeah. The story? I mean, we moved to Reno. We're about an hour north, though, like, our post office says that we Oh, wow. Reno. We're about an hour north of town. During the pandemic, we would walk around. I was in grad school in San Diego, and that's where I met Jenna. And we would walk around during the pandemic and look at all the houses and say, like, that porch is really nice, or, like, this is nice. We want this. We want this. Again, I think maybe in the, like, fever dream that was existing during the pandemic, we, like, got the chutzpah

move out into the country,

just try and do it without

having any idea what we were doing. And

that is, like, kind of what I have an album and song called 3 Years' Time, and it was just about

how when you

if you want it was the line in the song is if you want your garden to grow and you've never done it before, it's gonna take you 3 years' time. And it just kinda comes from this idea of, like,

when you try and do something really big, really new, especially gardening was, like, just a very specific example,

but building a home and kinda doing it on your own and in your own way,

it takes a long time to, like, figure it out, and you have to be really patient with that process. So our home has kind of come to symbolize

what we're doing with our lives,

which I think is good. I think our homes are supposed to be the symbol of what we're doing with our lives. So Well, and then your fulfillment,

you know, You Mhmm. It take it, yeah, 3 years, but

you have a home,

and your garden grew,

and your chicken's farming.

Yeah. Well, I've been joking. The chickens are are working, but I've been joking on stage because it has been 3 years now that I'm gonna have to rename the album 4 years time.

That's awesome. Rerelease it, revision, or you know?

Well, one of the reasons why I'm asking about Reno, Nevada is because a lot of my extended family are folk singers not

anywhere near the caliber that you are.

Meaning that they haven't recorded or anything. But

they are all from, you know, Kentucky and Tennessee. So this is the first time I'm meeting a fellow folk singer from Nevada.

It just

Yeah. I mean,

I'd like I'd I I grew up in Ohio, but I say that with that didn't help me get exposed to folk music. For sure. I take a lot of inspiration

from folk

musicians,

from

the Carolinas,

and from

Kentucky.

Folks like banjo players, like Roscoe Holcomb and Olaville Reed, who are from kinda the south. Then there's a area it's like the Blueridge Mount. It's like Southeast Kentucky, North East Tennessee, and Western

North Carolina all meet, and that is like this musical

in American history. And a lot of the music that I've been exposed to that's kind of informed what I do

just from there.

But, though, I need to add that lately, I've been listening to, like,

almost solely 19 seventies Texas singer songwriters.

There you go. So

my sound is

fine like, it's fun watching things shift, but the, like, music of Appalachia is is something that I've been

both deeply drawn to. I learned how to play the guitar basically by learning a little bit of Cotton songs. It was from outside of Asheville,

or I think she was from outside of Asheville. She lived there at some point. I I don't wanna,

not

a historian. I but I try my best.

We won't quote you. No.

This is this is the Unholy Union podcast. It's there's a lot of,

you know, fake news.

Perfect. Not a one on TV. No. I'm just kidding.

No. Well, I guess to that point though, what about the genre is drawing you in? You're you know, you say that the folk music is kind of what you are drawn to, but what about it exactly do you feel is drawing you in? Yeah. Why'd you choose that over

Country. Everything else?

Well Bluegrass.

Well, I

have lived a lot, just thinking mental health, in

social isolation

up until quite in

social isolation up until quite recently. And so folk music was something I could do

in that place of being alone.

And by alone, like part of it's a self, like it's a mix of like

not having folks around me

and a mix of maybe self sabotage

and, you know, keep like not knowing how

to leave that state,

but it kind of like suited

well for spending a lot of time with my instruments.

And then

part of it is I always kind of sang in this way that I, like, really threw all of my energy into it. Like, I was borderline yelling when I was a kid younger. And when I first heard Roscoe Holcomb sing in particular, his sound is no they refer to it as the high low and some sound. It kinda comes from the, like, a a a church tradition, the Pentecostal church in Appalachia, and the way that they'd sing with this, like, really

intense,

no harmonic, just clear notes,

like, probably singing an octave higher than you would suggest

most people sing,

and it's just all out. And it was something that I was kind of already doing on my own

to like many people's chagrin.

And

I kind of found a way into

play like, I I kind of saw myself reflected back to me in that music.

And

I've been learning to sing

more quietly

and

nicely,

but

my foundation

is still

hollering.

