Music That Heals: Sean Martin on Trauma, Resilience & Creative Courage (Part 1) | 184

Today on Crescendo Chat, I’m joined by Sean Martin — singer, guitarist, and producer behind The Quarantined.

Sean brings a perspective we don’t often hear on this podcast. He’s not a music educator. Instead, he’s a working musician, an Iraq War veteran, and a passionate advocate for mental health and creative authenticity.

Through his work with The Quarantined, Sean creates music that doesn’t hold back. His songs dive into real-life experiences—trauma, resilience, identity, and what it means to navigate the world today. That honesty has connected with a global audience, with hundreds of thousands of streams and millions of views across platforms.

But what makes this conversation especially powerful for us as educators is this: Sean understands, deeply, how music can carry people through the things they don’t yet have words for.

In this first part of our conversation, we explore Sean’s story—his journey through music, military service, and the moments that shaped who he is today. We also begin unpacking how music becomes a tool for processing life, not just performing it.

As you listen, think about your own students. The ones who walk into your classroom carrying more than they can say. This conversation might just shift how you see the role of music in their lives.

Connect with Sean: 

• Website – https://www.thequarantined.com/
• Facebook
• TikTok

Where to find me: 

Crescendo Community Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/crescendocommunity
Official Crescendo Page: https://www.facebook.com/CrescendoMusicEd/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/CrescendoMusicEd
Twitter: https://twitter.com/crescendomusic
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/debbie-o-shea-62a3741b/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/CrescendoDeb

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Introduction

Gday, I am Debbie O’Shea and this is the Crescendo Music Education Podcast – Episode 184.

This podcast is being recorded on the lands of the Turrbal people. I acknowledge them as the traditional owners of the land and pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging. They were the first music makers on this land.

Debbie O’Shea  

I’m so excited to be introducing this episode with Sean Martin, who is a singer, guitarist, producer and lead in The Quarantined. He’s an Iraq war veteran and mental health advocate. I just loved having a chat to him. He is all about the power of music to promote your own well being, your own creative resilience and being your authentic self and I just loved talking to him. I’m so glad to have met him, fascinating fellow. So I want you to sit back and enjoy part one of my talk to Sean Martin. 

Debbie O’Shea  

Today I would like to welcome Sean Martin to the Crescendo Music Education Podcast. Hello, Sean.

Sean Martin  

Hello Debbie. Thanks so much for having me.

Debbie O’Shea  

Well, I’m really looking forward to this conversation, I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, you just sound very interesting.

Sean Martin  

Of course, I take that as a compliment, yes.

Debbie O’Shea  

Oh, okay, good. Now to all of my usual listeners, they are on about music education, that’s sort of what I’m known for. But I think that what you have to talk about, there’s a lot of really good overlap with positive mental health, wellbeing, resilience. You just have a really interesting story. I would like to just get into some of the learnings that we can take from you into our classroom.

Sean Martin  

Sure, absolutely. I’d be very happy to help, I’m a big fan of music education.

Debbie O’Shea  

Sorry, say that again.

Sean Martin  

I said I’m a big fan of music educators. They’ve gotten me where I am today.

Debbie O’Shea  

It’s so needed. I wish everybody agreed. Anyway, I’m going to start with a little bio about you to give a bit of a background. So The Quarantined is a grunge, punk metal project led by you, Sean Martin, that combines aggressive music with socially critical lyrics addressing politics, trauma, addiction and modern life. Just as a little sidebar, there’s a lot going on politically in the US at the moment, you’re probably not short for content to work on are you?

Sean Martin  

Not at all.

Debbie O’Shea  

Anyway, back to the bio. The band formed through college and early radio play in 2010 to 2013 and built momentum with live shows in Southern California. Their single The End earned an independent music award nomination in 2016 and later releases like Antiquate Hate brought wider attention and radio play. In 2021 Sean expanded the project with solo work and successful crowdfunding, leading to new music, including Bedroom Inc and the 2025 album Aversion to Normalcy, which has gathered over 1 million streams on Spotify and continues to spark conversation over social media as well. Martin’s background, no I’ll just call you Sean. Sean’s background, Musicians Institute training and service as a US Army airborne infantryman, deeply influences your band’s message be free in your mind and when tyranny becomes the norm in order to survive you will need the aversion to normalcy, and advocacy for veterans’ mental health. The Quarantined continues to release purposeful music as an independent force in modern rock. Wow, okay. Also, 40 million views on TikTok I believe.

Sean Martin  

Yes, and growing.

