Justin Payne just released his new rock single “together as one,” which promises to make it to the top of the list of your favorite songs.
Justin is an accomplished artist who feeds his craft on his long experience as a musician, composer, and performer. His studies in classical violin and musical composition taught him to unleash his musical skills and creativity. Only a few artistic spirits can enrich his songwriting abilities from history and philosophy studies.
With a significant portion of humankind’s artistic baggage in his mind and heart, Justin Payne created "together as one" accompanied by his full band Justin Payne & Co. They have Justin on vocals and guitar, Marshall Fassino on the second guitar, Dave Cerelli on bass guitar, and Eli Simon on drums.
Hit the play button on "together as one'' to find an intro with a powerful combo of distorted rhythm and lead guitars, the bass waving notes, and exciting drums. The instrumentals make a fantastic synergy with Justin's emotional vocals. They manage so well to build up the energy through the song that you can feel the lyrics deep in your chest.
When you hear Justin sing, ‘You’re the one I want to love for the rest of my whole life,’ you can’t help but sing out loud. Besides, the instrumentals are so great that you can feel them just like a burst of energy coming from your core and running to your limbs and mouth, and at its climax, you cry the lyrics out with Justin and rock your air guitar hard.
Press play and get your daily dose of excitement by listening to “together as one.”
Welcome to BuzzMusic Justin Payne & Co. What are the memories behind the lyrics of “together as one?”
I suppose the most vivid memories that led up to writing the lyrics of this tune stem from my romantic relationship with my fiancee, Miranda. We both lived in the same college town in Ohio for decades, with different partners, before starting to date. We were friends for a long time beforehand, too. We have seen one another struggle with our respective lives, ups, and downs, long before we fell in love. Now that we have been together for nearly nine years, we have traveled the bumpy road of life and keeping a relationship alive, hand in hand, sometimes contentiously, most times with a solid unified front. I remember our happiest and hardest moments: vacations, short-lived breakups, arguments, and tender loving moments and words. We have supported one another through deaths in our immediate families and friend groups, disagreements, therapy, discovering my PTSD, the estranged relationship with my family, and many other peaks and valleys of life. She has been with me on my national tours, together seeing parts of the country we had never visited. She has had my back when I have played in empty rooms, feeling unnoticed and like a failure at my job. We have nursed each other back to health from serious surgeries and illnesses. And, despite what has come or what will come from life, we "struggle through it all as one, stumbling through this life, together as one".
What was your greatest motivation to make “together as one?”
I deeply love my fiancee. She's my life-mate, no question. So many of my songs try to tackle bigger, more existential issues in the world. So much of my job takes me away from her, mentally and physically. I owe so much of my stability and happiness, confidence in what I do, and will to carry the indie songwriter torch in a corrupt and misdirected industry to Miranda. While writing this new record, my mind kept going back to how much I have grown as an artist in the past year, to my big, risky plunge into the Nashville rock scene, and how scary and much more difficult it would have been to carry out alone. All of these thoughts were engendered by a creative rule I set for this project, to make all of these songs simple and straight from the heart, flying lyrically and structurally more on my intuition and gut feelings than letting the confines of "proper songwriting" get in the way. My heart kept reminding me of how deep our love goes, how much we've grown, and how far we've come. The kernel of this tune came from that. Life is a struggle, regardless, for almost everyone. What could be better than facing it with the one person you love and trust more than anyone else? That is what this one is about: the agony and the ecstasy of that journey.
What makes “together as one” different from your other songs?
Even though my output has been much more influenced by rocknroll and punk music over the past few years, I don't shy away from ballads as a songwriter. I have difficulty sticking to just one genre or way of doing things. Personally, I don't really care about genre. I value the message and feel of a tune. By that measure, this is my best ballad yet, because it is the most direct, with lyrics that most of us humans can relate to in our lives. It is direct and personal, unlike a big-picture-type song, and I think it hits the mark. I could not be more proud of how well the arrangement and the words line up. It tells a simple story, but with all the thunder and lightning that goes along with a tale of true love in a world that seems to want to tear us apart.
What would you like to say to those who listen to “together as one?”
Elder-Millenial lefty punks like me aren't TOO jaded by this world of chaos. We tasted the last of our society working, until adulthood at least, and carry with us a hope that we can change the world and our dim futures on this planet for the better through the virtues of trust, community, and love. This is as much a "grungy love anthem" as it is a testament to sticking to your guns. These themes run through almost every song on the forthcoming LP. What is your life if you don't stick to your principles in defiance of a neverending stream of external distractions, comparisons, and noise?
What's next for you?
A LOT! This tune has a music video releasing on 10/27/2022 on the Justin Payne & Co. Vevo channel (@justinpayneandvevo)! I cannot wait to unveil it, as the crew and I really hit a home run with this one! There is going to be another single from this record, "is this what it feels like?" releasing in December across streamers, as well as a six-song EP. There will be big local release shows in Nashville based around each. Another single, "bad vibes," will be dropping digitally alongside a third music video in early 2023 to accompany the full-length vinyl LP release "underrated/overstimulated", featuring songs you cannot get elsewhere. Somewhere amid that whirlwind, I think Miranda and I are going to take a much need vacation from the biz around the holiday season to rest, relax, and recoup before another round of writing and fleshing out the next record.
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