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We’ve been pressed into the appreciation conundrum more than we’d like to admit, meeting someone whose talents just never seem to curb, confusingly so it’s hard to know where to even begin to define them. Mae Martin is very much the embodiment of that riddle, a talented writer, comedian, actor, and now touring musician, a person who would be easy to envy if they didn’t seem so damn busy. Wanting to know more about this upcoming tour and the new music fueling their newest version of creative excellence, we stole a few minutes to learn more about the power of therapy, comedy, and who the joke is on if you don’t show up. 

OnesToWatch: Thank you so much for making the time to talk with us! My first question is always the same, but for you it’s a little different because you do so many things… why did you decide to add music to the many things you do?

Mae Martin: It was kind of an organic decision. I feel like from the outside, it seems like a big pivot, a big weird pivot, but it didn't to me because I've been playing music privately for so long. Like since I was a teenager, and when I moved to LA about three years ago, I had been making all these demos just alone in my apartment and really enjoying them. Then I played them for some friends who were really encouraging but as we were making them, I don't think I ever intended to release the songs. So I think that's a good thing because it means you don't self-edit it as much as you might, right? 

You said you were always writing, but you've had so many different ways of expressing yourself. What made you keep gravitating to music? Was it self-therapy of a sort? 

I think when I moved to LA, I was reconnecting with the kind of earnest North American that I am – after 12 years in England being drenched in irony. So it was kind of just giving myself permission to not have to find a punchline. Like if you're doing standup or something, your point of view has to be so crystal clear and you have to format everything you want to say into a really structured set up, with a punchline. And with music, you can speak in metaphor and things don't have to be as clearly defined, which they're not in life all the time. So there's a nice kind of nebulousness to it, I guess. So that was refreshing to be able to be more poetic. I just wanted to feel authentic to all the other stuff that I do – not just like I’m trying to be a rock star because I'm really not and it's a very new skill. I'm trying to learn and I'm still learning. 

So I just hope the same kind of energy is there and vulnerability, the same themes, and nostalgia...

No, at the risk of sounding indulgent, it's really, really excellent, and a complete credit to your perspective because it's enchanting in a way, so I really love it. 

You mentioned your process, though, which is so fascinating, because you're right, coming from a comedic background, everything is a little bit like knife fighting. I think I've heard it described like that, right? You need to be so precise and it's so dangerous. Music, in many ways, is a lot more forgiving. How do you write music?  Is it very different from how you go about other things? Is it melody? Is it ideas? Do you have a process yet? 

It tended to be layering guitar parts, so melody first, I guess. Just on GarageBand. A couple of them were lyrics first, but mainly it was like solitude, which was really nice. There's a real immediacy to it, you know. Like I'm I'm editing a TV show right now, which is great and so fun, but it's such a collaborative process and there's so many voices and opinions. Which is amazing and you come out with a totally new thing, but there's something really nice about just being in your apartment making music and solipsism. I was working with friends in the studio, I showed them the demos. 

And because I've known them for so long, they were really sweet and empowering to have opinions about music. And we all have them, we know what we like and what sounds we like and what words feel good to our brains. But it’s different to feel empowered enough to have an opinion. 

I did a show called Feel Good in England and the soundtrack to that was the first time that I went in the studio with our composer, Charles, and I was like, oh, I have a lot of opinions. I played guitar on some of the score and that was like the beginning of getting back into it for the first time, really since my teens. 

Do you have an ambition for the music side of you, or is this just fun? Is this a great outlet, or are you trying to complete a part of your career that felt incomplete?

Well, it's weird because I know so little about how the music industry works, or what the opportunities are or how that like trajectory works. 

It means I'm really chill about it and open to whatever comes along. And my main thing is I just hope, you know, if even one person listens to it on a road trip and feels like they're in a movie, then that's incredible, you know. So yeah, I feel proud of the album and pumped to make more, but it's less like, “I want to take over the world.” It's more like, “Oh, what a super fulfilling new thing to do.”

Speaking of the album, I absolutely love the art direction. Is that all you? There's so much going on there. That's maybe one of my favorite photographs. 

Thank you! It wasn't intended to be for the album. I just met this amazing photographer called JJ Geiger and we did this shoot where I wanted to go for a sort of ‘gay male twink’ vibe. I’m in like a 90s basement, and I think that the nostalgia's there. And also, I think that a lot of the confidence to make the music probably came from me getting top surgery three or four years ago and so I wanted to kind of celebrate that and explore that new twink side of me. It was it was super fun, though. 

Did there just happen to be that old TV there? 

No, I brought a couple of TVs, but in terms of the wardrobe, there was a guy assisting the photographer who was wearing these tight little jean shorts, and so we just traded pants and socks. So they were not my clothes. 

All right, love the wardrobe. What a look. It's a beautiful image, so I thought I had to ask about it given the album title, I’m A TV. A lot of easy and probably complicated messaging here. What does it mean to you? As you said, you weren't sort of settled on this being the album cover, but now it is. So why did you settle on it? 

Titles are really hard. One of the first demos that I'd made for it was the song “Stowaway” and there's a line in it that's, “I’m just a TV talking to you.” I want people to interpret it however they want, but for me, it's like, we all have so much static noise in our heads of things that we absorb from other people and from the world and the news. So, it's like trying to sweep away all that stuff and be like, what's underneath? 

Who would I be if I'd never met another person, or if I hadn't watched that TV show or, consumed that news article? It sometimes feels like we're all just composites of the same stuff that we're consuming. Has TV been good to you? Has it been hard on you? 

It's been good to me. I have a real millennial nostalgia, though, for growing up with four channels in my house and having to adjust the thing to try to get Showtime to watch softcore porn. I miss the simplicity of that time, so maybe it partly came from that. But I wonder, like what would my personality be if I'd never seen the Simpsons? I don't know, probably very different. 

