Marlee Carpenter sings for the crowd. *Photo submitted*

By Tom Victoria

Marlee Carpenter expresses herself through performance. The artist’s talent is evident whether she’s singing a song or playing a role.

She explained her passion.

“Its a healthy way to express myself and deal with my emotions,” Marlee said. “Rather that be exposing myself through a character’s eyes or writing a song to process my feelings, it’s the healthiest way I know how to cope with life.”

Along with acting, modeling and singing, the Ohio resident plays instruments, writes and produces. Marlee stays busy with all of her endeavors.

“I'm in two cover bands,” she said. “We just played some shows over on some islands called Put-in-Bay, where we have a residency, and those were our last shows of the season. I just wrapped a feature film called Extraction USA that I co-starred with Leanne Johnson. She's another actor that's local to the indie film scene. That was awesome. We shot for 21 days, four weeks altogether, and had a great time doing that.”

**Marlee performs in a still from the film *Extraction USA*.**

Along with being the lead singer for the cover bands, Marlee creates her own music.

“I just dropped my first single All a Dream a couple of months ago along with the music video,” she said.

Although funding is an issue for the subsequent album, Marlee is determined to complete it.

“I'm going to make the album no matter what,” she said. “I at least have enough money to make my next single, but I'm going to have to fork out quite a bit of money to finish the album. It's going to take me a few years because recording albums is not cheap. I have discovered it's very expensive when you want to do it right, but I'm excited about that. I have all the track demos done. They're ready to go. It's just the money to actually get them recorded is what I'm needing right now.”

Marlee enjoys the music style she performs with the bands, but sought inspiration elsewhere for her own music.

“My cover bands are pretty rock and roll,” she said. “I love singing rock music. But when it came to my album and what was inspiring me to write the songs, it was more of the indie pop scene that really drew to me. I discovered an artist named King Princess back in 2020, and I just immediately got hooked on their music and their sound. And then Hayley Williams of Paramore has her own solo music that's also very much up that same alley as King Princess. That indie pop sound and the way I write is very singer/songwriter indie pop style. So for the original stuff that I have, it's definitely a very different sound than my band sound. And a lot of people when I announce that I've released a single at my shows, people will go listen to it and they're like, oh, that's not what I was expecting from you. That's so different. Yeah, it's a totally different genre, but it fits where I'm at in my life right now, so that's why I went with it.”

Marleee covers a variety of artists when performing with the bands.

“My bands do a big mix,” she said. “I love doing Lady Gaga. I will do all the Gaga songs I possibly can. We actually have three in our repertoire that we do. I'm not as big of a fan of Ozzy Osborne. My bandmates are super into Ozzy. I think he's cool. Whenever they mention an Ozzy song, it's not my one that I'm going, oh, yeah, let's do it. Crazy Train is great, but honestly, the best thing about that song is the lyrics and that guitar riff, so what everybody knows is that guitar riff. I do love doing AC/DC. I really love AC/DC, Led Zeppelin. Love Led Zeppelin. The hard rock tunes. I'm really into the hard rock stuff if I had to choose.”

Marlee described the different styles of the bands.

“So the full band, it's called Hard Candy,” she said. “That's the rock band. And my second band is just an acoustic band. It's just me and my guitarist from Hard Candy. Well, I actually have four different guitarists. That band is called The Forgotten. I have four different guitarists that I rotate because Keith Rowe, who's in Hard Candy with me, is not. He's trying to settle down. He's got a kid on the way. He's not taking on as many gigs anymore. So I have my buddy Chase Eagleson, and he plays with me sometimes. And his is a totally different sound from anything that Keith plays. But then he's stepping back a little bit. He's not taking as many gigs on right now. So then I have another guy named Dylan Kendrick, who steps in and plays with me sometimes. And come February, Keith's going to have his baby, and he's going to be on hiatus from February until May. So I have a third guy named Adam Sendelbach that is stepping in to also pick up some gigs with. It's more acoustic stuff. We do a lot of Hard Candy’s tunes, but acoustically, and it works. I mean, you'd think it'd be hard to do Thunderstruck acoustically, but it sounds really cool. It's a totally different sound. It gives people a chance to hear different facets of my voice, though, because I can do a lot of different genres, and I have a lot of little ticks in my voice that come out in certain songs, and I think people enjoy hearing those differences.”

***Photo by J. Droski Portrait Photography***

And Marlee’s work doesn’t end there.

“It's been an exciting year,” she said. “My production company called Bucketknaut Productions — that's based out of Columbus, Ohio — we just launched our own streaming service called Bucketknaut TV. That's just strictly all Bucketknaut projects. It's going to be free on Bucketknaut TV for people to watch. So we're super excited about it.”

Marlee could never choose to do just music or acting.

