Briston Maroney: The Grassroots Poet from America’s Basement

By Hunter Craighill

When Briston Maroney arrived at Plateau Studios a month ago, he brought with him no artistic ego, no arrogance, and no superiority complex. As soon as he stepped out of the Nissan Pathfinder, his natural, easy-going demeanor infected the entire atmosphere. He was humble, he was soft spoken, he was respectful. Briston Maroney is just a regular dude. It just so happens he is on his way to becoming one of the biggest indie alt-rock artists in America. 

He shaved the beard he wore in recent pictures, revealing a face much younger than his voice gives off. As we chatted and walked around the property, his attitude was polite as he felt out his company, but soon eased into comfortability. His easy manner made it feel as if we had no work to do at all; we were just hanging out shooting the shit.

After a while, our stylists dressed him in a pair of faded overalls over a t-shirt. His dusty brown hair curled out from under the green beanie. He climbed onto a defunct ATV that we had just pushed out of the garage. “Wow, my dad would be proud,” he muttered. “A real southern boy.”

Maroney is a real southern boy, but not in a camo and shotgun kind of way. He grew up in Florida until his parents divorced, then split time between Knoxville, Tennessee and Florida. In all of that time, music was a huge part of his life and the places he lived were a huge part of his music. “Man, I think the South will always have a really big impact on the way that I see, like, beautiful things,” he told us later that day in an interview. “There's like a beauty to certain parts of the South that you won't find anywhere else.”

At first, he had no aspirations of a professional music career; it was just the joy of the music. “Dude I wish so much I could go back to how I felt at like 12 or 13 when I got into all this shit, because I did not have a single fuckin’ goal. Like I just loved doing what I was doing and that was the beauty of what was happening. It was just straight joy every time I did it.”

He followed this passion with an obsessive compulsion, not chasing any ultimate goal, but just for his own happiness. For a while he played guitar in a bluegrass band called Subtle Clutch, continuing to master his craft. Then in 2017, he started to work on and release his own music, starting with the EP Big Shot. With the momentum from this release, Maroney grinded in the underground scene in Knoxville, packing out basements and living rooms, playing intimate but equally rowdy crowds that would often get shut down. One show happened to be at the residence of a member of our Nuance team some three or four years ago. Briston remembers the night fondly: “That was a legendary show for like 1,000 reasons. That was sort of a ridiculous night. I think the party ended up getting broken up, and also my dad came to that show. He was thoroughly convinced that he got black lung because there was mold in the basement.” Our team member declined to comment. 

         Briston Maroney built his audience in this basement scene, but eventually rose to a nationally recognized musician. After drifting around nomadically for a few years playing music, he released his breakthrough EP, Indiana, in 2019. This catapulted his career, as he opened for Wallows on their Euro tour and played Austin City Limits that same year.

It was in this period of time touring living rooms and eventually bigger venues that Briston Maroney decided that music was what he wanted to do with his life. “Music as a career is still a really strange thing to me. I probably decided it was what I wanted when we started touring. I fell in love with touring and it's my favorite thing to do,” says Maroney. To him, it doesn’t matter if it’s a private studio session or a festival for thousands. The ability to deliver music to people and influence their night is his purest source of happiness.

After the interview, Briston and his band set up in Plateau Studios to play a two song set. When he started playing, Maroney’s presence and energy was infectious. He could shift from a cool and composed delivery to a reckless and dangerously impassioned cry within seconds. We were all worried he would crash into some invaluable piece of equipment with the way he was convulsing and thrashing in front of us. Yet somehow he rode the line, quivering on the edge of out of control, but still wholly in control. It causes an adrenaline rush, swinging audiences, making them believe in a cause. It makes them feel what Briston Maroney is feeling, because what Briston Maroney is feeling is a reflection of what everyone in that room is feeling. 

“I mean I just fuckin’ miss people, like I miss being in a room full of people and deciding the possibilities that can come out of a night,” he said of performing. “I just miss the autonomy of being in a space and getting to write your own story for the night.” He paused. “I mean, I can still do that at my house, but the story usually ends up with just me doing laundry for no reason because, like, I watched like all of Schitt's Creek, so I don't have anything else to do.”

Maroney’s success is no accident. The realness of his personality flows into his music and his lyrics so naturally it feels as if every song is telling your story. Even if you’ve never been offered ketamine from a kid in Bowling Green, as he tells in “Deep Sea Diver,” his sentiment is somehow painfully relatable. Lyrically, he is a grassroots poet. He uses contemporary vernacular to shape the very literal, specific, and personal situations of his songs into timeless, universal anthems that tell the story of the modern American.

         Maroney’s nomadic lifestyle translates into the lyrics of “Deep Sea Diver,” the first single off of his upcoming album. Not necessarily in a literal sense, but in the way that we all wander aimlessly through life without direction to some extent. With lines like “it’s a job seven days a week / to make things harder than they have to be,” he touches on the aspect of overthinking that everyone of this generation seems to struggle with. Through the vulnerability of his lyrics, he extends a hand to everyone who struggles in the same capacity.

         “It's been really exciting to share music right now,” he hesitated, looking at the ceiling.  “But it's also just a really strange time, as we all know, to do anything self-centric. I've tried to use “Deep Sea Diver” as a window into letting people know that it is okay to have personal conflicts right now at a time where the world is in mass conflict. Your own struggles are part of a bigger story. I know I don't want to be the focus right now, but I just want to remind people that it's okay to go through those things 'cause they're not doing that alone.”

         This is exactly the kind of selfless, humble, and inherently good nature that makes Briston Maroney successful. Not just in a monetary or a popularity sense, but in the way that success is what makes you happy. Right now, what makes him happy is reaching out and helping as many people as possible, whether through his music or through his social action.

         In this case, he is extremely successful. His song “Freaking Out on the Interstate” reached over a million streams recently, and he has found himself more and more involved with social justice movements and charitable organizations. He told me about attending a protest in June: “The protests were insane. I mean thousands and thousands of people--scary in the midst of a pandemic—but it was the most inspiring thing to go to a Black Lives Matter movement protest and just see actual fuckin’ change happening in front of our eyes. I've been so inspired by leaders in Nashville taking a stance.” He has also done a lot of work with No Kid Hungry, a charity organization to help feed low-income communities and households fight poverty. 

         All in all, Briston Maroney deserves every ounce of success he receives, no matter how he defines it. His musical talent is only matched by the quality of his character. The music industry and the nation as a whole need more people like him, whose heart is far bigger than his ego, and his desire to connect with others outweighs his desire for his own personal gain. With several singles coming out in the near future leading up to his album release in early 2021, Briston Maroney will continue to connect with people through his good music and his good will. Godspeed, my friend, and probably don’t do that Ketamine.