Interview With Marlana – Going Solo From Milo Greene

Posted on July 14, 2020
by Aimee

One of my favorite things about indie pop band Milo Greene has always been co-lead singer Marlana’s memorable vocals. She has now taken that skill, along with her songwriting, and applied that to going solo. Check out her new songs on Spotify – and get pumped for more coming soon.

We chatted for quite a while this week about her new music, about the difficult place the songs came from, how she is handling COVID and what the future of Milo Greene might or might not be. All the best, Marlana – and I look forward to more new music!

Header photo: Jonah Small

Marlana Interview

Aimee:

Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. I’m a big fan of Milo Greene and I actually photographed you guys in 2015 here in Denver. But I know that you’re going solo and I’d like to hear about that. What prompted that? How’s that been? What’s that process been like?

Marlana:

Well, thank you so much for being a Milo fan. I love to hear that. I’m also curious, where were we playing at that time when you were taking photos?

Aimee:

It was at the Bluebird, if you remember.

Marlana:

Oh, yes, I love the Bluebird so much. It’s one of my favorite venues.

Aimee:

Me too.

Marlana:

But to answer your question, I suppose it got started… I was thinking about doing it for a while but never really had the courage. I think during the last Milo tour that we did, I had a bunch of my friends around me and I was just kind of talking about the possibility of doing it and being afraid to do it. Most of them kind of told me to get over it and put the music out there. I definitely got the courage from friends.

It’s just a very vulnerable thing to do. I’ve had my band with me during the process of releasing music for the last decade and you share the experience, you share the criticisms, you share the highs, you share the lows. Doing it on your own is tough, especially for me because I’m a total wuss and I have very thin skin. I take everything to heart very personally. I don’t like if people are mad at me or criticism… It makes me feel sick to my stomach.

I was the kind of kid that if I got in trouble in class for talking or something and the teacher yelled at me in front of everybody, I would feel completely mortified. I would want to throw up. Putting out personal music… I haven’t done that since high school, probably, but I think I finally got the courage. I had a bunch of songs, body of work, and it was just going to sit on my computer otherwise so I figured why not give it a shot?

Aimee:

That’s awesome. It’s funny that you mentioned high school because one of my later questions was going to ask was have you always been singing? Is this something that you knew that you were going to do for your life? Some people kind of just know and I was wondering because I think you have a very beautiful voice so –

Marlana:

Oh, thank you very much. It’s weird because I was thinking about it recently. I feel that it’s something I’ve always wanted to do from a very, very young age, from as young as I can remember. My parents tell me I always told them, “I’m going to sing. I’m going to sing. I’m going to sing. That’s going to be my job!” That was always the plan since I can remember, and never even considered another option.

Of course now today, I’m kicking myself going, “What the fuck was I thinking?” But still, that was kind of always the trajectory I had in mind, very confusing for my parents – who don’t sing – I didn’t grow up with musical parents or anything, but they have a love for it. They encouraged me, which I feel very fortunate to have. They were definitely concerned most of the time, though.

But I also think back to high school and the things I did in high school. I used to write very horrible songs. Horrible, horrible songs. They’re so bad. I can’t even listen to them now. They’re just so cringey awful, but you have to start somewhere. The confidence I had when I was younger was crazy. I used to write horrible songs and burn them to CDs and hand them out to people at school and think, “This is my art.”

Aimee:

I love that.

Marlana:

But now, I’m just so mortified. I think the longer I spent in the music industry, the less confident I became. The more you know, the harder it becomes and-

Aimee:

Sure, and more people criticizing you.

Marlana:

Absolutely.

Aimee:

And the more people who are exposed to your music, the more you hear criticisms, then you get scared.

Marlana:

Right. You have more to lose. The older you get, it’s not sexy to be a starving artist at a certain point. When you’re young, there’s no repercussions. You are doing it for the love of it. You have no clue. You’re so green and naive. Everything is just go, go, go, and I think that had a lot to do with the early success of Milo because we weren’t thinking. We were just doing and we had no idea, really, what we were doing and I think that’s why it worked, but it’s really sad. At this point, I feel like my songwriting is the best it’s ever been, but I am the least confident I’ve ever been in my life and it really fucking sucks.