“I get asked this question all the time and I can't answer it because my heart beats for acting and for performing music,” she said. “I need both. Obviously, if one took off and I had to pause the other one, that would be something, but I wouldn't really choose that. It would be kind of an organic thing. If my music suddenly blew up and I had to go on tour, then, yeah, I'm going to have to put movies on pause for a little bit. Or if suddenly my acting career blew up and I had to go out to L.A. or Georgia or New York or whatever to shoot some films, I'm going to have to put the music on pause, but I have no desire to quit either of them. Just, if one takes off, great, I'll just take it as it comes, because I can't choose between the two.”

Marlee always enjoyed singing, but performing in front of a crowd took some time getting used to.

“I have been singing since I was a kid,” she said. “I had terrible, terrible stage fright, though. I would be standing in front of people singing with tears streaming down my face and shaking like a leaf. But there was something about being on stage that was stronger than that fear. And so I would force myself to get up and do it because I loved it so much. And after I get done, I'd be like, that was amazing. I'm going to do that again. And then the next time I get on stage, I'd be sobbing and shaking again. But I just kept doing it. And eventually I stopped being scared to get on stage.”

Marlee took inspiration from musicians of various styles and times.

“I know as a performer, probably Lady Gaga was a big one for me,” she said. “She really inspired me. I loved Amy Winehouse. I used to be a jazz vocalist. I was very much into jazz music. I did probably five or six different live jazz shows, but I was very much into Ella Fitzgerald, Etta James, all those major jazz players even back to Duke Ellington. I really love Duke Ellington. I know he doesn't sing, but I played the saxophone for a very long time, and I got into the saxophone because of jazz music. I don't know that there was ever one person that suddenly made me go I want to do that. I've just always been a singer. And I've definitely improved over the years. I will say that, not that I ever had a bad voice, but my range has improved significantly over the years just from gigging so much. You work that muscle and next thing you know, you're hitting notes that previously you couldn't hit.”

Marlee often finds music as a way like no other to express herself.

“People that I've been involved with, I sometimes cannot find the words to tell them how I feel or what I think,” she said. “And I will sit down at my piano or I'll sit down at my guitar, and it'll just pour out of me. And that's what I'll do is I'll send them a song that explains what I'm going through, how I'm feeling. Because sometimes I don't know what it is. I just can't quite form the words for it. And I feel bad for people that date me sometimes because I kind of Taylor Swift everybody's ass. I write about what I know. I write about my feelings. So if you're dating me and it's really intense, I'm going to write music about you. And I had one song about my ex that was pretty scathing, and I decided not to put it on the album. I have people trying to convince me otherwise because most of the songs in the album were just about my feelings of loss and things like that. Maybe I'll change my mind down the road, but that's literally how I express myself. I don't know how else to express myself honestly.”

Acting also has been part of Marlee’s life since she was young.

“I was in the church plays, all that stuff,” she said. “I got into community theater when I was in fourth grade.”

But Marlee was particularly inspired by a performance she saw much later.

“It was my sophomore year of high school,” she said. “There was a guy that was in the grade above me. I dated him for a second. I loved movies. I was a huge movie buff. I loved watching movies. I really loved actors, actresses. But it was watching him perform and the way he acted and the way he just grabbed my attention that made me go I want to make people feel like that. I want to grab people's attention like that. And I got my first lead role my sophomore year of high school. And after that, I had the bug. I want to do this as a career. This is what I'm set on. And for the next decade of my life, that's what I've been working towards. I had never seen somebody grab an audience like that before, a live audience, and he would just go off on these tangents on stage, improvised out of his ass. And I was so impressed because I'm not the best improviser, and I just couldn't believe that he was winging all this stuff.”

Marlee took to the stage.

“I am a theater-trained actress,” she said. “When I studied in New York City, I was theater trained out there. I love theater. There is nothing like getting that immediate response from an audience or not getting any response and just being like, shit, what do I do now? You have to think on your feet. And I honestly think some of our strongest actors out there started off as theater actors. As long as you can pull them in and rein them in on how to work on a camera, they know how to think on their feet. They're quick-witted, and I'm so grateful for that background. I do want to go back to theater at some point. Unfortunately, it's all community theater where I live.”

Film edges out theater for Marlee, though.

“If I really had to pick, I'm more drawn towards film,” she said. “There's something about film and the magic of pulling a movie together that I think gets me a little bit more, because you go through this process of writing a script. It goes through all of its drafts and then next thing you know, you're putting a cast together and you're getting funding, you're picking locations, then you spend a few weeks shooting and then you're in post for forever. But then you get to see this movie magic just happen. Everything just comes together, which in theater, that happens, too. When you have opening night, everything just comes together and there's nothing like it.”

Acting in film came later than stage for Marlee.

