Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dex Randall Shepard. I'm joined by Monica Lilly Padman.
Are you excited that your name is very similar to the little boy's name in Game of Thrones or A Knight in the Seven Kingdoms?
I do like it. But his name is Dex Sol. His middle name is S-O-L.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It makes me think he's got really cool parents.
Well, I think he does.
And he's so artistic.
We're in love with him. He's so good.
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Chapter 2: How did Marcus Mumford and Carey Mulligan meet?
And I was like, oh, shit, he's right. I better go and write some songs.
How long before the four of you were playing that it was clicking, you were putting songs down that you thought had merit?
Was that a quick process? It was quite quick. I had a collection of songs that I'd written at college, sort of naked on my dorm room floor. They're very raw. Too raw. Indulgent? Yeah. Okay, sure. Yeah, yeah. Trying to put T.S. Eliot to song, you know, is that kind of indulgent.
It's hard not to be pretentious.
It is. You have to be, or you'll never make it. But I had started honing my narcissism well enough to write songs, I think. And then we started playing a couple shows and then we got asked to support other bands. And that was helpful because it was like, right, well, we need enough songs to fill that set.
So I remember the day I wrote Little Lion Man in my ex-girlfriend's kitchen, which was probably a bit rough, but then showed up at the rehearsal studio like three hours before soundcheck and was like, lads, I think I've got another one for the set. And they were like, phew. Because we only had like five at that point. Yeah. What were you expected to play? Like 35 minutes or something?
Yeah, like half an hour. That's six songs. And you fill half an hour with a bit of chat. Sometimes a bit more chat. Yeah.
Isn't it funny too how much of this stuff, there's no science to it, but there is like the infamous Beatles stuff. They're playing in Germany forever. They're just playing.
They were honing there. Yes. I mean, that documentary is my favorite music documentary. The Peter. Yeah, Peter Jackson one. Yeah. And it's nine hours, which is shorter than your average day in the studio. Okay. But watching that documentary, I mean, it's the most beautiful. I think you get an idea of some of the hanging around. You know, you're watching like Ringo twiddling.
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Chapter 3: What was the impact of performing at the Grammys on Mumford & Sons?
Yeah. You want to be able to talk with your friends about what's popular.
I want to be normal, regular.
That's interesting because I get to like 18. I want to do something no one else has done.
Yeah, you want to be different.
This is our freedom of being white.
Right. Interesting. Yeah, yeah. Like I'm like, wait, you guys are nerdy and I want to be the opposite. That's interesting. And she's like, I'm brown. Please don't notice I'm brown. I do all the same shit you do.
Yeah, isn't that weird?
If you were white, I wonder what your fucking musical taste would be. Well, the truth is, she probably still liked Taylor Swift.
Of course.
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Chapter 4: How did the new album 'Prizefighter' come together?
And yeah, it's pretty detailed. I mean, I played it to a few people who are very helpful. I played it to Elton John, played it to Brandi Carlile. Elton was like, I've never heard anything like this. And I'll do anything to help you if you want to put it out. And Brandy had said exactly the same thing. Like, I'm with you. It was fucking shocking how many of us. Yeah.
And part of the exhausting process of putting it out was hearing other people's stories. Yeah, sure. Because you need to comfort them. Yeah. And it's an absolute privilege. And my general view on it has been, all right, I'm going to have boundaries around this. I'm going to say like, thank you so much for sharing that. I hope you have what you need.
Yeah.
Because I'm not your guy. I'd be fucked up, wouldn't it? Like, I'm not going to be your guy. Yeah.
on this yeah I can't yeah I can't and that wouldn't serve you obviously wouldn't serve me and putting it out was straight and then the rest of the record is not really about that but because that was the first song it got a lot of attention I feel like grateful that I put it out I honestly feel glad I have also been able to move on
And I think without it, I wouldn't have come back to the band as energized or as joyful or as free. And I think that's a big part of the freedom that I now feel in the band. It's like, I got that. I moved on. It's out there. I toured it. It was great. Musically, I'm very proud of it. The whole record. And it helped my songwriting. And it certainly helped my ability to accept myself.
Well, my body keeps betraying me is a line.
Yeah. The body betraying me, putting that out of your body to there, has that helped in any of that?