Debbie O’Shea  

And you’re an Iraq war veteran and a passionate advocate for mental health and creative authenticity, and I believe you were featured in Rolling Stone.

Sean Martin  

I was, yes.

Debbie O’Shea  

That is just my little intro. What would you like to add to that snapshot of your work that you’d like to tell our listeners?

Music Production, Mentorship, and Creative Influence

Sean Martin  

So another very great part of doing what I do is working with some of the producers that I’ve worked with. In Musicians Institute I went to the audio engineering program and was able to take a few classes with people like T.J. Helmerich and Dave Isaac and a whole bunch of people from that era of the 80s, 90s, and 2000s who shaped modern recording techniques. They pass along a lot of the information from the older generations of what George Martin was doing with the Beatles, what Eddie Kramer was doing with all of his bands and some of the classic things, Tom and Chris Lord-Alge, passing along some of their techniques and stuff. But once I started to get professional, I worked with a guy named George “G-One” Archie, who was the audio engineer for Death Row Records. So Tupac and Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre and all of them back in the days when they were in Death Row Records, he was the audio engineer sitting in the room with them making all those records. So it was really awesome to sit and talk with him about the past and what he experienced, but also what it was like on his own as an independent music professional, taking his mixing and mastering knowledge into the future and creating a business for himself. That’s what really helped inspire me to go after the path I’m doing now. Also the next producer I work with, Nathan Yarborough, who worked with Aversion to Normalcy, did work with Halestorm, Alice in Chains, Korn, Evanescence, Apocalyptica. He’s done some of the really heavy, deep rock music that carries a lot of emotional weight. He was able to foster and facilitate this record, and it’s why it sounds as great as it does.

Debbie O’Shea  

Wow. Even I’ve heard of some of those names (laughs).

Sean Martin  

Yeah, yeah. So it’s been a magical journey. One thing I wanted to reference was Dave Isaac, if you don’t know, is the guy who inspired me to get this microphone right here the SM7B because he was Michael Jackson’s producer. He was the guy who helped produce Thriller and Bad. So much so when I was a kid like Bad was one of those records that I had as a kid, my mum would let me listen to just because it was that good and it was clean lyrics. So I use the SM7B for everything because of Dave Isaac. He was like, man, all he needed was the powerful mic that could carry powerful vocals to and then do really, really high stuff and really, really low volume stuff and in pitch. It can do it all, if you set it right. This is the microphone for that. So that’s why, just those little bits of orientation into the industry to set you up for success is really what that producer work did for me.

Debbie O’Shea  

Wow. Okay, I have two questions. One, very ordinary. So the microphone you’re using now, so if you’re not on YouTube, you can pop on and have a look, because there is a vodcast version. Is that the mic you use to record your vocals as well as podcast?

Sean Martin  

Yes, it is. When I’m working at home this is what I use. But for Aversion to Normalcy, we would use Telefunken microphones. We would use, oh, I believe I don’t want to speak at it, but I know Telefunken was one of them, and there was another condenser microphone. But these are dynamic microphones that are perfect for just localised area. If I was in a nice, big studio with walls that were treated and all that stuff, then I could bust out some of the condenser microphones there. I have some here behind me too, as well.

Debbie O’Shea  

Yeah, it’s a really nice clear sound for a podcast audio, so thank you.

Sean Martin  

Right. Yeah. I mean, that’s the beauty of it, the magic, yeah.

Music Teachers, Early Experiences, and the Power of Support

Debbie O’Shea  

But the other, more relevant actual question is it sounds to me when you’re talking about this, that when you’re looking at your journey, a lot of it is connected to people that you have met and known and learned from and collaborated with. That’s what is coming across to me, is that that’s a big part of your journey?

Sean Martin  

Yes, the holding each other up, the helping each other up, the moving each other along. And I will say, I started singing when I was four years old and how that came about was because my dad had died, and my mum needed something for kind of like an after school thing for all three kids. She found this community choir in Mendocino, which was about eight or so miles away from my hometown, in Fort Bragg in California. So from four until about nine or so years old, I was doing Mendocino Children’s Choir. We would go out and in the community and do performances. We would do performances of at that point in the early 90s or so, mid 90s, we would do, I always get it mixed up, but Richard Marks, I think, Everything I do, I do it for you. I don’t know if you know that song, everything I do (sings) you know that one? But we would do it as a little kid and I would try to do the little raspy vocals at the end, to make it just that much more sweet. So that’s the kind of thing we would do. So I was always involved in that from a very young age and had a very large appreciation for people able to translate music to kids, to give them that weird, silly thing that they can do that can turn into something that’s actually pretty good. So that was always my introduction to music from a very young age. I was given access to a lot of the techniques from a young age, because I wanted to know how to do those things. I wanted to know how to become a better singer. From seven I was introduced to the world of opera. So from there, as a young kid, learning how to project in a 5000 seat tent it’s very different than a 5000 seat theatre, you have to project harder in the tent, but you have to do it more correctly, because if you stress your vocals out too much, you can blow your vocals out. So learning those proper projection techniques from a very young age helped me later on in high school. As a freshman I would get the lead role in this school musical because I could project in the back, all the way to the back of the cotton auditorium. It’s because I had that training from a young age and it’s because of, I’m willing to bet, a lot of your listeners who train young people. So I am a product of people like all of y’all and deep from my heart, thank you for what you do.

