Marty Casey Bright as Brooklyn
By: Alison Tuck |
Friday April 18, 2008 |
 |
"Relationship issues are definitely the driving focus of my brain." |
| At quarter to five, I was foolishly engrossed in my book, fully expecting Marty Casey to be late in true musician fashion for our 5 o'clock appointment, when I saw a shadow cross the page. Looking up, I saw Marty with his megawatt smile and noticed that I was not the only one in the room looking. Although his affable and soft-spoken nature belies his bawdy and brash, Iggy Pop-esque, onstage persona, everyone in the room can feel that they are supposed to know him. As he slides into the red vinyl seat across from me, plops down the rock epic that is Slash's biography and adjusts his "Live Fast" hoodie, he squints his blue eyes into the afternoon sun and says "What’ve you been up to?" The Hickory Hills native and finance major extraordinaire from the University of Illinois has just returned from a recording session in Los Angeles and his raspy voice makes pleasantries with the waitress and me as he orders a decaf iced coffee. Marty Casey is a very busy man; he’s been up to a lot since the grand finale of CBS’s hit show, Rock Star and I’m glad I could catch up with him on his extended layover between songwriting/recording in L.A. and Canada. Besides playing with the Lovehammers, recording the new album and filming the video to “Sleeper” (whose treatment he also wrote), he’s been working on some side projects. “I’ve been writing for other bands, I’ve been going in and kind of jamming with them and writing and that’s what I did a little bit in L.A. and [what] I'm going to do in Canada next week.”  The experience of writing for other bands seems to be cathartic. Over the years, the Lovehammers’ writing style has evolved from “plugging in the guitars and the amps and just jamming, then through long jam sessions” something amazing develops out of a mixture of talent, passion and resolution to Marty’s current writing process of creating art out of personal experience. “Over the years, for me, it's just become more of a personal thing; more of sitting down with an acoustic guitar. Sometimes you can do it in one sitting, other times it takes several days of working on it, sometimes you have something that you've been working on for years and it just never gets finished. But now it's very much a personal [thing], trying to complete the songs all on my own and then bring them for the band and they take a long look at it, get their ideas and it turns into an established song.” His side projects with other bands have brought him back to sitting in a room with a band and seeing what sticks. I lean back in the booth and observe the tow-headed man across from me and try to figure out what exactly he’s about. His obvious, and long rooted, passion for music has expanded through his participation with Rock Star. Marty Casey has a startlingly sincere devotion to the band he’s been a part of since he was 14. And a seemingly equal enthusiasm for any and all things he can get his hands on, including the amateur modeling gig he’s got coming up in May at Chicago hotspot Le Passage. “I really don't take myself too seriously like ‘Oh, I think I'm a model.’ You know, it’s more that maybe the name will bring some fans… I feel lucky to have the opportunity to do any of it. I try to ‘yes’ to as much stuff as possible; that's kind of my goal for the year, to turn down as few projects as possible. If you can do it, there's no sense you shouldn't unless it's something that you just don't agree with the concept.” With that in mind he’s tackled a musical side project that he describes as “New Order meets Beck; it’s electronica dripping with nostalgia sounds.” This departure from his standard relationship-centered song matter hasn’t just affected his work with outside bands. “My songs are becoming so story oriented. Every lyric needs to make sense, there’s not too much David Byrne style rambling which I really do like the style of.” Although he’s got a few new songs that are in the pipeline for the side project in Los Angeles, the recording opportunity in Canada and the new Lovehammers album, the song that’s most intriguing of the lot has to be the darkest. “I wrote a song called 'That's Life' that we're recording this weekend and it's a perfect example of a transition song because it has nothing to do with me. It's very dark, but there is a lot of hope at the end of it. The first verse goes: Professor Know-it-all works late / tutoring the Homecoming Queen / his wife at home, she bakes a cake / he misses their ten-year anniversary / he comes home without his wedding ring and that's life. Then: Miss Hollywood she's riding high / her career has hit stride / she has some drinks / she takes a drive / ran a red light / she got thirty years to life / she killed a boy riding his bike / That's life. And then the hope goes to a bridge section, the hope is: In your heart there is a flame / that burns bright on the darkest days / so trust yourself / you'll make it through in this life I'll always believe in you / I'll always believe in you / promise always stay true / And that's life. So there's still hope in it after the darkness of the statement, but it's once again… it's not really personal, it's just a statement. So I don't how people will react to this statement since they're so used to connecting so personally with all of the songs because they are all what we are all consistently going through. Relationship issues are definitely the driving focus of my brain.”  The concept of change, the feeling of standing at a precipice, has been the only constant in our conversation. Marty has nothing but opportunity ahead of him at the moment, including a job offer from the bank at which he used to work in his New York days. Despite the copious amounts of tape and the refreshingly candid answers I had received throughout the interview, I had to know, what’s the dream gig here? A guest spot as a character on The Simpsons? Couch jumping on another Chicago favorite’s show? “I'd like to host Saturday Night Live…and perform. Be the double, like Madonna, where she gets to perform and be the comedian. I don't know, I don't even know if I'd be good, but it would be fun to do it. To get to host Saturday Night Live, that would be it, I'd be able to die right after the show.” For now, he’ll have to settle on playing Daley Plaza at a benefit concert for Earth Day next Tuesday afternoon between one and two. Not such a bad gig. EDITOR’S NOTE: If you can’t make it to see the band in person, you can still support the Lovehammers’ dedication to a greener Chicago by downloading “Trees” on April 22nd. Marty and the boys have arranged for 100% of the proceeds from sales on that day to be donated to The Earth Day Network. |
|
|
|
|