Fortune Favors the Gold

Ex-Richmond rock band Gold Connections to play Bandito's with bold new album in tow.

Reconstituted. Revitalized. Emboldened. Pick whatever descriptor you want for the reboot of Gold Connections, the rock quartet led by Central Virginia expat Will Marsh. Just don’t miss the show at Bandito’s on Friday, Feb. 14, because Marsh’s band is hitting a whole new stride in 2025.

Starting over is never easy. Recommitting to a career in music in the artistically draining, financially post-apocalyptic age of streaming takes a special type of dedication. After going on hiatus and moving to New Orleans to work with Habitat for Humanity and pursue a master’s degree in writing at University of New Orleans, Marsh has come to understand that making music is more than a creative pursuit—it’s who he is.

“I can’t stop,” Marsh says. “Literally every day, I want to be a lot of things, but I just keep on being a musician the most consistently out of all those things.”

Since 2017, that drive has resulted in two EPs—the first recorded with friend and fellow former William and Mary student Will Toledo of Car Seat Headrest—as well as a pair of full-length albums, the latest of which is titled “Fortune.” As a songwriter, Marsh has always shown a knack for fashioning hooks and choruses worthy of mulling over, rewinding to hear again, and maybe even spontaneously etching somewhere with a ballpoint pen. But “Fortune,” which landed in late 2024, is evidence that his own pen is getting sharper.

The scenes he sets, from substance experimentation to episodes of heartbroken solitude, are more vivid. And his wry humor, which bubbles just below the surface, blends with cutting commentary on the state of the world to form elegantly ironic, observational sculptures. In “Stick Figures,” for example, he sings: “I dreamed of grad school and marriage /A young romantic, late-Obama era /Don’t get hung for a memory /It ain’t a crime like hurting private property.”

 

Then again, Marsh isn’t content to let his lyrics do the talking when it comes to the state of the music industry. On one hand, he’s been pleased to see acclaim for “Fortune” from outlets like Rosy Overdrive, Garden & Gun and KEXP. But he pulls no punches when it comes to disappointing press campaigns, the broken economics of touring, and the album’s biggest review to date, the one published by Paste Magazine that he says was somehow marked as sensitive content on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. “I just want people to know that’s how technology and art are interacting right now,” he adds. “That’s what we’re dealing with.”

Fortunately, Marsh’s double-down on Gold Connections has a staunch ally in his cousin and new creative partner, Fraser Wright. After moving to New Orleans in 2021, Marsh began spending more time with Wright, a guitarist and student of music at Loyola University New Orleans. When the COVID-19 pandemic’s pause on live performances began to ease, Wright was eager to hit the stage, and Marsh was inspired after discovering how much he and Wright had in common musically. “I can collaborate with this person,” he remembers thinking. “There’s an instinctual bond.”

Style Weekly spoke with Marsh and Wright about this new collaborative chapter, recording at Dockside Studios in New Orleans, their song named after Richmond’s own Strawberry Street in the Fan, and the general ups and downs of life as musician in 2025.

Style Weekly: How has the reception to “Fortune” been so far?

Will Marsh: [We were] initially feeling some frustration and having to re-strategize on the publicity front and just do it myself, essentially. We did a publicity campaign with a company, but that didn’t go super far. We had a couple of small pieces, but no album reviews or anything. I got really pissed and started sending vinyl to journalists and [direct messaging] people, emailing people, complaining on Twitter, calling people out, and then things actually started to come together… I believe this is our best album. I know that we’re not the only band experiencing this. Journalists are hurting, because I understand that publications are falling apart. Everyone here is hurting. But I was like, “What the f—k is going on? Can we talk about it at least?”

Speaking of the state of the music business, tell me about what happened on social media with the Paste review of “Fortune.”

Will: Twitter marked it as sensitive content. They were suppressing our Paste review, which is really strange… I think perhaps because the review is critical of algorithms and critical of far-right violence.

Fraser Wright: There’s so much chaos going on everywhere, and I think everyone is very frustrated. We’re also very frustrated for many of the same reasons. I’m just really excited to be on the road and playing all these songs that have a lot to say about the current state of things, and have people experience that.

Will: We’ve talked about things we’re frustrated with, but really we’re also very optimistic. Maybe optimistic isn’t the right word. Emboldened? We feel very emboldened right now and committed to what we’re doing and [to] doing it on the ground level, and really moved by all of the support and camaraderie that we’re experiencing.

“Fortune” represents a recommitment to music on your part. What does it take for an artist to devote themselves to this line of work in 2025?

Will: It’s a very existential question. Since the money isn’t really there in music anymore, it has to be a vocation. It has to be art—a dedication to art as something that is meaningful for me to take part in. Playing music is valuable to me, and it makes me feel good, but it’s also a gift to the world. I think a lot of artists might struggle with that idea, that they are providing a gift to other people, because maybe it seems pretentious or something. But that’s what keeps me going: the idea that we’re putting on a show in New Orleans, and we’re going to rehearse a lot, and we’re going to pay our rhythm section, and we might lose money, but ultimately, my friends are going to be there, and they’re excited about it, and we can have this experience together.

Fraser: It doesn’t really feel like much of a choice, no matter the circumstances. We’re going to be making music. I think about what made me inspired to pursue music, and the artists I have looked up to growing up and the inspiration I got from those people—I feel like it’s my responsibility to at least attempt to pass that on to someone else in some sort of way.

