an interview with spooky marvin

Mitchell Marinaro is the frontman of the Bay Area band, Weird fun, but there's much more to him then that. His solo music project "Spooky Marvin" is truly fantastic. Each song pulls from very different inspirations and music genres, but somehow always seems to sound so authentic to Spooky Marvin. In this interview I talk to him in depth about his music, but also hear from Agustin Ortiz, his close friend and collaborator on music projects:

When was Spooky Marvin created? When did you start making solo music?

Mitchell:

I think Junior year of high school because I got a job and I had enough money to buy recording equipment. I got an auto interface and speakers and the whole bit. I actually didn’t really have the intention to record music at first and I figured out how to do it, I made my first project on garageband and I was like wow that was so easy, I could do this forever, I could do this all day, just make songs and shit like that and yeah from there I’ve been doing it every single day since then. It’s been kinda my thing to do ya know? So yeah my junior year, 2016? Yeah 2016.

What’s the backstory behind the name Spooky Marvin?

Mitchell:

Spooky is my favorite adjective because I love halloween and I love scary stuff, I feel like it’s kinda been a thing for me since I was a young lad. I really didn’t even think I was gonna use it as my name for solo music, but I always forget, Grace reminded me that she came up with the name! She always says weird names for like projects and bands. I originally wanted to do Spooky Melvin because of the band The Melvins and she was like no you should do Spooky Marvin, it flows off the tongue so well! So I would say that Grace came up with the name entirely.

What bands or artists are your biggest influencers? Also aesthetically what are your biggest influences?

Mitchell:

For Spooky Marvin, lately at least, I’ve been really into the music that I grew up on, the three most important albums for me that I listened to as a kid were, Elephunk by the Black Eyed Peas haha, as hilarious as that is. And Demon Days by The Gorillaz, I think that’s like the greatest album of all time. And probably for my childhood I would say like, unrelated, but Portrait of an American Family by Marilyn Manson, but for Spooky Marvin lately it’s been early 2000s pop anthems, like big ass pop songs, like Britney Spears, Gwen Stefani is my biggest role model and just the producers are the MVPs for all their songs, we call it just pop, but there’s elements of Funk and Soul and Rap beats, I feel like it's such a variety of genres in one sound and that’s what I want my music to become, a mix of things.

That’s so interesting to think about. Pop music back then was just so much more enjoyable.

Mitchell:

There’s waves you know, and right now, since 2010, there’s been that millennial “woop” you know like, “Oooooh wooaahh” *imitating current pop music* It’s in like every song. Paul Mccartney actually just released a song called “I Wanna Fuh You” and it’s SO bad.

Wait Paul Mccartney?!

Mitchell:

Yes! Paul McCartney, “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” Paul McCartney, he made a song called “I Just Wanna Fuh You”! Haha. It’s literally the perfect example of a bad millennial pop song. I think he was trying to make a new album and he was like I wanna stay relevant so I have to appeal to younger people. Yeah so I was thinking in the car today, generations, they try to make what music they listen to when they’re young and they kinda make their own genre using what they know and transforming it into a new thing and our generation, I feel like they’re just now starting to do that. For a while it was in the hands of the older people and they were making all those millennial pop hits that you hear on the radio, the songs that make people say the radio sucks. I feel like now the the youth is taking what they know from the music they listen to and actually creating what needs to be made, the future of pop music.

Could you talk about your first EP “Friends Forever”?

Mitchell:

I made “Friends Forever” trying to make a really dark, not dark as in dark subject matter, but like just a midnight type album. I wanted it to sound like a bedroom experience, not bedroom as in I made this in my bedroom, like you’re in the bedroom with a partner and you’re trying to get it on and stuff, and not even in the sense that like it’s sex music, I wanted to make an album that sounded like good sex, but didn’t need to necessarily all be about sex. “Under Your Bed” is about fear, like general fear that people have, “Daydream” is about sleeping, like they all have to do with idea of you being in bed where a lot of shit happens, you go to sleep, you have sex, you do a lot of things! I feel like that’s a cool thing and it’s kinda like the album that fits perfectly when you’re lying in bed at night, that’s when it makes the most sense, or you’re in the car driving. I just wanted to make a late night EP and my life was really weird at that time and I kinda released it out of the blue, I feel like I didn’t promote it at all. I just threw it out there and said like Hey, well here’s my EP. “Daydream” got kinda popular on Soundcloud for like five seconds.

So you recently released your new EP “100%,” do you have anything to say about it?

Mitchell:

While I was making “Friends Forever,” it’d be kickass if I made an EP called 100%, that’d be cool. It just looks cool, I feel like numbers aren’t really used in titles, also it’s a phrase I say all the time instead of saying like yeah or that sounds good I say oh yeah, 100%. Rolls off my tongue real easy. So yeah, it was an experimental process for me, I did a lot of stuff I don't usually do. I rapped on it! Which was so good for me, it gave me a lot of confidence as an artist, I feel like the album as a whole gave me a lot of confidence as an artist, I collaborated with a lot more people, I had Agustin, Rico Paid, a lot of my friends from the New Wurld collective on a song and just the whole album was more collaborative than usual. It was a good step in the right direction, it’s a sign of change, it doesn’t sound anything like friend forever, but it sounds like change and growth, a good snapshot of what is going on in my life right now. If I put a little more time and effort into it, it probably could’ve been better, but it’s what was happening right now and the next album is gonna be better you know, it’s gonna keep getting better and better. It needed to be released when it was released.

