A Dirty Dozen with MARCUS SIMONINI from ANOTHER ONE DOWN! – May 2023

According to a recent press release: “Today Open Your Ears Records is pleased to welcome Another One Down! to its roster. The hard-hitting pop-punk band joins the independent label’s rapidly growing roster, which includes such artists as House & Home, Guardrail, Sea Of Storms, and more. Additionally, Another One Down! has announced their new album, A Bitter Descent Deluxe, which will be released on May 26, 2023. The record is an expanded version of the band’s debut A Bitter Descent, featuring new music and acoustic versions of songs from the original release. Fans can check out the band’s new single “Betray A Friend” now. Another One Down! has proven themselves to be an unstoppable force within the New England music scene and beyond since their humble beginnings in the small town of Exeter, Rhode Island.” We get singer Marcus to discuss new music, influences, and more.

1. Tell us a little about your latest release. What might a fan or listener not grab the first or second time they listen through? Are there any hidden nuggets you put in the material or that only diehard fans might find?

This is the deluxe re-release of our debut record A Bitter Descent so our whole philosophy going into it was that we wanted to give our old fans little nuggets that they would appreciate while also giving people hearing it for the first time something to introduce our band a bit more. One main example of that is we re-recorded our 2017 single “Good Grief!” for this re-release. That song was the first real fan favorite song of ours, so we wanted to give our old fans a more updated version while also introducing it to our newer fans who may have not gone back and listened to our music before this album. We also added a B-side that ALMOST made the record that we were still really proud of called “Betray A Friend” and two acoustic versions of songs on the record. All in all, this re-release in my eyes just acts like a celebration of the record, a few extra songs, some beautiful vinyl and merch, and an exciting step forward for our band now being signed to Open Your Ears Records.

2. What got you into music, and can you tell us about the moment you realized you wanted to be a musician?

I think a few key factors got me into music. I’d always been into music and started playing piano from a young age, but I think when I finally started to hear rock music more on the radio like Green Day’s “American Idiot” that’s when I really started to become obsessed. Another big factor to me was the game Guitar Hero III. Once I got that game it was really game over for me being interested in anything else besides learning real guitar. I don’t really know if there was one single moment where I realized I wanted to be a musician but I do remember just slowly realizing that nothing makes me feel the way that music makes me feel both as a listener and as a performer and that I wanted to spend my life pursuing that gut feeling rather than trying to pretend I was into math or English or anything else. It just has always encapsulated my life and I feel like I know nothing else the way that I know music.

3. Building on that, is there a specific song, album, performer, or live show that guided your musical taste?

The big one for me has always been Green Day’s American Idiot. I truly don’t think I would be into anything I’m into today if I didn’t hear “American Idiot,” “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” and “Wake Me Up When September Ends” on the radio as a kid. It really has been a stemming point for my tastes which gravitate towards things that are hard-hitting and epic sounding but still catchy. Especially once I saw them live during the 21st Century Breakdown tour as a kid for my first concert, that solidified my obsession because wow was it an incredible show.

4. If you could call in any one collaborator to do a song with, who would it be, and why?

I think currently it would be Phoebe Bridgers. I genuinely think she is the best songwriter of our generation, from lyrics to taste in experimentation to her attitude and outlook on life and how she puts it into her songs. I also just think it would be interesting to see how her style would mesh with our styles because sonically they’re different, but I think they still share core values, themes, and emotions.

5. What is your favorite activity when out of the studio and/or not on tour? What do you like to do to unwind?

Honestly I just love to watch TV and movies in my free time. I’ve gotten really into using Letterboxd recently and I love just taking in media like that and discussing it with friends about what things worked and what things didn’t work. It has parallels to music in that way and I think that might be why.

6. How would you describe your music to someone who’d never listened to you before? What is the one comparison a reviewer or fan has made that made you cringe or you disagreed with?

I think the best way to describe our music is that we don’t subscribe to one single vibe or emotion. We take all of our influences and give the listener everything from catchy pop-punk to clean soft ballads to fast punky songs and everything in between. It’s like taking the many corners of the pop-punk scene and putting it into one project. We’ve had a lot of strange comparisons recently. Someone said we sound like “Djent-Punk” on Tik-Tok which is strange because I don’t think we have any djent qualities really other than the fact that Ryan and I are both Periphery fans. I think the funniest one was when someone said we sounded like Hoobastank. I’ll take it I guess, “The Reason” is a top-tier banger.