And Belt it out.

Yeah. And so, like, I can hear my sound shifting

closer to a countryish

sound, and that's a little bit because, like, I'm obsessively listening to Guy Clark for the last year and a half. And I don't know if you listen to Guy Clark at all,

but that'll do it.

But

but and and, also, like, we're in this moment where country music is, like, right in the front of our,

like, kind of mainstream culture right now. So

when I travel around to play music, I'm almost exclusively

not exclusively, there's plenty of non country

folk singers who are fantastic,

who are doing the thing, but it's a lot of country music. And so that exposure it's funny. We're, like, in this moment where maybe, like, everyone associates banjo with bluegrass, but we're in this moment where country is, like, very alive and vibrant.

So I think we're gonna just gonna push into the next question.

Does your poetry and your writing

feed your music?

Well, it's interesting because,

like, I'm not a great

I wouldn't, like, classify myself as being a spectacular

lyricist.

I've been very proud of the songs I write, but I tend to just, like, pick up a guitar, and then I'm, like, strumming, and then I start singing something. I'm like, that's a good line, and then a whole song comes out of it. But a lot of the poetry, just like talking about being, like, kind of on the spiritual journey,

a lot of my poetry when I I I used to write a lot of poems. They're generally, like, self reflective. A lot of them are, like, navigating

what we were talking about earlier. Like, you have these expectations on you, but then it's, like, negatively impacting

health. And how do you, like, push through that?

And or how do you just, like, name what's happening? Because that's one of the things that's so painful about, like, mental health stuff is

it's hard to name what's going on and nobody else

views it as being real, and you barely view it.

But I went down academia rabbit hole, got a PhD, was doing a postdoc. I didn't write a word for 5 or 6 years.

And after I stopped working,

I just, like, something

happened where all of the sudden,

like, it was like I could it was almost nauseating. I, like, couldn't stop writing.

And I often joke one of the, like, ways I like to describe how I write is I call them or we kind of call them my, like, how in the field moments because

outside of our house, there's a pasture where there's a lot of cows. And while I was working my postdoc, I was watching these cows one day and I was like, these cows look so happy

and I'm really miserable

or just like not, not doing that great. Like like, mentally. I'm, like, very anxious, and I'm struggling.

And this valley we have, we're, like, Nevada desert

mountains, so it's all sagebrush.

But then in the bottom of the valley, there's

water accumulates, and grass grows. And I just had this thought of, like, oh, it's because their environment suits

them. They're they're in a field of grass. They probably wouldn't be having this wonderful

existence.

They

were, like, on top of that mountain over there where it snows and there's no grass. We're going to college.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So they probably walk back back to this field if they have the choice. So I kinda like I don't know. Like, a lot of my writing is these, like,

really intense feelings I get. In that in that moment, the intense feeling was, like, our environment

if our environment doesn't suit us, there's there's little chance that we're gonna thrive

or we're gonna have to work really hard to thrive and that might not last so long. And so a lot of my writing,

poetry, and essays are kind of like me grappling with, like,

my own spirituality,

I think. It kind of evolved from, like, thinking about mental health and how to live well into being more explicitly spiritual in nature. And that's kinda what I bring into a lot of my sets now in between songs. It's just kind of,

I don't know, like, a lot of people talk about society and, like,

what's wrong with it because there's

apparently a lot of things wrong with it. But you just, like, watch TV or listen to the radio. It's super weird.

And, like the last year has been this journey of just being like, well, it kind of feels like spirituality

and not, I'm not talking about religion because religion can be a space for spirituality,

but it just feels

like there's no explicit spiritual

life in our culture. It's like, it's almost like, I don't know if it's even now I'm always talking about like my spiritual life. So I don't know if it's like,

if people are all doing that, but if it's like what it was like before I was always talking about spirituality,

then

it's just, like, not something that's, like, a big part of our discourse and dialogue,

especially if you might be in, like, a more like like I was, like, a liberally,

like, we believe in science kind of space. I don't know. I grew up around friends who were like, atheism's cool. And then I'm not trying to be here to, like is prophetize

the right word?