Aimee:

I feel like music is such a deeply personal thing to do as a job, and I’m sure that’s a blessing and a curse. Do you feel like you’re lucky that you have a job that helps you express yourself or is it really hard to expose yourself that way?

Marlana:

It’s a mixture of both, I think. I don’t know. I get nervous doing things like this, even talking to you about it, because I feel I can never quite get the words out or explain myself or give you a true representation of who I am as a person. That’s why I felt like songwriting always did that for me like, “Look, I can’t tell you how I’m feeling right now. Words are difficult for me, but let me throw it in the song and the emotion of the song, the way it’s produced, the lyrics, all of that together will help tell you what is going on in my brain better than I could do it in a conversation.” I think that’s a part of why I do it. I mean, the process of writing the song, it’s for me. But once I put it out there, it’s for other people and they can do what they want with it and relate to it however they want. That is the best part.

Aimee:

Right. Well, I really love the EP you have out now but I was kind of confused as to what has and has not been released – Spotify makes it confusing in terms of what’s an EP, what’s a single, what’s a…. I’m Good. That’s the EP that’s out now, right?

Marlana:

We’ve been going track by track. The full EP is coming out the 24th. There’s this trend going on with releases that people either call “cascading” or the “waterfall effect” where when you put out a single, the previous single will be attached to it. At this point, I’ve put four songs out. As they were coming out, that would be the song at the top and then the previous released songs would be right at the bottom. It’s accumulating on Spotify and elsewhere so it looks like it’s the full EP, but I there’s three more tracks that will be on there to complete it and I believe that comes out on the 24th of this month.

Aimee:

I was going to say, that’s a full length album, then…

Marlana:

It’s seven songs, which to me is all you need. Everybody has different tastes. I remember when double albums were the rage, and Celine Dion used to put out records that I swear to God had like 25 songs, which I can’t handle. I love artists, but I find that when I’m listening to a record, around track six or seven, I get a little winded and it feels like I’m hearing too much of the same voice and my body just gets tired.

And it’s not that I don’t like the rest. I just felt like six or seven songs is the happy place for me and that’s what works. But to me, yeah, it should be an album. I don’t know. EP, album, the terms seem kind of irrelevant but because the music industry is so stuck in the past in so many ways, they have to have a label on. They need a term. They need to be able to call it something that way they can pitch it, that way they can try to promote it, get it to radio. All of these people need something to wrap their brain around.

Aimee:

Well, I wanted to tell you that the four songs that have been released, whether they are an EP or not, I really love and I’ve been listening to them a lot. But the thing that is strange to me is that I feel like your songs have been very haunting and beautiful but somehow, they put me in a good mood.

Marlana:

That’s awesome.

Aimee:

It’s very interesting how that makes me feel. I guess I want to hear a little bit about where the sounds came from and your song writing process and all that.

Marlana:

Thank you so much. I don’t know. I learn more and more about what I’m doing and how I’m doing it every day, trying to psychoanalyze myself and be like, “Why do I do the things that I do?” I don’t know. Thinking about it now, it’s interesting that the songs make you feel good but they also feel sort of depressing at the same time. I think that’s kind of the perfect representation of who I am as a person.

I’m really good at kind of turning on a version of myself that looks good for everybody else but internally, mostly pretty doomsday thoughts going on all the time. I think that’s probably why that happens and I don’t think it’s intentional. I just think that’s the way I operate. Because so much of music is it’s your subconscious just coming out, that just happens to be the way that it happens.

Aimee:

My understanding is you kind of came from a dark place with these songs. Do you want to talk about that at all?

Marlana:

Yeah, sure.

Aimee:

I understand if you just don’t.

Marlana:

No, it’s fine. I’m still trying to navigate how exactly to talk about it because it’s a weird thing, especially publicly when you put music out and people can listen to it and make their assumptions or try to dissect what’s going on in one thing. It’s another thing to be on the phone and have this conversation with you about some of the most difficult times in my life. It’s hard for me to even talk about it to my closest friends but I need to because I feel that that context is important.