Debbie O’Shea  

How traumatic to lose your dad at four. I am so sorry. And your mom with three kids. Oh, my goodness, but thank goodness, part of her strategy was to get you to do some singing in a choir.

Sean Martin  

Yeah.

Debbie O’Shea  

It just shows too the influence that those of us who teach young children, the influence that we can have down the track that we will never know.

Sean Martin  

Yes, yes, truly, some of the darkest moments in my life I was able to share with my music teachers, because I knew that they understood life just a little bit more. It wasn’t so cut and dry. They understood the grey areas, the weird stuff, just because it was maybe strange, they weren’t totally freaked out and appalled by it. So when I said I knew I could come to my teacher in middle school and when everything was crashing down in my world, and I’m wrestling with these thoughts of suicide and I’m wrestling with these thoughts of my friends. I know I want to be here for my friends, but all of them turn around and hating me, what is going on? I don’t understand what’s happening to me. I could take that to my music teacher, because I knew that they had at least a better understanding of the emotions of what I was going through to help at least advise me. So those kinds of things, like when it gets really off the rails. To me, music teachers were the ones who were able to help me through and not be crazy judgmental about everything that was going on and help me find a way. I found later on in my life, I didn’t have to land personal stuff on my music teachers, but they were still able to impart personal wisdom through music.

Debbie O’Shea  

Oh, I love that, and I do agree that we do have a deeper understanding of the weird.

Sean Martin  

Yeah, absolutely.

Debbie O’Shea  

That’s something that we sense, that we provide a safe place. That’s one of the things that draws me to music education and that just reflects back what I think most of us feel. Which leads me very nicely to gratitude. Because every podcast guest I ask about gratitude. It’s vital to not lose sight of those things for which you’re grateful. So right now, and later on I want to get into how you decided to go into music, having been a veteran, and deciding where you were going. I’d love to know why you went music. So let’s bookmark that. We’ll come back to that. But for now, just looking around, what are you most grateful for right now?

Creative Freedom and Finding a Path Through Music

Sean Martin  

Right now, I’m the most grateful for the system that I’ve been able to build here because of what it creates. It creates free and independent content creation. It enables me to sit down at three o’clock in the morning, record a song, singing not bother anybody else around me, because I can sing soft enough to where the microphone picks it up and I don’t have to blast it. So if I really want to, I can record an entire song at three o’clock in the morning, and nobody’s going to know any different, nobody’s going to be disturbed, and I’m going to have every single avenue to do everything I want with it. That, to me, is something that I have been dreaming about since 2012 and I understood that it was even a possibility.

Debbie O’Shea  

That is complete, I don’t know if I’m gonna use that word, I’ll say it though, complete creative freedom.

Sean Martin  

Yes, yes, that’s what enables it, so it’s not just the equipment. It’s not that I panthenaise the equipment, it’s what it enables me to do that’s what I’m most grateful for.

Debbie O’Shea  

That is amazing. Okay, and before we get into a deep dive on your thoughts on mental health and resilience, there’s so much we could get into, but I’d really like to know was there a trigger or more a series of events that steered you towards music when you were at this juncture in life, when you left the military.