Evangelize for

anything, but it's, it's I feel like a lot of the there's a big connection between these dialogues about mental health

and lack of a dialogue around spirituality

because I I think spirituality is, like, kind of this art,

being,

like, aware of who you are and your connection with the world around you. Centered and

yeah. No. I I I totally get that. My wife and I,

we always talk about

how spiritual

the lack of spirituality in this country, it has to have something to do with mental illness

because

to me, when we talk about spirituality,

I think about religion,

and we're Christians.

And I always think, like,

my belief is that there's something after.

So that gives me a little bit of medicine

towards mental health because I'm like, I might be struggling right now, but I'm not gonna be struggling forever.

Well, and I think we also talk beyond that even

further and say that there's also a morality

issue Yes. With a lot of

the country or the world even. And if we're not striving to find our own morals and try to live by those, it doesn't have to be religion. Right? But if you don't have any morals, then

what what kind of society do you live in? Right? And that that goes along with turning that TV on. It's depressing to turn the TV on because

we don't have morals. And morals doesn't like you just said, that doesn't have to be a religious thing.

Just be a good person.

Find the person that is you and then live it. Right? Like, you don't have to be

Exactly.

This made up thing

or live by any certain code as long as it fits you. Right? Like, it's all about a morality you can live by that fits you.

Mhmm.

Yes. We could go all day.

Well, you know, there's, like, 2 themes there that I think come up, and one is, like, living well as an individual. How do you have a life that feels good to live and that you feel good about living? And then there's this other one that's, like, about morality, which is, like, how do we interact with one another?

And

I'm

just trying to figure out where to go with it, but I've been thinking a lot. I've been reading I kinda started so Judaism, and I think this is the truth with a lot of religions, is kind of a book club.

You you pick up the Old Testament, the Torah at the beginning of the year, and you read the whole thing. And that's what a year is. And at the beginning of the next year, you read it again. So when the new year came around this year, I started reading,

and I got really I've been like, feel like I've been getting, like, so much out of it this time going through, and I'm not doing it with anybody else, really. You know? So it doesn't feel

religious so much as my

thing that's happening.

But I've been reading I keep reading the Sodom and Gomorrah story,

and I'm, like, very convinced that it has a lot of good things in it. And I just wanted to share one of those because, like, I feel like everyone thinks about the, like, sexual depravity aspect of that story, and I I don't think that's really the point. But the the two words that I think come up when it comes to morality is this idea of righteousness

and this idea of wickedness.

And I think, you know, we live in such a, like,

I don't know, lazy

time where, like,

righteous means good, and wicked means evil, and good means righteous, and evil means wicked. It's like it we we don't know what those mean. And the more I read it, I feel like I'm just getting this feeling of, like, righteousness and goodness is just living a life

that fosters life around you

and that sets up the next generation for that too. And wickedness is just everything else. It's just anything that doesn't promote life and doesn't promote life across generations.

I was listening to the podcast where they were talking about the,

Iroquois Confederacy,

which was, like, the very awesome government that the, like, many of the tribes in the northeast had before

the bad things happened,

as history has us now. But there was a concept there in which

all laws that were passed had to consider

7 generations in the future. What is the impact of this law? And that sums up better than what I was trying to say, what I've been getting just reading

the, the Bible lately, where it's just just like and I think a lot of our morality is just like

missing our connection with each other and missing our connection with,

I don't know, the future. And It's it's hyper focused on I want it now. Instant gratification.

Yes. Mhmm. Yep. With 0 zero thought about what that can do later on. Absolutely.

Well, I mean, that kinda goes into our next question.

Alright. I mean, what does what do you feel like, with your spiritual journey that you're on right now and all the things that are essentially feeding your inspiration,

where do you think or how do you think your music will sound within the next 5 years? Where do you think your music will take you?

Woah.

Well, well, it's it's gotten,

I think, a lot more joyful

recently. I've I've been putting together the next thing I'm working on, and I do a lot of solo recordings I would love to be able to bring in. I have a lot of great friends who are awesome musicians who have gotten to play shows with and tour with, and I'd really love to do something. Because everything I've done so far is just kinda me, and that's a little bit a product of

the style I play, but also,

like, where I am in the career path. I've been joking I'm not joking, but, like, I feel like peak age for a folk musician is, like, 56,

and I'm

31.

