Artist Interview: Q&A with Elisha Marin
The multimedia artist gives us a deeper look into his boldly optimistic and tender-hearted debut album, Shining Out.
Elisha Marin album artwork, 2021.
I’ve been fascinated lately with musicians who practice other forms of artistic expression. I’ve come across musical artists who also dabble in painting, videography, cartoon drawing, crafting, and more. Often their music overlaps with their other art form in interesting ways too.
That’s the case with singer-songwriter Elisha Marin, a multimedia artist who’s also committed to supporting other artists. Besides running his own graphic design studio, Inkfish Inc., he teaches music and art to elementary schoolers and runs the Freeborn County Arts Initiative in Albert Lea, Minnesota.
His debut album, Shining Out, which dropped in June 2021, is also intrinsically linked to his visual art; he even brought his portfolio into the studio with him as inspiration. With both his music and graphic design, he’s said, he wants them “rooted in tradition but with some modern elements as well.”
Elisha Marin. Photo by Dahli Durley, 2021.
It’s a great way to describe Marin’s music, which has some pop sensibilities but incorporates rootsy and throwback elements as well. It’s a romantic album, too, which feels old-fashioned in the best way. Over half of the tracks deal with affairs of the heart, from burgeoning love to relationships ending. But even the kiss-off songs have a softness, what feels like a conscious choice to reject bitterness and focus on the positive healing effects of moving on from something that’s not working for either person.
Shining Out represents the culmination of 10 years of songwriting. In some ways there’s a diversity of sound, but a surprisingly consistent feel considering they were developed over such a long period of time. That’s partly due to Marin’s nimble fingerpicking and distinctive voice—rich, soft and soulful—but also to the lyrics, which signal a calm and introspective way of viewing the world and dealing with problems.
Hearing a group of songs that seem to come from such a strong and consistent perspective despite being written over a decade made me want to hear from the artist himself, so I asked Marin my most burning questions about his craft and his debut record.
Elisha Marin. Photo by Olivia Blinn, 2021.
Carol Roth: While your music has a definite folk/Americana feel, I sense other influences at work. There’s a pop feel to some of the melodies, and a couple of the arrangements have what sounds like a slight R&B tinge. “My Love Regardless” has a bit of a throwback soul vibe to my ear. Would you agree?
Elisha Marin: Good ear! Most of these songs were written and performed for years with just me and my guitar, pretty folksy. When approaching the production, I was very fortunate to get to work with Matt Patrick of the Library Studio in Minneapolis. I felt that I had taken the music as far as I could and was ready to bring it to a group of collaborators to develop it a little further. Matt not only produced and engineered, but played dozens of different instruments throughout the record. Aaron Fabbrini joined in on upright and electric bass, as well as pedal steel—featured in a beautiful solo on “Love is a Luxury.” The incredible Zach Miller, musician and educator, contributed some breathtaking percussion performances on all sorts of drums, vibraphone and bells. I was also lucky to have my friend Alissa Klein from Nashville lend her vocal talents.
The collaborative nature of the production really helped bring good energy to the music, although other songs on the album remain more stripped down in honor of my own roots and personal development. I wanted the album to feel timeless, but also rooted in folk-Americana musical traditions. I’m really proud of the final product. After all, gospel and R&B are Americana music, too.
CR: Who are some of your biggest influences—what musicians inspire you or inform your own sound? Who do you listen to for fun?
EM: My artistic influences include writers like Walt Whitman and Elbert Hubbard, painters like René Magritte and Frida Khalo, and musicians like Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen, and Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam. I love art history and architecture, and it seeps into my songwriting through songs like “Love is a Luxury,” written in reference to Magritte’s The Treachery of Images. My playlist recently has a lot of Marina Satti and Fonés, Tinariwen, Gipsy Kings, No Blues, and Hindi Zahra.
Elisha Marin. Photo by Dahli Durley, 2021.
