Nick Margiasso of Sabbatical Year has just released his latest LP: Metropolitan. Nick's musical style ranges from Classical Rock to Indie Electronic, and he has been an active journalist. Read the following interview to see how Nick's formative years have led to his distinctive musical identity, and how that identity relates to us all.
Sabbatical Year is on Spotify, SoundCloud, and Facebook.
The interview has been abridged for clarity.
Vic: So, how did Sabbatical Year start?
Nick: We started four years ago. I had been writing with an old band before [Sabbatical Year] but that didn’t work out, so I wanted to find somebody to finish the music that my old band started. So I got together with a new band with two people, a pianist and myself just to write, and then we added a bassist and a drummer. That became Sabbatical Year. The sound of the band then was a little bit unique: it was less than modern than it was classical rock.
There was a bit of a hiatus in between, but eventually, I realized that the music I write differs so much from the band’s previous output, so why not try on my own? So, it’s all me right now. I could hire a band to perform all the music, but right now it’s all my stuff. That’s what my album Metropolitan is now. And I think this is the right way to go. You gotta be proud of everything you do, especially now that the music is authentically me. I’ve always had an inkling that my stuff by myself was better than what we did as a band, and right now I feel like I’m right about that.
You gotta be proud of everything you do
Vic: How would you characterize the difference between the music you write now and the music before?
Nick: It was kind of like Ben Folds Five if you’ve heard of that, or Elton John. We were piano fronted, so we were like a rock piano band with guitars and other stuff in the background. Now, my music is written by me on a piano, but none of that is the final process. I then take my music to the studio to the synthesizers and guitars to use a lot of effects to modernize the music. So right now my music is more like indie-electronic.
Vic: That’s a really big shift in style, from the original Classical Rock to Indie-Electronic.
Nick: That’s true. Compromising is the hardest thing about being in a band, and once you’ve been in it for a while, you can see whether you want to stay or to say you can do this on your own.
Plus, I get to say things I want to too. With the band, there was a guy with a certain religious background, a guy with a certain political leaning, and I’m right in the middle of that. Now I can say exactly the things I want to say--lyrically.
Compromising is the hardest thing
Vic: Is there any thematic meanings to the songs you write?
Nick: Our style was kind of obscure. It was very emotional, coming-of-age if you will, but now, being solo, I could do something different. Right now, politics and the way our country operates compel a lot of Americans to see things from a different angle. I get to express this musically, lyrically. The lead single of this album is called “An American.” The song is about being disenchanted with where our country is right now, about wanting the freedom that we [supposedly] have: the freedom we champion but really lack. With NSA, immigration, and so much else going on, writing music is just my way of venting [anger,] of dealing with reality.
Writing music is my way of venting anger and dealing with reality
A very interesting thing is that this album was written and recorded traveling the world, from Amsterdam to Paris, from Belgium to New York. I feel like when you travel, you see the link that we all share, the common themes we share in humanity. Humanity becomes palpable. It is so easy to talk about our differences--[how] the French [is different] from the Americans, the Chinese from the Mexicans--and neglect our shared identity. I hope to convey that in my songs: the common man, the want to be loved, to be free, to get drunk, to be free to kiss whoever they want. The want to decide to do what they want to do. That’s kind of what my music is about.
When you travel, humanity becomes palpable
Vic: I’ve noticed that not only do you write music, you also shoot music videos! Your MV “Dd” caught my attention in particular, for the way it mingles city scenes with a girl doing solo dancing. Can you walk me through the creative process behind that?
Nick: There was a really talented guy in Atlanta that I worked with doing films, his name is Anthony Bonaparte. He’s a film producer and a director from San Francisco who now lives in Atlanta. He’s actually been filming on and off a documentary about our band, and we have a documentary company we started after he approached me about the documentary about the band. We decided to do some documentaries together based on our similar interests, just in sports and media and music.
So Anthony directed the MV. Maggie Carter, a fantastic dancer from the area, is the star of that Video. We gave her the music and she’s a great choreographer, so we wanted her to run with it. The music was a remix experiment back then. What is ironic about it is that remix style became a bridge to where I am now--more electronic, more synthesized. We just decided to be free; she was a dancer and was really loose with everything, the director got to do what he wanted, and we got to add new things to the music. In short, that was a real turning point. I found my own new identity. Shortly after that, I was on my own.
BE FREE
Vic: You’ve been through a lot in your music career! What would you say is the biggest lesson you’ve learned over these years?
All you are is a link, in the biggest chain you could ever imagine.
Nick: I think it is to be aware of what is real and what is false. Some of the real stuff that is crucial to you in terms of becoming a better person and improving humanity is simply ignored. The world is about a shared experience. That’s a problem about our current culture being so self-centered, to the point where you think everything revolves around you on social media. While I embrace technology as part of the modern world, people have become so self-serving that you forget the things that people before you have laid down for you...All you are is a link, in the biggest chain you could ever imagine.
We don't care enough
Our shared experience constantly reminds me that somebody’s always going through something, just like you are, that it’s always not as bad as you think. It also reminds me that we don’t reach out to the people in need enough, and that goes back to the things we used to do as an American. We’re in New York City, the gateway to this country that was so great. Right now it looks more like a self-serving country where my TV has to be bigger, my car has to be bigger, and not care about the actual crises that happen all around the globe. We don’t care enough. Those are the things I want to convey in my music and try to live as a maxim of my life as well.
Vic: Name one of your favorite artists.
Nick: I’m a Radiohead guy. I’ve always wanted to be extremely free with my music, put anything you see fit in your music, and I feel like Radiohead does just that. They were a mega Rock band who had spun bands like Coldplay. They could’ve been anything, but they decided to completely throw our guitars away and go into the studio with their synthesizers and laptops, and that’s the new album. I just love it. I am also a journalist, so I was able to follow them around Radiohead this summer for a little while; I was able to meet Tom and those guys and was able to get backstage at a couple of their festivals. They’re active in political things, social things, they just check all the boxes for me. I just love them.
I feel like there aren’t that many people who could just write a good song anymore. So many people overlay [their music] with studio tricks, but at the end of the day, they can’t write nice melodies and nice structures. I’m also using the electronic stuff now, but I can always strip things down to an acoustic one and they would be as powerful as I’d like to think.
At the end of the day, acoustic music should be as powerful