Sean Martin  

Yeah, it was kind of deductive reasoning with I knew that I had to pick something. I was very disillusioned. Not only was I very disillusioned at the military, I was disillusioned at my country, I was disillusioned at my society and I just didn’t really trust anybody and I knew that I wouldn’t fit into the corporate structure. I knew that if I went back to a regular job and some kid around my age at that time, mind you, I’m 20, barely 21 at this point, some 20ish other person is telling me aggressively, go mop the floor. I’m going to mop the floor with them. I know that I have these issues. I know that the normal way of operating and just acting like everything was going to be fine was not how my life was going to go at this point. Too much crazy stuff had already happened and I knew that if I didn’t give myself a place to allow myself to have a voice, because I chose to forego it for so long in so many different avenues, in so many different areas that I felt like it was absolutely destructive because I muzzled myself. Once I told myself that I’m not going to be anybody’s slave. I’m not going to be, as the quote that I love the most from the Ray movie, from Ray Charles’s movie, is “Don’t let nobody make you no cripple”. For his mum to tell a boy going blind that, wow. So I took that to heart, because at the same time, I knew that I was broken, that it was very, very easy to let myself become a victim, let myself become a cripple, and let everybody treat me that way. But I wanted to learn to grow above what was just there and I knew that the only way I could get that complete attack to this entire thing was to have music be a constant thing that I go after, because it’s going to be a consistent self investment. The self investments are the ones that always pay dividends, not just sometimes.

Debbie O’Shea  

Wow, there’s so much in that. So first, your feelings of your voice, your voice has been foregone and you’ve muzzled yourself. So is that through the systems in which you worked basically? 

Sean Martin  

Yes, and because it was a necessary part of it, operation security, OpSec, is a thing that’s talked about all the time and you can’t have a political opinion when you’re in the military. It’s just not advised. So not that that was the thing, but really it also restricts, because of all of the relationships that you have are really actually based on rank. They’re not really actually relationships anyway. That’s the trickery part of the military, is that all of those relationships that you have with everybody, because they’re based on rank, they’re actually worthless. That’s the thing to remember, because they will drop it at the first sign of when you become not something that they need, that’s why they’re transactional. So when you understand that they’re all transactional, they have to be transitory and a lot of people rely on them to not be transitory, but they are.

Debbie O’Shea  

That’s quite sad, isn’t it?

Sean Martin  

It is. It’s one of those hard, hard realities. Because look, not every single person who was there for you, after you get out of the military is going to be there for you. The people who you think are going to be your lifelong friends might not end up being your lifelong friends. When you’re facing down all of this at 21 years old and feeling like it truly is you against the world. That’s to me, how could I not make music? What is the point of a revolution without dancing? That’s where my mentality is at. So I knew that overcoming everything that I had learned required some kind of artistry to demonstrate the humanity in it, because the systems around me I’m seeing are taking away our humanity or restricting our humanity. I want humanity to be free and independent and the best that I can do is to live that kind of a life and help others around me to slowly, incrementally incorporate it into their lives. That’s the best that I can do, the best I can hope for and with that music enables that, some other job is just notional. To me this is direct.

Debbie O’Shea  

I really like that. You are actually directly reaching thousands. In fact, hold on, what was the Tik Tok stat? Let me have a look. 40 million. 

Sean Martin  

It’s grown since then.

Debbie O’Shea  

Okay. You could argue you are directly reaching and hopefully positively influencing millions of people through music. You sure couldn’t do that if you were mopping the floor with your co worker in a corporate job,

Sean Martin  

Right. I mean, I feel like this is the perfect thing for what I’ve been living my life for, because before that school was not as important as art was. So when school became art, then I was really interested. But the rest of the time I was having to go through it in order to get to the art. In the end, that kind of translated into the rest of my life, because I would do Lyft driving in Los Angeles and it was all just waiting until I could get back to playing my guitar again. So music just creates a greater sense of enjoyment and awareness.

Debbie O’Shea  

Yes, enjoyment and awareness. You’re obviously finding that music is a tool for your own mental health, but you have expanded to being an advocate for music, being good for others mental health.

Sean Martin  

Yes, absolutely.

Debbie O’Shea  

And you do that through your music. Okay, bringing it back to my job. We sort of do that too. In fact, there are times when our system really gets me down. We have to work within those constraints and that kids have to jump through the standardised testing hoops and all that stuff but they can find that joy, authenticity, learn about relationships, tolerance, all of those things that we do if we’re doing our job properly in the music room. So it’s almost like although we are working within systems that restrict us, we’re quite free in our own way to craft our lessons in a way that is really positive for the children and hopefully, maybe, create a little island like you found in some of your music teachers at school. I think that that’s something we shouldn’t lose sight of.

Sean Martin  

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Sign-off

Thank you for joining me for this podcast. Don’t forget, you’ll find the show notes and transcript and all sorts of information on crescendo.com.au. If you’ve enjoyed the podcast or found it valuable, you might like to rate it on your podcast player and leave a review. I’d really appreciate it if you did. All I can be is the best version of me. All you can do is be the best you. We’ll meet again. I hope we will, bye.

Just for Laughs

As we know, laughter relieves stress. Don’t lose sight of the funny side of life. I used to play piano by ear, but now I use my hands.