Absolutely. When you say that line, it is sort of interesting. If you were to sort of talk to someone as a TV versus a person, to your previous point – and well put – is it just that each individual's their own transmitter and we're just rebroadcasting information that's being pixelated inside our heads and then regurgitated? Is that just what it feels like for you? 

That's what it feels like sometimes. And definitely this job that I've been doing for so long can so easily slip me into inauthenticity. You know, you're talking about yourself all the time. There's like a temptation to narrate your own life and package it up in a really palatable way, and that's hard to resist sometimes. 

Also, so many of the songs are about relationships. I feel like when you fall in love, you’re partially a projection of what they want in the beginning and then you kind of strip those things away and there's like a real slow reveal of who you really are and intimacy is the cure for all of that feeling. 

It is indeed. If you could put together your dream band, who's in the band? 

Oh man. I mean, so many of them would not jell with each other. But, I grew up listening to my parents' music and I still do. They listen to a lot of Pink Floyd and Beatles and Zeppelin and it's never got better than that in our world. I mean, it’s always been such a cliché, but The Beatles really woke up something in me. You know when you hit puberty and suddenly like the wallpaper of reality is coming off and you're seeing the workings of things? Like Dark Side of the Moon and the White Album, those were so huge for me. So maybe I'd take some of the old icons like that and pair them up with people like Andy Schauf, or I love Fontaines D.C. I also love this Canadian band Half Moon Run. But then also there's – I think on the album you can hear – my fantasy of being in Third Eye Blind, like the real nostalgic stuff. 

I think when I said I was going to be making music, most people were like, “Oh, like singer-songwriter, folk stuff, just an acoustic guitar,” but that's not really what I listen to. I love a full band. I love Elliot Smith, and I feel like you hear his name and you think of a sad guy with a guitar, but some of his songs like “Pretty Mary Kay” have these sweeping arrangements that are very George Martin kind of complex and whimsical. So, yeah, I like that. Not that I've achieved that (yet). 

I love that. I heard you’re going to tour! Are you looking forward to that oppositional energy from what you usually do? In comedy you sort of cover that ground, but are you looking forward to that in music as well? 

I'm really nervous. I don't know why it feels like I've never been on stage before, suddenly. It's really exciting, but it is a different energetic exchange. Like you can't be self-deprecating and frantic and bail halfway through a song. You have to commit to it, almost like acting, I guess. You've got to really commit to it. So I just have to build my confidence, but it's really new. With comedy, so much of it is about energy and being in the right state of mind and you can make anything work. But I'm not used to playing along to a click track and the actual forensic skill that’s involved. It’s really daunting, the technical side of it. But if I can get past that and to the point where I can just sit in it, it’ll be fine.

I'm going to presuppose your audience will be very supportive. I often ask artists: is each album a chapter in a book? Are you already writing the next chapter, or do you have an idea of where this leads? 

I'm always writing the next thing. I think with any medium, by the time you come to promote it, there's new things that feel more relevant to you to say and do. 

For instance, how old are these songs generally? 

The youngest are like from this past summer and then the oldest are from maybe two years ago. It's not that old at all, and it'll be super fun to play them for the first time live. But I want to do another album for sure. 

If you were able to transport anyone who's listening to the album into the ideal setting to enjoy it, where would you put them? 

Oh, that's awesome. I mean, maybe that basement from the cover of the album. Yeah, it's just like lying around in your underwear and maybe you're eating Cheetos and you've got your old PlayStation, that would be pretty great. I mean, everybody likes a road trip playlist. But also, I'm getting really into painting these days. Just like painting weird animals and stuff. I feel like putting on an album and sitting and painting is a nice thing. 

I love that. I guess because I'm so American Southwest-oriented, like Route 66 is a road trip to me. What does a road trip look like to you? Is it the windy hills through the redwoods in northern California? Is it the great plains of Canada and the States? Where where would you put them? 

In my mind was picturing northern Ontario, with the forests and the lakes and you're going out to a cottage and you got to stop on the way and get groceries and that kind of thing. 

So, tragically hip country. 

Very much so.

It sounds like you do a lot, but when you're writing and you hit an incomplete thought or you get some writer's block, what do you do to reset, chill out? 

I'm really into this Korean spa right now. I like to go there. Well, it is weird because it used to be music and then now... So maybe that's why I'm painting animals. I'm having some friends over tonight to paint weird pictures. I also like escape rooms. I love an adrenalized horror escape room. Anything to take me out of the present moment for a minute and turn my brain off a bit. I like an escape room because you have to be focused on the task at hand. 

I meant to ask when you said painting. Is it oil painting or watercolor, or what’s your medium? 

I use gouache, they're these really rich acrylics. I do it in pencil and then acrylic and then black pen over the lines. I'm enjoying it. 

I have one last question. At OnesToWatch we love when fellow musicians and artists celebrate other ones. So, who are your OnesToWatch? Who's criminally underrated, isn't getting enough flowers? You just can't believe they're not famous yet. 

Okay, I'm saying Lauren Ruth Ward. She's opening for me at the LA show and she's a friend and her voice is so amazing. I went to see her at like Pappy and Harriet's, and I hear this guy in his 50s who’s watching her, he says to his buddy, “It just wakes you the fuck up, her voice just wakes you the fuck up.” And I was like, yes, exactly. So, she is amazing.  And I think Charles Watson as well, who I work with a bunch, he's just a really great songwriter.

I love that. We had Lauren, probably five or six years ago now perform on our roof in Hollywood. She's amazing. 

Oh my God, she's such a rock star. Like she’s from another era. 

We love to hear it. Continued success Mae, we hope you take over every creative outlet there is. Thanks for chatting with us. 

Lovely to meet you!