But with this EP, there are a couple songs that I think I’ve had for a long time that were in the hard drive space that I’ve loved and didn’t know what to do with and put those on there. Maybe four of them, I wrote during one chunk of time after I had had a very low period and was on my way to recovering.

I think for a lot of people, you go through these ups and downs in life. This just happened to be a very, very difficult one and I’ve had many extremes. I’ve had many different bouts of serious, serious, scary depression and I’ve had extreme highs. You just don’t know when it’s going to hit you. It’s a day by day thing for me, one breath at a time. You just don’t know.

At that particular moment, I was coming out of dealing with just grief that I hadn’t dealt with since I was 15. Never really thought about it or analyzed it in any sort of way and then I think it all just came crashing down on me at one time and it needed to happen. I needed to get it out. It was built up in me for years and years and years. It’s like a toxin that’s stuck in your body for so long. When you don’t address it, it will just continue to eat you alive.

At a certain point, it just made me collapse. It brought me down. Thank God I have the support system that I do because I had friends and family pull me out of the trenches. It was a very, very scary period. Once I started to feel slightly back to normal, that’s when I sort of turned the computer on again, picked up the guitar and messed around just for the sake of “Can I still do this?”

Aimee:

Sure, sure. I think that’s really important in terms of grief. I know that your brother and sister both died at 33 and I have a thing about that because my grandmother and my mother both died at 76. I don’t know if you have something with the date but for me, I sit here and have 76 in my head. You know what I mean? It’s like the date in my head when I may die. It was just very poignant to me when I read that about you.

Marlana:

I definitely think about the number 33. And just in terms of in a few years, I will have hit that. Even once I pass it… If I pass it. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. But if I reach that age and I surpass that age, I will, at that point, have lived longer than both my brother and sister, which is just a crazy thing to think about. It just really messes with your head.

And this year, my grandmother passed away and she was in her mid-nineties and it is just crazy to think she lived three times longer than them. That’s like several lifetimes of change and growth and experience. It’s just mind-boggling that some people get a moment and some people get many of them, and it’s just every day, I’m wrestling with that reality. It’s out of my control. It’s out of everybody’s control, but it’s specifically hard for control freaks like me to deal with that.

Aimee:

I feel you. Speaking of control freaks, how are things going with COVID, what have you been… Have you found anything fun that you’re doing during quarantine? How’s that been going for you?

Marlana:

It’s been really hard, I’m not going to lie. But I’m super fortunate. I have a clean, nice apartment that I live in. I have the support of people around me. But it’s so weird. It’s just weird. I don’t know what else to say about it because every day feels kind of monotonous and I start to get angry at the dumb shit. If I have to clean the kitchen one more fucking time, I’m going to lose it. You know what I mean? There’s always laundry for some reason. There’s always a mess. There’s always dishes. There’s always something and I can’t-

Aimee:

Laaaaauuuuuuundry.

Marlana:

Oh God, it’s never-ending and I can’t get anything done while that stuff is lingering. Maybe that’s just me procrastinating and maybe I’ve been doing that forever, but I’m the person that has to get up and make sure everything is clean, everything’s put away before I can even pick up the guitar. This whole thing is crazy.

Aimee:

Well, you had mentioned earlier, talking about the music industry. Have you seen changes since COVID or how are things going in terms of how the music industry is responding?

Marlana:

Based on my vibe and my… My boyfriend is a music manager so he’s in the industry as well, so I hear things from his side. I hear things from my managers. I have tons of people in the industry all around me and everybody is kind of in the same position where they’re like the chicken with their head cut off. We have no fucking idea what is going to happen and how to proceed. It is changing on a daily basis and people are just taking shots in the dark because you can’t sit around and twiddle your thumbs and postpone things for a later date that we don’t know even exists.