“I didn't really start doing film until 2019,” she said. “I did a short film in 2016. I did a commercial in 2018, but then I did not really get into film full-time until 2019. And actually 2019 was the last theater show I did as well, which was my own show. I did a show called Marlee Who? We Don't Know Either, and that did really well. It sold out. And so we did a second show at Playhouse Square in Cleveland called Marlee Who? Take Two, and we did two nights of that. That was the last live show that I have done besides performing with my bands. I've just been strictly film since then.”

Marlee initially didn’t have a problem memorizing lines.

“When I was a kid, I had a photographic memory,” she said. “Then, I developed some health problems. I started passing out a lot. I had a lot of concussions and started having a lot of issues with my memory. It was probably back in 2019, I just really started trying to get better at memorizing stuff because I really struggled in college with memorization. It was a major problem. I could never remember my lines, but I figured out a method. I would just record everyone else's lines and then just go through and say my line as the other person is doing their line because I found if I was doing it, actually doing it versus just looking at the page, that was helping me more. I couldn't just look at a page anymore, though, and memorize the entire page like I could as a kid. And now the last two features I did, I memorized the entire script in a week, and I don't really have any problems memorizing anymore. I think I've just worked on my brain long enough and kept working that muscle that I regained those pathways that those concussions may have damaged. It's still the same, though. As soon as I get done with a scene, the lines are gone. Within two hours, I can know that entire scene for weeks. As soon as I do the scene two hours later, all gone. Don't ask me to do it again.”

Marlee savors feeding off the energy from a live audience.

“Especially performing with my full band,” she said. “I'm very active on stage. I am not just a stand and sing kind of person. I am jumping all over the place. I am getting on the floor. I'm getting up in the audience’s faces, exerting so much energy. And when the audience is not giving that energy back to me, I get drained. I get drained so fast. It is so hard for me to keep my energy up and that affects my singing, too, because when my body gets tired, I can't support my voice as much. But if the audience is super into it, that just energizes me. And I could just go and go and go. We did a private party. Normally, our shows are four hours. Three of those are playing, one of them is just breaks. And we did a private show, and they actually paid us to stay an extra hour. So altogether, we had a five-hour show that we did. And it was because they were so giving of their energy to us, that made it so that I could get through the show. But when the audience isn't into it, it is so hard keeping your energy up.”

Marlee has had the opportunity to play a number of the types of roles she sought.

“I have played a lot of girls that I always wanted to play so far,” she said. “But one I have not gotten the chance to play yet is I'm a former benzo (benzodiazepine) addict, and I would love to play a role of somebody that had that same problem as an addict because I feel like I would be able to really find myself in that person and be able to give a really raw performance. My business partner and I are working on a miniseries called Friday, and that particular character is going to have some of those nuances in it. So I'm really looking forward to playing her. It's just going to be a while before that gets made, at least two or three years. But if I could find something else in the meantime along those lines, just anytime I find a character that I can relate to, know has pieces of me in it, I immediately latch on to them and want to be a part of them.”

Marlee’s talent has not gone unnoticed.

“Extraction USA, the feature I just wrapped, they came to me to do their concept trailer,” she said. “They needed to do a trailer to get investors and the lead, Leanne, heard about me from my business partner. They worked on a film together and Tyler told Leanne, you need to meet my friend Marlee. She saw a video of me playing my piano on the floor and that sold her on me. She's like, this person has soul, I want this person in the trailer because I was playing her love interest. And so they cast me for the trailer. I was not supposed to be in the movie. They were going to get a name actor, at least like a D- or C-list celebrity to play my role. But after we shot the concept trailer, Leanne went to the director and said, I don't want anybody else. It's got to be Marlee. If we're going to do this film, it's got to be Marlee. And I was very touched by that because I was very drawn to the story and my character: kind of a drifter, but she's got this traumatic past and she doesn't like to open up to people. I wouldn't say that I'm a closed book. I'm pretty open about everything in my life. But there's times that I have trouble sharing, and there's times that when things get really hard, emotionally hard, I tend to shut down and isolate myself. And I saw a lot of that in Steph's character. And so I was very drawn to that character and appreciated her story very much because a lot of it aligned with my own life. And that's what I look for.”

Marlee isn’t satisfied to do just any part.

“I'm very picky about the characters I take on,” she said. “I don't just play any role. If it's a character that I can't relate to, I don't care, I'm not going to play it. And they've got to be very well-developed characters. When I read scripts, I've had scripts sent to me with female characters that are so one-sided. Their only purpose in the movie is to be somebody's love interest or they're there to look pretty. Even if it's like a rebellious character, they’re a one-sided, rebellious character. I always pass on those scripts because if I'm going to put my heart and soul into a role, it's got to be worth it. And I need the character to have been properly developed so that I can do that.”

For Marleee, some emotions can be harder to portray than others.

