We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Sean Martin. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Sean below.

Sean, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

I guess most people love to gamble, but I learned gambling with the music business is never rewarded. Whether they admit it or not, everyone wants something for nothing. The pro’s and con’s list, the crucible of scrutiny, the razors of prior experience: these things we rely on to help us determine gain from loss. Whether we are hopeful optimists or snide pessimists, risk for reward is a game we all play when scarcity forces our choice. In the music business, the reason every band is not signed to a label with every creative outlet at their disposal is evidence of scarcity. The very concept of DIY doesn’t exist without scarcity. In this context, I say take NO risks. If all the plans, goals, operations, and outcomes aren’t fully defined, that is not a risk for reward- that is a con, and anything less than that is not worth your time when scarcity preys on your life. We don’t have as much to lose as others, being independent artists. You don’t get time back, and in the larger scale of things, thats the only resource we have that won’t come around again.
Expect that if you want someone to care, you have to pay them. If people aren’t up to your level of understanding and determination, don’t invest time and effort to change them into what works for the situation. Don’t make the mistake of thinking as a DIY artist you have to adhere to someone else’s schedule of release- Only settle for what you want, and keep focusing on the only investment that has 100% return- an investment in your education, experience, knowledge, and ability. It is NEVER your responsibility to enable, to make excuses for, or to educate others for their own benefit- they have to seek knowledge to truly understand the value of it. So I say, choose wisely who you take a risk on, with great prejudice, and know what you are looking for before you go looking. Not all who wander are lost, but those who wander without a goal in mind are destined to be mislead.
Also, have the courage to admit when you aren’t good enough, don’t have enough knowledge or ability to complete the objectives you set for yourself, and never depend on one source for everything you need, including yourself. Trust is earned, and so is respect- just because others don’t respect you, doesn’t always mean you haven’t earned the ability necessary to accomplish. Accomplish in spite of the perceptions, and learn more than those who cant perceive the goals, but never to spite them- accomplish for yourself.
I speak in these generalizations for a reason- the specific details matter to the situation, but self reliance only works if you know yourself. The question asked of oneself in the face of risk should be, “Do I know myself well enough to know when someone is lying right to my face, and the patience to deal with it safely and properly?” That is more important than “Is this person capable of accomplishing what is required of them?”

Sean, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am an anomaly. My situation is not normal, or planned. I don’t have the same goals as 99% of everyone else.

I’ve been performing in school and community choirs since I was 4, but my first big task as a singer was being in the opera Tosca at 7 years old. I started playing guitar at 12, and began writing songs soon afterward. When I was 16, I recorded my first 10 song album, and had been awarded 25 Unanimous Superior awards in CMEA Bay Section festivals in solo and ensemble groups. I was selected to State and Regional honor choir twice in 2 years, and at the same time had a deep love for Jimi Hendrix, Green Day, and Metallica.

I am a Veteran of the Airborne Infantry, I served in Iraq in 2006-2007 with the 3/509th Airborne Infantry Regiment. My story is that of pain and death, for everyone and everything around me, some just took 10 years to feel it, some… Immediately. I hated and loved the experience, but the results were, 5 years after ETS, I finally got the disability for PTSD that I had earned through my service to this country. All the while I had my guitar with me.

I took my Post 9/11 GI bill and gave it to Musician’s Institute in Hollywood, and in 2012 I set out to be a working musician and audio engineer in LA. And when I realized that I could be the main songwriter, the performer, the audio engineer, becoming the producer became available once I had the money to pay for services to execute a dream- and that was to make a band that could be punk, grunge, and metal, and had a place to write songs about the true to life experiences that had made me who I am. In 2011, I named it The Quarantined to represent the separation I saw coming, and to allude to the cages that we all live in, perceivable and not.

WIth The Quarantined, I got two great friends from music school and I signed to a sub-major label in 2015, nominated for an independent music award and an International music award (Ireland) in 2016, and still sold under 300 copies. What drove me to do more was all the live shows, the interviews, the communities that supported us. I was a terrible salesman, but a great singer and guitarist with a vision.

I left LA in 2017 because I could feel the city becoming way the fuck worse than even when I had arrived, and listening to the people who had been there before me gave me no shelter from the reality that the rewards to being in LA that was available to me with my disability was not any greater than from somewhere else. PTSD was a liability for most because they didn’t understand it.

Now, I get to create music without the need to sell anything, but the desire to say what I can to shape the world into something I could be proud of. Thats what makes me different from anyone else- I lived and learned a life that spans continents, lived in mansions and slept on the streets, been rich in company, love, loneliness, and sadness. I driven across the country 7 times now myself, and seen more than I ever bargained for. I’ve got the freedom everyone so desperately wishes for, and mostly what it brings is sorrow at how it will never happen for way too many.