CR: Most of your songs have an optimism to them that I don’t hear a lot in Americana—even the ones dealing with problems feel like they’re drawn to light, looking for the positive. What drives you to write in that vein?
EM: I appreciate that observation. The title track, “Shining Out,” was written as my own response to the Charleston Church Shooting in 2015. It’s a song of hope for change, written at a very dark period in American history, and I felt like it was the right song to set the tone for the album. My best friend, artist Susanne Crane, once told me something that changed my life: “Life throws a lot at you. Why make it harder on yourself?” and I agree. There are a lot of dark things in the world right now. My philosophy is this: Find what you can do to affect positive change, and do it. It will bring a lot of meaning to your life. It has for me.
CR: One notable exception is “Heavenly Father,” which is an interesting spin on gospel—the narrator is bringing his struggles and doubts to a higher power, but unlike a lot of gospel, this song seems to question the intentions of the creator. I loved the lyric “you gave us all this free will then you left us in a garden / if it’s true that you know our endings from beginnings / you would have known we often gravitate to fruit that is rotten.” What can you share about the thought process behind this song?
EM: This album is me laying my heart bare to the listener. I grew up in a very severe and intense religious environment, and this song is a reflection on my own journey of awareness. I’m hesitant to share too much of my own perspective on it because I love hearing others’ interpretations of the song, but I did like one review that likened the ethereal voice in the background to a Siren song. I guess the debate is this: Are they Sirens singing you to shipwreck, or just a really good choir somewhere off in the distance? It can be hard to tell through the fog.
Elisha Marin. Photo by Dahli Durley, 2021.
CR: I think “Where I’m Going” is my favorite song—it’s got the strongest folk/Americana feel, so it really drew me in, and your fingerpicking is beautiful. At first I thought “where I’m going” was talking about dying—you know, like “crossing the great divide”—but as the song goes on it seems to describe coming back to Minnesota from California. Is this an autobiographical song? Can you tell me a little about it?
EM: Glad to hear that! A lot of these songs are quite literal and autobiographical, because I like writing with multiple layers of meaning. I wrote the song while playing music and traveling in California, thinking about a romance that didn’t work out and what the future held, but I like to think of this as an open-ended song. Is “Where I’m Going” about death or travel? I think both. The opening imagery is crossing the great divide, yes, but changes in life can also be described similarly. Many of us get to live a few lifetimes within our time on Earth by shifting beliefs or career paths or by accident or by opportunity—good, bad, neutral, or anywhere in between. How lucky are we to get to change and grow and be reborn?
CR: I know for most artists, this answer can change over time, but currently, what’s your favorite song on the album and why?
EM: Because all of this music was written from the heart, quite earnestly, it’s hard to choose a favorite. Listening to or performing each one takes me back to who I was and where I was and how I was feeling at the time. I hope everyone who listens can find parts that resonate with them.
CR: Now that the world is opening back up, do you have plans for playing out locally or going on tour? It sounds like you have a lot of other obligations though—is it hard to fit gigs around everything else?
EM: I do have a lot of other obligations, but that’s how I stay grounded. I’m honored to direct an arts nonprofit located in a former opera house with a romantic backstory, The Freeborn County Arts Initiative. I’m also working on another building restoration project and have been teaching in Minneapolis this summer, but there’s nothing like getting together and singing with people and I can’t wait to perform this music for more audiences. I don’t have many performances lined up right now, but I’m happy to take new opportunities as we continue to reopen safely. If any of the Adventures in Americana readers want to reach out or listen to the new music, information can be found at www.ShiningOut.net.
Thanks for having me! It means a lot.
Listen to “Where I’m Going”:
Carol Roth. Photo credit: Dan Lee.
Carol Roth is a full-time marketing copywriter and the main music journalist and social media publicist for Adventures in Americana. In addition to studying the guitar and songwriting, Carol’s additional creative side hustle is writing self-proclaimed “trashy” novels under the pseudonym @taberkeley!