Yeah. Like I've been on a real journey the last few years. And part of that was not feeling like a victim, I think. And being like, I've got control of this. I can drive this train. I'm not just a passenger and I won't just be a passive driver.
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Chapter 5: What insights does Marcus share about his songwriting process?
And so these songs just poured out of us. And they're the closest to source in terms of the writing and the recording we've ever done. We'd like to write it in the morning and record it in the afternoon and be done and walk away. It's a very live feel. The feeling you get as a vocalist, for sure. The closer you can record a vocal... to when you wrote it, the better.
On the first record, we did a demo at Ben's house that I played and recorded at his house in his parents' attic.
Chapter 6: How does Marcus describe the emotional connection to his recordings?
And then when we came to record Sino More, 18 months later, we couldn't get the same emotion in that vocal, so we just used the demo eventually. On White Blank Page, that song, the Crashing Out song. Boy, acting's so similar. You've got to grab the emotion while it's there. And then when it's gone, it's catching fairies, man.
Better actors is no problem. My wife being like, oh, yeah, I do that. It's no fucking problem. I could have done that in the back of a spaceship if you needed me to.
That's how you can really tell when someone can just show up and be perfect every time. Acting-wise, we call them acting robots.
It's like, yeah, I don't know how they're doing this. Yeah. It's really annoying, isn't it?
It is annoying. I don't like them.
Fuck them. Okay, no, I want to extend a compliment and ask you if you feel it. When we had Seth Rogen on and we were talking about the studio. Did you watch the studio? I did, yeah. Okay, great. You've seen one thing together.
We want first overlap. Well, that's not a music documentary.
It's not music. It's not movies. That's fine.
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Chapter 7: What role do collaborations play in Marcus's new album?
But what I see is not just an incredible show. I see the results of an incredibly generous life that every one of these people would have shown up to party in this thing. There's a lot of... successful actors, they couldn't assemble five other ex-co-stars.
Yeah, right. So you think his humanity and the way he walks through the world has had a real effect? Yeah, that show is a result of who he is as a spirit.
It's really on display and it's really cool. And I would argue that Prizefighter, do you feel that at all?
The fact that you can call Chris Stapleton or however that works? I do feel that. You know, our band has always loved music and being at shows and watching our contemporaries and being inspired by them. We spent a lot of time investing into the community. And it's not just so that we can name drop. It's a bit of that as well.
Are you friends with the Avets? I'm really good friends with Seth. Yeah, we love those guys. They're such inspiration for us. They're bad motherfuckers if you haven't seen the Avets play. Yeah, they're amazing.
I'm doing a thing for them on Monday. The Muppets?
Yeah, the Muppets.
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Chapter 8: How does Marcus reflect on his experiences with community and collaboration in music?
I'm excited. So we've invested a lot into musical relationships, you know, stayed in touch with people. And then weirdly as a headliner, you go out and you do your shows and you're a bit insulated from the community. Festivals are always fun because you bump into other people. And sometimes those awardee things can be cool because you see people you wouldn't otherwise see.
But on this record, we've never opened the door. Our band basically has always been collaborative and we've never really represented it on record. And so on this record, we were like, we want to call in.
our friends and actually gracie abrams has been like the fairy godmother of this record she's been behind the scenes with her magic wand she heard the demo of banjo song before i'd written anything on it was like you gotta write something on that so i text her lyrics as we were going and voice memos and be like what do you think of this what do you think of this and she was always behind the scenes just cheerleading
Oh, that's awesome. In a way like Brandy was for my solo record, Gracie has been for Price Fighter. And so then we called her up and said, will you sing on Badlands? And I thought she was going to just do some harmonies. She turned that song into a duet. It's like my favorite song on the record. It's amazing. And the same with Gigi, who we'd done some shows with. Gigi Perez.
Josie, who we've known for a really long time.
Like, I don't need to know you to look at the list and go like, oh, yeah, this is a guy who's clearly been benevolent and generous with his peers because they show up.
I feel deeply honored by the people that said yes. And Chris, I didn't know. Chris, I just called. Cold call. Hey, bud. Big fan. I think he's a generational talent. He's like my favorite voice, male voice in America.
Do you know Heaven Sent by Steel Drivers? No. I cannot stop listening to this fucking song since I interviewed him.
That was his first band.
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