7. When your band is hanging out together, who cooks, who gets the drinks in, and who is first to crack out the acoustic guitars for a singalong?

Ryan is certainly the first to crack open a beer. Pretty much anywhere we go Ryan is constantly looking for the closest brewery. No one I would say cooks, but Brandon is definitely the first to say “who wants to order food.” Dylan and I are both the ones breaking out the acoustics but rarely ever singing a long I’d say, we’re usually just jamming out ideas we’ve been working on. Then Alex is either fixing up a guitar or taking photos with an old camera. It’s a good time.

8. When was the last time you were starstruck and who was it?

I saw Gucci Pineapple from Tik-Tok on the street the other day. He goes to Berklee currently, so he lives right near me. I regret not saying something to him but honestly, I didn’t know what to say and I’m unsure if his Tik-Tok persona is his real-life persona and I’m already kind of an awkward guy so I didn’t want to create a conversation so awkward that it would disrupt the space time continuum.

9. What is the best part of being a musician? If you could no longer be a musician for whatever reason, what would be your dream job?

I think the best part is all the cool experiences that you don’t get to experience unless you are a musician. Traveling the country in a van, meeting other people in bands basically on this same quest as you are and becoming immediate friends, getting an entire room to move just with sounds you’re making on pieces of wood, people singing your lyrics back to you. They’re all indescribable feelings and events and it’s a never-ending chase to experience that high again. If I couldn’t be a musician I would love to teach in high school or college something music related or maybe history related. I love teaching people things that I’m passionate about and I think the role models I had at that age have affected my philosophies of life so much, I would love to be that person for someone else in a time that can be so mentally taxing.

10. What is one question you have always wanted an interviewer to ask – and what is the answer? Conversely, what question are you tired of answering?

I’d love for an interviewer to ask me about how I came up with specific lyrics. Like the concept of how I came up with the lyric / concept “A Bitter Descent” is actually pretty funny. My best friend Jonny and I were in the car listening to “How To Save A Life” by The Fray and he misheard the chorus lyrics as “somewhere along in a bitter descent” instead of “the bitterness and” and it happened to be right when I was in the middle of writing the record and I immediately was like “that’s something I know it” and jotted it down in my notes. I love unique phrases like that. I’m getting a little tired of answering questions about how I got into music but only because I know what my answer is going to be immediately, and I feel like I’m regurgitating the same thing every time I answer it. But I also know not everyone else knows and the interviewer almost certainly doesn’t know, and it is interesting for the reader, so I don’t mind answering it.

11. Looking back over your career, is there a single moment or situation you feel was a misstep or you would like to have a “do over,” even if it didn’t change your current situation?

I feel like half my career has been missteps to be honest, it’s almost hard to pinpoint one. Like “we should have done this instead” or “if only we had emailed this person at this time, we coulda done this” are conversations I feel like I have a lot with myself. To be honest though, it’s a cliche but mistakes are how you learn and that’s what I’ve taken away from it. Just try to move on and do better next time. But to answer the question more specifically, I would go back and not put a SpongeBob sample before a breakdown in an old song of ours OR I would’ve changed the sample to in Band Geeks when SpongeBob says, “is this the part where we start kicking?” and then Patrick says “kicking? I want to do some kicking” because that would’ve been way funnier.

12. If you could magically go back in time and be a part of the recording sessions for any one record in history, which would you choose – and what does that record mean to you?

Part of me wants to say something more historic like Abbey Road or something because that would be sick but I did already get a glimpse into their studio process with the Let It Be documentary, so I’ll be emo trash and say I’d love to just be in the studio watching American Football make LP1. I think it would be really interesting to just see a couple friends make a record during their last two weeks of college, not really thinking anything of it and not knowing that it would literally change the course of emo and alternative music for years to come. And also because I’ve listened to that album so many times and it genuinely helped me get through the deepest parts of my depression.

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Category: Interviews