Marbin Update and Archived Interview: (Playing Through The Changes)

Marbin Update and Archived Interview: (Playing Through The Changes)

It’s always an extreme pleasure to witness one of my favorite Fusion bands and all all-around great people in the band, Marbin. I met Marbin, consisting of Dani Rabin, Danny Markovitch and Jon Nadel, about three years ago during one of their local gigs in Virginia. We became fast friends after many long nights discussing the ins-and-outs of music today. Any chance I get to see this band, I do it and with the addition of a new drummer Everett, I was pleasantly surprised as he has assimilated nicely into the group adding dynamic playing and accentuation.

For this review, I’m gonna go back into my vault of interviews and reviews and give to you my first interview with any band ever. If you haven’t checked Marbin out, do it NOW! They have many great albums out like ‘Israeli Jazz’ that I recommend and are almost ready to release a new one, ‘Strong Thing.’ Check them out here: https://marbinmusic.bandcamp.com/ I would also like to recommend, Jon Nadel (bass) Solo Album, ‘Urraca.’ It has some great rhythmic compositions. I see another interview with these guys around the corner!

Enjoy Marbin from 2016-
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The Interview:

Jam Band Purist: How many shows have you guys played now?
The band discussed it for a second.

Jam Band Purist: Holy hell, that's a lot of shows. I thought you guys would be bigger than you are by now.

Dani: “So did we. It just takes a lot of time and effort to get to where we need to be, it's taken us 4-5 years just to break into the music festival scene.”

Jam Band Purist: Have you just not found your niche?

Dani: “No, we have our fan base but its just having our niche accepted. We do things a little different than other bands.”

Jam Band Purist: “If you play that many shows, you must have a lot of crazy experiences, what are some of yours?

Jon the Bass Player: “Almost driving into a river.”

Dani: “No, not too crazy stuff just the normal incidences when you go on tour you see all kinds of crazy people and when drugs and alcohol are involved...”

Danny: “Well, alcohol mostly.”

Jam Band Purist: What's the story behind the song “Escape from Hippie Mountain” that's got to be relevant to these crazy experiences?

Dani: “We were at a festival called Spring Fling, I think it was there. There were two chicks getting into a fistfight.”

Danny: “The one kept introducing herself as Jessiker”

Dani: “Her and another girl were fighting but were still trying to be all ‘hippy’ about it and when we first got there, their was the other hippy with blood all over his shirt and when we asked him what happened, he said it wasn't his blood and that made things even worse. Jessiker was eventually banished from Hippie Mountain, people yelled ‘Go West’ it was cold and freezing and we left as soon as we could. We saw her hitchhiking on the way out.”

Jam Band Purist: Sounds like quite the escape. You use a lot of interesting scales and modes within your music, what are some of your favorite scales and why?

Dani: “We like all scales equally, our music changes scales so quickly that we have to understand them all equally. For us as a band, it's more about the melodic statement.”

Jam Band Purist: So, what's up with the rotating cast of band members? Are you just trying to keep things new/fresh and interesting? Or are there other reasons?

Dani: “There have been all kinds of reasons for us to have different members but mostly musical differences.”

Danny: “We can put up with a lot of personal stuff but musically we can’t have it. Those guys are dead to us.”

Jam Band Purist: So, part of why I love music is lyrics, you guys are great but any thoughts on lyrics or are you strictly instrumental?

Dani: “We are strictly instrumental. We have no thoughts on changing that.” (Later, Dani would sing me a few of the songs he wrote which I really liked.)

Jam Band Purist: There are a lot of bands using social media to gain fans and followers, for me you guys helped pioneer or start that whole trend but you have played over 1200 shows, while most of these bands have barely played out of their basement. What can you say to that and to the bands that are up-and-coming using that model?

Dani: “We are just now getting to the point where we can use social media to gain hundreds or thousands of followers/likes but that took a long time. I say good for them, if they get likes and can get big off just social media that's their prerogative, some bands just can't tour and they aren't meant to tour like we do.”

Jon Bass Player: “I think the promotional videos that were are putting out have really helped gain access to the music.”

Jam Band Purist: Anything planned for tonight, maybe set-list wise?

Dani: “The band has never made a set list, we play what we are feeling.”

Jam Band Purist: Ok, final question but a serious one; any musical guilty pleasures?

Dani: “You should ask the bass player.”

Jon Bass Player: “Oh Here we go.”

Dani: “The problem is that he doesn’t feel guilty about them”

Danny: “He likes Linkin Park and bands like that, haha”

We all laughed at him for a moment.

Jam Band Purist: I would make fun of you too. Thank you guys so much.