My clients are the people who I chose to work with, and I’m lucky that I have full authority over that choice, because I didn’t always have that. I still have to fight for the rights to my own music from managers I hired who stole it prior to release. I have fans from coast to coast, and I’ve got some haters too, but I make more fans everywhere I play.

I live by the Army values, and anyone who works with me knows it because its what I do more so than just speak on it. I get to bring that element of honor back to an industry that is justly becoming more of a network than a monolith.

Now, I get to focus on the art of making music, the art of vocalization, how to pack a phrase of music with as much feeling and emotional content as possible, learning and growing every day, and all the techniques to tell those stories with a guitar. I get to take that to every audience I go to, and share in their feelings that inevitably get experienced- The love IN the music, through the pain. Thats what I get to do, and I wouldn’t rather do anything else.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

The first thing that is necessary is to analyze the ecosystem: We have a whole lot of venues closing, but demand for live music is unfortunately also lower because not as many people can practically get to places, bands are no longer as prevalent as they were before, and there are serious safety concerns in this age, from shootings to faulty stage construction, crowd crushings, and COVID changed people’s perception no matter how “over” it may be. There are more than 10 sites to stream live music through studio processing and make money, fans, and business happen, and there are another 20 that are fucking liars about their efficiency in those departments. There are new ways people gather, and when they do, live music is inevitably a part of it. Live music with butts in the seats is supremely preferable to me, but the value of live-streaming is overwhelmingly a part of the new ecosystem.

There are areas that have a higher concentration of talented musicians than others, but what I have seen is a lot of grassroots businesses starting to create networks more than corporate structures to build their businesses.
People are still very tribal, they wont use musicians they’ve never heard of and don’t represent themselves well. Standards are more important than ever in the decision venue owners have to choose what music act to add into their business plan. Some venues will still let anybody play as long as they hand them 300 dollars at the start of the night, hoping it was for ticket sales but it doesn’t really matter as long as the money is there, and promotion looks like a facebook post. Hookers of a different kind, AND they have their purpose.

There is no singular mindset to bring a solution to the evolving playing field that planning a tour is. However, if preparation matters, then original artists have to get creative on the process to finding underserved populaces because [insert classic venue] closed has no relevance to the places people gather who want to hear GOOD music, more so than NEW music. I understand how hard it is for singer/songwriters to refine the perception of their music and their selves, but adaptation is necessary, from coast to coast. It will always be necessary even after you adapt.

An important shift in music has happened and I see electronic music becoming less desirable. I think people are starting to feel the lack of emotional depth to sampled music and are appreciating performed music more than they have in the past 10 years. With Grunge music becoming the new classic rock that plays in the background of kids birthday parties, elevator music, and in stores and restaurants, I see a new appreciation for live performance coming for America, which I welcome.

The need that society has for music will never die: this is the crux of why being in the music business is a lifelong investment worthy of attention. We cannot forget that no matter how shitty people may act, the need for good music will always be something people want, whether or not artists get paid for it is truly up to the artist and the business sense behind them. After all, we teach people how to treat us by how we treat them. None of people’s perception matters to the process of making music and what it means for you- you should always create, always improve, and always find the better way to present yourself through your music to the world. The world could be your audience for 1500 dollars on Facebook/TikTok/Twitch/IG tomorrow, so what are you gonna do when you’re on that stage?

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Before I deployed to Iraq, I went through a training module called Combatives. Many people in the martial arts world are very familiar with the course, but the content is usually reserved for deployed soldiers because it teaches you all the correct and efficient ways to incapacitate or kill your enemy with your body. Its around 3 weeks long, and it requires you to do intense martial arts training on the mats from 6 am to 7pm every day.
The final test was what they called the gauntlet, but the idea was this: you have to incapacitate every person in the class, in a particular order, in a formal match, no restrictions. They had medics on staff to revive you and apply medical treatment if necessary. Every person had to do this for every person in the class- It means everyone gets knocked out 50 times, in one day. I did not succeed the first two times I tried, got to #25. I couldn’t beat this particular guy, and after two matches he was arrogant af about it. That was when I discovered the 6th gear, so to say: this extra level of harnessing adrenaline that every combat vet has to be able to tap into in order to survive. The last 25, I learned how to use fear as a weapon. I was one of the youngest in that class of 50 people that day.     

Contact Info:

• Website: www.SMVoxGtr.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/Thequarantined
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/sean.martin.90226
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/sean-martin-42912361
• Twitter: @theQuarantined
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/@thequarantined
• Other: www.TheQuarantined.com

Image Credits
Alexx Calise, Drongo Portraits, Steven Duarte, Solanum Productions, Ultimate Studios Inc., Sabrina Weber