So,

you know, there's, like, there's a certain function of how much support do you have to, like, create

art. And right now, I'm kind of in this space where creating art is

an at home DIY kind of thing,

and I have the support of some awesome people who've really helped me on that path. But the things I'm making right now are kind of evolving to being a bit more joyful. I mentioned my one of my first albums of my first album of, like, original music is called Unbecoming, and that's just, like, navigating

mental health and kind of this unweaving

of myself from expectations.

I was about to

I was about to ask if you've read the Nietzsche story, Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Have you No. I can't I can't even pronounce that.

It's okay.

Tell us more.

In the story, there's this, like, metamorphosis

in which you're a child, but then as life kinda goes on, he starts you start getting the weights of society placed on your back. And so your first metamorphosis

is you become the camel. And as the camel, you're very proud of yourself for all of the expectations you can carry.

And then when you're getting a little bit

older, you start realizing all these expectations and weights are actually quite oppressive,

and they start weighing you down, and you're struggling to make it to through each day. And then you kind of evolve, and you realize those weights are actually a dragon,

and

you have to kind of become a lion and fight that dragon.

And

that album for me was about kind of, oh, and then the idea is once you win the fight with the with the dragon, you get to be yourself again.

Like, you get to just live your life without the weight of expectations of other people. Right. And I that's like a journey that it really resonated with me. It might have been, like, tattooed on me. It's very but I say all that to say that a lot of my early

songwriting was, like, kind of intense

in that

way.

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Well, it's still recording. Right? Yeah. You're we're still good. You should be okay.

Alright. Yeah. So, anyway, that was a long way of saying a lot of my songwriting was coming from a rather intense introspective

place.

And now,

I'm

I feel like a lot of my writing is coming from, like, I

a lot of, like, joy in my life. So it's been a fun transition,

though I'm grateful for what I've written because it keeps me grounded, I think. So

yeah.

So I wanted to ask you kinda

how the industry works now because

I don't know all the nitty gritty. Well, you're on Spotify.

So what do you think? I know there's a lot of musicians out there that think Spotify

and

streaming platforms such as Spotify are kind of

a net negative for the mute music industry.

What do you what do you think about that? Because I feel like, especially with small artists,

that's a good discovery platform. But

So when you get bit because, like, I'll just say her name,

Swift.

I'm pretty sure she's not a big fan of all these streaming platforms. I can't remember, but I feel like she may have gotten into TIFF with Apple Music for streaming and things of that nature.

Yeah. I I don't know a lot about her story. I think

she is doing well enough that, like,

I don't know if I

it's not that I just I I don't care. Like, I I For sure. I'm just saying, like, for for somebody like yourself, do you see Spotify

and their business model of

So I don't know. I read somewhere that there's pen they pay you pennies per play or something like that. But, you know

I mean, it's less than it's a less than a penny per play. That being said,

I probably am in I don't know what percentage of musicians

are vocal

because, you know, it's, like, very a lot of people are fighting for better pay for musicians,

and then there's things like merch cuts at venues.

Right. That that's like a big topic. And I

there's a I probably am

I don't know if it's the unpopular opinion, but I probably, like, wouldn't go around just like talking about how I feel about this because but I, I, I think I lean more towards what you were describing, which is

like,

I can just get my music out to anybody, and it doesn't mean that I'm always succeeding at that task.

Right.

But We found you. Yeah.

Yeah. And we and and the Internet and all of that has provided really amazing platform for getting music out. I think sometimes as a musician, it's a little overwhelming that it's so easy. Like, I did it. I did it by myself. Everyone's doing it by themselves. There's 19 1,000,000,000 music songs on Spotify. It's like, how do you navigate that? I think folks who worry about how much money you get from it like, back in the day with radio plays, there was, like,

a 100 songs being played on the radio, and they were splitting up radio

revenue between like a 100 songs.

And

the part of me that, when people talk about wanting bigger pay,

is for streams, which I'm all for because I would like to be paid more.

But I'm just like, where's that money coming from? For sure. Because

now there's just more songs. There's more streams. There's more things being played, and,

obviously, people are paying money to Right. To get.

Yeah. I just I just don't know how they how somebody

if it was still

buy go buy a CD.

How do you find new people?

How do you discover artists

at all? Because

people don't go in there to buy a CD from somebody. They have no idea who it is.

They go in there because

they know, oh, so and so released a new album. I'm gonna go buy it.