Do you feel your sound changed and grew between the two EPs?

Mitchell:

I think so, I think “100%” showed that like I have a general idea of what I want my sound to be as an artist and that sound doesn’t limit itself. I had a wider range of influences. That’s what I’m trying to put forth with my music, I could make a Rap song, I could make an RnB song, do whatever genre I’m working with and it’ll sound like me, like Spooky Marvin.

Can you guys both talk about your guy’s collaborations?

Agustin:

I think our collaborations through music have always been very important to us because it like started our friendship, we used it as one of the reasons to first hang out. Like the first time we hung out was us making music.

Mitchell:

Yeah he was like I really wanna learn how to play keyboard and I was like yeah okay come over I’ll try to teach you the keyboard. We just messed around the whole time, we ended up just singing a bunch of songs using BB Kings voice, we just turned into goofballs immediately. You know when people hang out they need something to do, they can’t just eat forever haha, so we would just make music, it was never that serious, still like we take it seriously, but it never feels like work.

Agustin:

I don’t think we’ve ever made a song where we were like we have to do this.

Mitchell:

When we get together we're just like wouldn’t it be sick if it was this? And then we’re like yeah! And then we got, “na na na na na na!”*from their song “Como Siempre"*

Agustin:

For the Spanish song on “100%,” “Como Siempre,” my cousin from Columbia was in town and we were like we should make a Spanish hit because he just showed us a bunch of Reggaeton, it was just so funny. We’re both half hispanic, I’m half Colombian and Mitchell is half Peruvian, so we were like, we know enough!

Mitchell:

Yeah Grandma didn’t speak english at all for a while and she passed on a lot of Spanish songs to my mom and my mom had me growing up on some Spanish songs, so like probably same with Augustin. So we knew the basis of like that kind of music and it’s something with our heritage. It felt right to do, it was a really cool experience.

Agustin:

Also people just have so much fun with those types of songs.

Mitchell:

I feel like it brings a lot of people together, there’s been a lot of youtube comments on the Como Siempre video in Spanish like praising it and stuff. It made me feel so happy about it. It’s similar to that saying that’s like everyone laughs in the same language, we could see something that’s completely foreign to us, but if it’s funny we’ll laugh. It’s kinda the same thing with music, you could look up the translation and see that “Besame” means kiss me and stuff like that, but like in reality it doesn't matter, you’re just singing it and it's like a community thing that everybody can gather in on and it doesn’t matter what heritage you are, it’s something to bring everybody together.

Can you guys talk about New Wurld?

Mitchell:

So a lot of my friends make art or music or are interested in creating in the future and I thought it’d be cool to have a platform for everyone to be on, help each other, promote each other, just a place where everyone to live in that world, that New Wurld haha. Yeah I want it to turn into an empire at some point haha, where you’ll be able to tell like oh that’s a New Wurld artist! Eventually like do music festivals put together by us, where all the people are in affiliation with or a New Wurld artist. I guess it’s a record label you could say, but I don’t even know what record label even means.

Agustin:

It’s not a record label because it’s all kinds of things, like Chris makes videos.

Mitchell:

Yeah it’s a collective, it’s a place for everybody to put their shit haha.

Agustin:

It’s kinda like a team I think. Like a team of people who all wanna help each other make cool stuff.

Mitchell:

Okay we’ll say that haha.

Will there ever be any Spooky Marvin live performances?

Mitchell:

Yeah! Big plans for that in the future, I want the first show, in the Bay Area at least, to be very special. I really wanna do like a crazy, huge show. I want to get backup singers and have a full thing because I would be in complete control because it’s my solo project, I want it to really be what I’m about. I think making music is so important to me, but also performing it is a whole other set of tasks that require attention and for me that’s almost 60% of being a musician. I think performing is so important, especially with my kind of music, I feel like the energy of the crowd is so important, I really wanna cater to that. I want to have it be like my brain is exploding all over the stage, like all my ideas are everywhere. In the very far future, if I keep doing this Spooky Marvin thing, in October I wanna do a haunted house show, where you enter through Haunted House and there’s this huge show going on in a section of it, that’s been like a fantasy of mine haha. That’s like a dream of mine, hopefully coming soon!

That’s all the questions I have! Anything else either of you want to say?

Mitchell:

The next big project I’m working on, I might release an EP in between, but I’m trying to work on a musical thing. It’s like a concept album I guess would be the best way to describe it.

Agustin:

It’ll be performed as a musical one day!

Mitchell:

Yeah hopefully one day! There will be characters and stuff. That’s a long term project, haven’t even started, haven’t even thought about it too much. Yeah just be on the look out for me, I’m gonna be throwing out shit out of the blue all year long.

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All words & photos by Mac