What went into your decision to study music at Loyola, Fraser?

Fraser: I went to middle school and high school in Central Oregon. Actually Will and the band Gold Connections at the time did a West Coast tour and played in our town… I was just getting super into guitar. And then after high school, I moved around a lot. I wanted to go to school, and I wanted to study music, and Loyola gave me the most money. I’d never been to New Orleans. I wasn’t super-thrilled about the idea, but it was cheap and I could study what I thought I wanted to. I started the fall after the beginning of the pandemic, so everything was shut down. There was no live music. I couldn’t really play with anyone. And it was like that for a year and a half, maybe, where I desperately wanted to play with people, be in a band or start on a project or something.

Will: When I moved here and we would get brunch and stuff, I was starting my MFA program—just in grad school and working. It felt like almost a whole year passed, and I was still writing music, but I wasn’t like, “Oh, now I’m gonna start up the band again.” And then there was this turn in our relationship, where the idea of starting up Gold Connections happened.

Fraser: The timing was perfect, because I was super-frustrated at not having anyone to play with and not being in a band, which is what I’ve always wanted to do growing up. Then Will starting to actively look for a band, and us hanging out more—it just worked out great.

 

Beyond the family connection, what drew you to Will’s music?

Fraser: I’ve always been a fan since the first EP, knowing about it being his cousin. I’ve listened to those songs so much since they’ve come out. I was in middle school. Those songs are mixed into all the other artists I was super into as I was starting to get more serious about music. I’m obviously a big fan of his songwriting. I think his lyrics are very perceptive and humorous in a clever way. I always really appreciate when writers do that, and they’re just fun songs to play. They’re very catchy, and they’re very well written… Knowing the songs themselves are solid pushes me to be more sincere in my playing.

What drew you to Fraser’s guitar playing?

Fraser: The audition was like, “I’m gonna play the riff to ‘Bad Intentions.’ Can you play it back?” That kind of thing. He did very well with that [laughs] and could play it better than I could. So that’s a great foundation—just being able to play the guitar very well. The next thing that really inspired me was [that] I’d sent him a demo of a song, and then he sent me an idea, a soundscape thing, like, “What if we put this into it?” It sounded kind of like U2, or like “Monster”-era REM—kind of noisy stuff that I always like to experiment with…

Very early on, I was like, “This is a guy who I can trust,” and a lot of trust is me being ready for that. There have been artists who wanted to collaborate with me in the past, and I just wasn’t ready for that for different reasons. But [now there’s] this feeling that this person is working at a level of excellence that is going to motivate me, and he’s also my cousin. I was emboldened to collaborate with him [by] this level of musicality and creativity, and then a basic level of familiarity.

I know a handful of the tracks on “Fortune” are from sessions that took place in Charlottesville in 2020. What was it like recording the rest at Dockside Studios in Louisiana?

Fraser: I’m a big gear nerd, as most guitarists are, and having access to all that was so much fun. I feel like I finally had the tools to execute the ideas I had in my mind, which was really satisfying. And also a confidence booster, where I can trust what I’m hearing in my head, given how great everything turned out.

Almost all the stuff I played was through this ‘60s Silvertone amp, which is the same amp that Jack White plays. I’m a huge Jack White fan. Growing up being a huge White Stripes fan and seeing that amp there was so much fun… A couple of the songs, like “I Know” and “Hurricane,” have these crazy soundscapes going on in the background. That was really fun, layering all these guitar pedals and then putting them in weird orders—playing the guitar in ways that I usually don’t and pushing myself to do something different. [On “Strawberry Street”] I play my guitar with a violin bow… It added this really spooky, kind of of vibe, which I think adds to the song.

“Strawberry Street” has such a unique structure and mood. It makes the street itself in Richmond seem uncanny. What were the circumstances around writing it?

Will: I wrote the first part of it a pretty long time ago when I was going through a breakup… I was spending a lot of time hanging out on Strawberry Street and sitting on the benches there, smoking cigarettes and feeling a very deep sense of melancholy and loss. But also listening to a lot of Syd Barrett and “Meddle”-era Pink Floyd, wanting to tap into that kind of drifty, psychedelic, Gothic vibe that matched up with my interior experience of that street.

How has the feeling of coming back to Virginia changed during your time in New Orleans? 

Will: I come back to Virginia maybe twice a year, summer and winter, for maybe two or three weeks. I’ll drive up to Virginia and then back to Louisiana. Richmond feels like a home to me. And Charlottesville—my parents’ house is there, and that feels like a home to me as well. But as soon as I left New Orleans this winter, I missed it. As I was driving, I already missed New Orleans. I definitely feel more at home here than ever before. There’s all the people who live here, all my friends in the writing community and the music community. I’m just really grateful to live here. I love New Orleans, and I think that feeling has developed over the past couple years out of conflict. I do feel a sense of conflict with New Orleans that is more real—that you can’t experience with, like, a strip mall. That’s really engaging to me. That’s what keeps me here.

To hear and purchase “Fortune,” visit gold-connections.bandcamp.com. Gold Connections will perform at Banditos on Friday, Feb. 14. For more information, visit goldconnectionsmusic.com. To support the band’s current tour, visit indiegogo.com/projects/fortune-25-tour.

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