“Being sad is always difficult, depending on the day,” she said. “I don't really like playing sad because you never want to play the emotion. But when it's a really emotional scene, sometimes you just can't tap into that. You've got blocks. Things that have happened that day, that week, that month, stuff that is keeping you from accessing those emotions. And I run into that sometime back to what I said about shutting down. There's times when, especially having bipolar disorder, my way of coping so that I don't go off the deep end is to literally go into hibernation and just try to preserve myself, because sometimes my feelings are too big that I can't handle them. And that is how I got addicted to benzos, because I could not handle my emotions and I felt them so deeply. And so sometimes I run into that issue on set when I'm supposed to be having a really emotional scene, I'll be shut down and I'll have trouble accessing that. I wouldn't say that I've totally crashed and burned in any movies. I've always been able to get to that place. It just sometimes takes me longer. Sometimes I need more prep time, whereas other times I can walk right on set and instantly just have tears pulling out of my eyes.”

In addition to the piano and saxophone, Marlee plays guitar.

“I was very good at saxophone,” she said. “I was second chair my senior year. I was also the squad leader. And then I didn't touch it for seven years after I went off to college. And I can still play it, but I don't remember all of the notes, and I've lost some of the technique that I used to have. When it comes to piano, I started teaching myself to play the piano in 2019. I can't read piano music, but I know chords. I play guitar chords and I improvise. So if there's a G and an A, I'll play the G and I'll improvise some chords in between that G and that A. And then with guitar, I can only play open chords. Don't ask me to play a sharp or a flat or a power chord because I haven't figured out how to stretch my fingers like that yet to be able to do that. But I play well enough that I can write music. And that's the whole reason I taught myself in the first place is because I didn't want to rely on other people to be able to write my music anymore. I want to be able to do this myself. Piano is probably my primary instrument nowadays. That's the one I'm the best at.”

Music has always impacted Marlee.

“I've always been into music,” she said. “It's always been what moves me. I just connected to artists being able to explain themselves through their music. My dad used to play smooth jazz all the time in the car, and I really connected to that. I loved smooth jazz. It's so funny because so many jazz artists are like, screw smooth jazz, man. It's fake jazz. But I loved it. I was actually into smooth jazz before I got into ‘50s, ‘60s jazz and ‘30s jazz. But I loved the storytelling. I loved how people could move other people with their sound. And I loved singing so much that I wanted to be able to do that. My first song I ever wrote, there was a song by No Doubt, I can't even remember the name of it. I rewrote the lyrics to it. I used the same exact melody and I just rewrote the lyrics. This was in elementary school, I think I was in third or fourth grade. But then my first true original I wrote back in 2018. And I performed it at my first Marlee Who? show. And it was a jazz song. It was very jazzy. And then I wrote another song that was a more upbeat pop song for the Marlee Who? Take Two show. Now I have a ton of songs. My album is going to have eight tracks on it because that's all I can afford to put on there. I just like connecting with people in that way. It's something really special when I find someone else in my life that connects to music the way I do. Because my love language is sharing music with people. Even my favorite songs, songs that make me think of them, songs that move me. I want it to move them as well. And I hope that's what my music does for people.”

As far as what the future may hold, Marlee is lured by the two acting capitals in America.

“Part of me is curious about L.A. as an actor going out for pilot season,” she said. “But I also love New York. I lived in New York for two-and-a half years. Unfortunately, I had to move back. But I would move back to New York in a heartbeat if I could afford it. My heart and soul is in New York. I dreamed of moving to New York since I was 5 years old. I've never been to L.A. I would like to visit at some point. I work with a production company out there and do user-generated content for them. I'd be interested to see what L.A. is like.”

Marlee’s acting led to producing.

“So my business partner, when we were shooting our first feature film, The Cran — it's short for Cranwell County — he brought me on as an associate producer mainly because I was writing a bunch of music for the film,” she said. “That was my payment: we're going to make you an associate producer because it's a very low budget film. I also got thrown into the composing. He's been pushing me to become more of a producer and getting more involved with projects. Extraction USA that I just shot, I was an associate producer on. I have a miniseries called Hi … I’m Max that I'm producing. But I don't prefer producing. Trying to find investors for so many different projects, it's very hard.”

Marlee doesn’t let an occasional lack of motivation stop her from doing what needs done.

“I just force myself to do it,” she said. “And once I’m doing it, I’m reminded why I love doing it so much.”

Marlee offered advice for aspiring actors and musicians.

“Don’t give up,” she said. “You’re gonna get a lot of people that tear you down and don’t support you, but they don’t matter. Make art because it makes you feel better, not because you want people to like you.”

Marlee’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marcarpenter/

Marlee’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzOtBvQLVkXTRU7gvf45o-g

Marlee’s website: https://marleecarpenterofficial.com/

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