Yeah. And

if that that is though, a good segue just to say that if you do really like an artist,

the best way to get money in their pocket, besides just literally sending them money, is to buy their merch. That is the best. So for me, if, like, you wanted money to be in my pocket,

buying my merch is the best way to do it or, like, buying my CDs.

That said,

if you stream my music online, I'm, like, really grateful and really happy to know that that's the case

because

it's it's hard. If someone's listening.

Yeah. And I I think,

like, if you wanna make it playing music,

I I I unless because there is, like, a whole world of music, and I this is just something that I'm not here to, like, be a grumpy old folk musician. That's not why I'm saying this, but I just

I don't really get

the world of music that isn't

performed.

Like, there's a lot of music out there that isn't really performed

live,

and I'm really drawn to music as, like, a way of creating a third space for people to gather

and Oh, yeah. To be in community with each other.

And I that's also what I've learned is if you wanna kind of if if you if there's an inspiring folk musician on here, I think

you need to play shows in person. That's

literally where

one, it's the most fun thing to do as a folk musician, but it's also where you can actually

make money. So For sure. For sure.

It's also where you can take advantage of. But Well

Alright.

Well I think the question that we ask everyone to kinda round out our interviews here

is,

what would you do tomorrow

if you won $10,000,000

tonight?

I would

I would

sleep.

Yes.

So I'm You're Russ's spirit animal.

Yeah. My favorite thing.

Oh my God. So

what was it? I have to take some stuff to the dump, which is like an hour and a half away.

And I feel like I would be so much happier to do that chore.

If you had $10,000,000

in the bank?

Yeah. I'd be like, yeah. Let's, like, you know Go to the dump.

I also got the I just got a 10% warning on my phone battery, which is probably ill advised to me to be on my phone right now.

But with the video or the podcast,

I guess that feels like breaking the 4th wall on a weird way or something.

But, yeah, no, I have an album I wanna make. Like, dude,

if if I had $10,000,000

you would not hear from me for a little while. I would just enjoy,

like,

being at home

and then like cooking food. We would,

me and Jenna would

just probably take a sabbatical,

just keep doing what we're doing, but not the parts that we don't like. So,

for sure.

$10,000,000

will cut that the the bad parts out. That's that's for sure.

Yeah. I'd I'd buy it. I'd I'd to be more fun,

I'd get a telescope.

I'd get a kiln. I've been getting kinda into pottery, but it's kinda expensive. I probably actually wouldn't get a kiln. I'd probably

make one because that'd be more fun, and at a $10,000,000

that would need to work so I could just figure that out.

Right.

I wanna build a sauna in my front yard. By $10,000,000, I'd build a sauna in my front yard.

I feel like I'd still have, like, 9,800,000.

9.9 After that. 5.

Yeah. Well, you gotta remember all the interest you'll be making on that too. So it'd be kinda hard to spend. That's for sure. At least quickly. Yeah. Yeah. I make a Home Depot run is what I'm trying to say. There you go. I like it. I like it. You'll clear out all that stuff that you gotta take to the dump in your, you know, in your trailer, and then you'd

fill it up with with with new stuff.

Exactly.

Where can people find you, Charlie?

Yeah. On social media, website,

anything of that nature. You can find me. My Instagram is charlie_marx_music.

I got a website charliemarxmusic.com.

You can find all my music on Spotify,

Apple.

For a while, I wasn't on Amazon because I was taking this big stand against corporate America. That was my stand I was taking, but then I accidentally uploaded one of my albums and I don't know how to take it off. So,

you know, to,

They don't want you to take it off. Right.

So

and then and then if I tour a fair bit, I have, like, a band some town where I post all of my shows.

And

yeah.

Alright. Awesome.

Yeah. We I've this is fun. I would talk to you guys more. Oh, yeah. Oh, cool. Yeah. We'll have you back for sure.

Yeah. I and you'll we'll put all these links in the show notes

so that you can find Charlie easily

instead of trying to write this down while you're driving. So Don't do that. Please don't do that. Don't do that. But, yeah, we thank you for for joining us today, and we'll we'll invite you back soon. Jack Rasmus (zero zero four:fifty four): Yeah. Thank you for having me.

Thanks for listening to the Unholy Union podcast. For more Unholy Union content, check out our social media at Unholy Union Cast on Instagram and Twitter. We also have Facebook and TikTok.

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