You kind of have to keep moving through the motions. But the idea and the fact that live shows won’t be returning until probably the end of next year is crazy. Dealing with that, rerouting tours, trying to figure out how to promote records that are coming out right now, it’s insane and very confusing. With COVID, there’s shutdowns for film and TV production which means for the music industry, that’s not as many licenses will go through. That’s a huge way that musicians make money, is when their music is in film and television, whatever. That has slowed down a ton.

Every little step of the way, everybody is affected. Lots of jobs have been lost. Especially for my musician friends, we’re all going, “Well, what the fuck do we do? What other skills do we have?”

Aimee:

Right. Me, I have a lot of musician friends who are like, “Well, when things were slow, I always went and worked as a bartender and now I can’t even do that!”

Marlana:

Totally. No, that’s exactly how it is for sure. I mean, I was cleaning Airbnbs for extra cash and then COVID happened and all of the reservations were canceled so then boom, there goes my side money, my side hustle, and trying to think, “Oh, well there’s always a backup,” but at this point when there’s no backup, you just kind of sit here and go, “Well, what now?”

Aimee:

Yeah, I was out shooting concerts three or four nights a week and then it just stopped on a dime. Luckily, I do web design kind of as my day job so I’ve been very blessed to be busy during the day… that part, but now at night… we’re like, well, what’s on TV? We never used to watch TV!

Marlana:

It’s true. I actually am one of those people that does watch TV at night, though. I’m also just very interested in trying to learn about as many things as possible. Through the quarantine and during the lockdown, especially, I think I watched 11 different masterclasses and I’m obsessed. I don’t care what the subject is. I think everything is amazing. This is the problem. I think every-fucking-thing in the world is fascinating. I could just watch learning, educational, documentary style, whatever the hell. I could do that all day long and I sit there with my notepad and I take notes while I’m watching.

Aimee:

You do?

Marlana:

I kind of am trying to put myself in this mental state of mind as if I’m in retirement in my youth, but I might just take this time and mentally tell yourself that you’re in retirement and just do what you can and learn all the things you can. I’ve always told myself, “Oh, when I retire, it’s going to be the best. I’m just going to read all day and I’m going to learn and I’m going to get involved and I’m just going to keep learning and educating myself,” and I’m thinking, “Well, I might as well just do that now.”

Aimee:

There you go. And then you’ll have it all for later use.

Marlana:

The trouble is it’s so overwhelming because there’s just so much to learn and I want to know it all and I want to know it all right now. That’s a problem I’ve always had. It’s just “Tell me how to do it. Show me how to do it. I’m going to do it and I’m going to do it well. Let’s go,” and it doesn’t work like that, especially now. There’s so much information out there. It takes a long time and it’s really tough to pick the things that you’re interested in when I’m interested in everything.

Aimee:

Speaking of everything, did we miss anything we should talk about?

Marlana:

I don’t know. On the flip side, I’m not a very good on the spot thinker. That’s just one of the reasons why interviews are so tough for me because people will ask me questions like, “If you could be a character in any movie, what would you be?” I’m like, “I literally cannot think of that for you right now. I need to be in the shower or on a five mile walk before I will come up with the best answer for you.” You know what I mean?

Aimee:

I always want to call that person back.

Marlana:

Ha. Yeah. We probably covered the bases, but hopefully after the EP comes out, I’ll just put out another one and keep them coming as long as people listen. It doesn’t matter if it’s one person, a hundred people, whatever. I will probably keep doing it as long as I am not super defeated by it.

Aimee:

That’s awesome. There is one question I didn’t ask that I really need to. Is Milo Greene over?

Marlana:

I don’t think any of us would ever say that because you cannot predict the future. I would never say that. You never know what will happen, but we’re definitely on a hiatus. Yeah, for sure. Indefinite hiatus. You never know, we might pull some things out of the vault that we’ve never released and put them out. We may do a 10-year reunion tour. We may put out a new album in five or 10 years from now. I have no idea. But at this point in time, we’re muted.

Aimee:

Understandable. Well, I love what you’re putting out and I hope that when you can, that you’ll tour solo and I hope to see you in Denver.

Marlana:

Yeah, I would love to come back there. I love Denver so much.