Mackin Carroll - Damascus Track by Track

Los Angeles-based Mackin Carroll is a 20 something folk rock singer-songwriter, although his voice and outlook on life definitely make him seem more practiced and wiser than his years would suggest. He also fronts the indie rock band, The Nova Darlings. Carroll just released his second solo EP, Damascus and he was kind enough to write a track by track for the EP. Check out our interview where he tells us how emotional risk usually yields more emotional reward, how he centered himself when recording where Elliott Smith has recorded, and how music helps people discover themselves and feel less alone.



Ashes on the Bridge

This song actually has a pretty significant origin story. There’s an overpass that connects the 405 South Freeway with the 55 North Freeway in Orange County. It’s a bridge between the two that’s a carpool lane all to itself. Me and my friends in high school would go out of our way to drive on this thing as often as possible. We’d blare whatever song was playing (“Don’t Stop Me Now” by Queen comes to mind as an example) and drive as fast as we could across it. Usually there are no cars on it, especially late it at night. It really makes you feel like you’re the only ones in the world. We’d roll down all the windows and scream at the top of our lungs for the 30-45 seconds that we were on the thing. And it really lifts you up, physically, to see a big chunk of land and sky. And I would always mention to my friends that I wanted my ashes spread there. I distilled all my friends down in to a girl - and out came the tune.



Cigarettes & Fatherhood

This one came to me in a way no song has before. I had the first two lines for over a year: “I wish I smoked cigarettes, then maybe I’d have an excuse to sit here alone/And I wish I had a little girl, so I’d have an excuse to stay at home”.  And that came from my freshman year of college. Me just wrestling with my social anxiety at an age where people are going out to parties a lot. Many nights out spent me making way too many trips to the bathroom just to get away from people and coming home early and feeling emptier than when I left. But nothing came after those two lines. I fought tooth and nail to write it to. I actually had three or four whole songs that I tossed out. And then one day about a year later, I wanted to write some new material for a showcase I had that night. I had those two lines in a notebook. Stared at ‘em for a while. And then out it came, all at once.  I was pretty self-conscious about it, at first. I thought it would be too weird to play or too personal. But when I eventually got the courage to play it and feedback from close friends, people at shows seemed to latch on to it more so than my other work. It’s always the ones you don’t think too much of that stick. Whenever I think I’ve written “the one”, it’s almost never the case.



Sleepwalking

This song is a combination of me doing therapy for the first time, reading some spiritual philosophy books, and listening to the Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast. The first few months of therapy were pretty hellish - lots of me becoming of aware of my neuroses and habits without yet having the tools to affect any change. That adds a lot of anxiety. I was also listening to Duncan Trussell talk a lot about this thing he called “sleepwalking” where you’re sort of in the process of waking up, spiritually. But you’re still asleep; and that transformation, that journey towards awareness - it’s violent and turbulent as hell. It’s interesting because it usually gets some good laughs when I play it live. And I was weeping when I wrote it. That used to bother me a lot, but after a while, I came to accept that laughter and tears aren’t all that far apart. They both represent a catharsis of some kind. The song is basically about the process of realizing yourself - the overwhelming terror and the inevitable need for patience.



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