Singer-songwriter duo MAARCHES are in search of something greater
by Ali Elabbady
September 15, 2023
Creative multi-hyphenates and longtime friends Adam Garcia and “Medium Zach” Bagaason are the two forces behind the newly founded group MAARCHES. In their self-titled project released this past June, their shared minutiae in a quest for meaning holds it all together.
“I think as artists, we all explore meaning-making through work, output, conversations, and expression,” Garcia mentions, via Zoom. “I love mythology, and mythologies are about narrativizing the universe to try and find ourselves in front of it. We live to create and share and use words to connect ourselves to the world, and hopefully connect other people to the world.”
Medium Zach’s brother and Big Quarters collaborator “Brandon Allday” Bagaason helped facilitate the MAARCHES collaborators’ initial meeting more than 20 years ago. At the time, Brandon was a student at the U of M who frequented the Loring Pasta Bar, the Dinkytowner, and Bon Appetit, in search of like-minded hip-hop fans. “I met Adam when he came to Brandon's dorm room,” says Zach. “[It was] the same night that we were in the middle of making our beat CD for I Self Devine. We got a proper chance to hang out, talk about hip-hop and graffiti, and I got to show him a sketch I did, while playing back some beats.”
At that time, Garcia was involved in breakdancing with the Battlecats crew, making his own art through graffiti, and did a little bit of rapping under the alias Snakebird. “I had done like one or two solo shows with Adam “Booka B'' Bücher DJing,” Garcia says. “I wanted to be somewhere between I Self Devine and Mr. Wiggles. Mr. Wiggles rapped, made beats, he painted graffiti, and break danced, and I Self Devine is a renaissance man who could do anything, and is still a pillar within the scene. If you were a person of our persuasion in the early 2000s [or in the] mid- or late-’90s in Minneapolis, and you had models like the people that we looked up to, hip-hop is what you were supposed to do. The experimentation, and being fearless and relentless, to get in front of people and share ideas and express thoughts and connect, that's what happened.”
Medium Zach, Brandon Allday, and Garcia put out the EPL & Snakebird project, simply titled Songs, in 2004. Shortly after its release, Garcia put more focus into art, design, and illustration as the art director at Rhymesayers Entertainment until 2007. Garcia also did the album design and layout for Brandon & Zach’s Big Quarters albums Cost of Living and From the Home of Brown Babies & White Mothers.
Over the years, Zach and Garcia kept in touch about creative pursuits, as well as cultivating their friendship. “Zach's an art head, so when we get together, we talk about movies a lot,” Garcia muses. “We talk about filmmaking and directing and cinematography and writing and storytelling and like, that is really the stuff that I deeply care about as well.”
In 2014, Garcia wrote a sci-fi short story called Artifacts From the Gemira Commission, and he worked with Zach to create a gallery show as a companion piece. They created flags and photography based upon the story with a community of collaborators in Portland, Oregon. “One of the most important things was that it needed ambiance,” Garcia recalls. “It needed context, it needed sound, that pulls it all together and gives it an aural space. I reached out to Zach, gave him a few story points, and he turned around 11 songs in two weeks. I realized at that point that Zach can do anything, given the opportunity.”
During the pandemic Garcia picked up a guitar, a gift he bought his life partner, and started strumming away at it, eventually making a couple of scratch demos. “These little songs are pouring out of me. I started sending them to a bunch of homies, to show them what I was on musically,” he says. “It was really singer-songwriter-oriented stuff. When I sent those voice memos to Zach, he said, ‘Let's do this.’”
It just so happened that Zach was trying something similar at that time. “I really recognized what he was trying to do,” Zach says. “I understood the beauty in the simplicity of the language, and since [Adam] hadn't made a music project in so long, he was excited to be open to the process. He was also willing to let go of some of what they originally were in demo form.”
While the six-track MAARCHES EP provides a brisk listen, the apexes of their exploration are on full display. The simplicity of Garcia’s vocals and guitar arrangements shine next to Zach’s experimental production flourishes. “I wanted to be surprised, and I really wanted to get out of my comfort zone,” Garcia explains. “A lot of our feedback was over text messages where I would do a bunch, and then bounce. Zach would cook, then send things back, sometimes with not even a lot of context. I would have to hear it, digest it, listen to it over and over, and any of the changes I asked for would be minuscule, such as adding space.”
“All the songs that Adam wrote gave me a reference to what they should be and how they should sound,” Zach continues. “There was already a vibe there to work with, so it inspired me to go the direction that I wouldn’t go with normally as a producer, not necessarily like a straight up hip-hop producer, but I’d still bring in some of the feel that I would put in my own beat sets. My goal was to take Adam's songs and make something that could be special to us, so that we could confidently get behind it and say ‘this is a thing.’”
From the purgatorial bliss of upbeat-sounding “Synthesize” to the lucid-dream-like state of “I-R-L (Sleepwalking),” the EP takes the listener on a quest for self, trying to make sense of a world in flux. Elsewhere, “Classic Aries” examines the forecasts fed to us by astrology apps and how life choices are then formed. “Exquisite Collision” sounds as if it’s a spectator on the sidelines of the apocalypse going down in real time. “Gail’s Song” serves as one of the most straightforward and mournful songs on the project, while “Hera” ends everything on a resilient note, with Garcia singing “Never get upon your knees, never let them see you bleed.”
The cover art is equally compelling. Taking a page from that same art project commissioned with the help of friends in Portland, Garcia and New York City artist Vance Wellenstein exchanged text messages involving hundreds of images as the project began to take hold. “One thing that stayed the same through all of it was this idea of layers,” Garcia mentions. “When it comes to worlds, we approach things as systems, like design systems and creative systems, and they're all meaningful and have stories in them. I wanted to create a world of visuals that can evolve and adapt over time for whatever we need to do.”
While the group had their first performance in Los Angeles this past August, MAARCHES play Minneapolis for the first time at Minneapolis graphic design firm Burlesque of North America’s 20th anniversary celebration on Saturday, Sept. 16. “There's been a lot of intentionality behind MAARCHES and where me and Adam see this going,” Zach says. “We've both been doing everything we can to set it up for it to be received by the people that can appreciate it. I know that from doing this as my career for a long time, you also have to continue to show up, and create those opportunities for yourself.”
Garcia agrees: “Right now we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg of what MAARCHES is capable of, but there's a lot more that will be revealed, especially in our live shows, that we're really excited about.”
MAARCHES perform at Burlesque of North America’s 20th Anniversary at Modist Brewing. DJ Jimmy2Times will also perform. In addition to music performances, there’s a magic show by the Magic Underground, as well as prizes, prints, and more. 7 p.m. to midnight, Saturday, Sept. 16. 21+. Free. Info.
