Backstage Pass with... Todd Martin
Getting flashed and beat up at shows—the fabulous life of Todd Martin
By: Nicole Boutin
The past year or so has seemed to be the time for male singer/songwriters to take center stage, pushing out Boy Bands and Britney Spears. From John Mayer, Jason Mraz, Ryan Cabrera and Howie Day, these guys are everywhere and often compared and contrasted to each other. The boy-with-guitar craze is almost overwhelming, even for someone like me who has a slight fetish for this musical genre, and yet out comes Todd Martin. Originally from Philadelphia and now out of Boston, he is a breath of fresh air in this music scene.
What struck me first about Todd Martin were his vocals. His voice is a combination of husky, low chords that capture the listener from the very first line of lyrics. He also uses a series of pedals to loop his guitar and vocals, layering them to create a rich, deep sound that surpasses a single vocalist and guitar. I was lucky enough to talk to Todd Martin over the phone, and I got a chance to hear about his influences, his plans for the future, singer/songwriter piano-polka and getting flashed by 50-year-old women:
Tuned In: Well, let’s just get started here. What made you want to venture down the singer/songwriter path?
Todd Martin: I think it probably started in High School when I started playing guitar. It was just a fun way to express myself at first. I was always listening to guys like Stephen Kellogg, Matt Nathanson, and John Mayer in the early days, and that kind of thing really interested me. Just the way they are able to express so much emotion and feeling in a song. They could just be sitting there with a guitar, not even hooked up to an amp or anything. Everything that I write is pretty personal to me, so it’s good to kind of get it out. A little bit of a venting mechanism.
TI: Well I was going to say, after listening to one of
your CD’s “How It is That I’m Alone”, it came across to me that a lot of your
music, especially on that CD, is about relationships. Is that what you usually
write about? Is that your most inspiring
topic?
TM: Yeah, it definitely affects me the most in my writing. It is easier for me to write things about something that is deep and dear to me, which is a lot of times, a relationship, friends or a girlfriend, something that is close. I’m trying harder to make people up! But it doesn’t seem to come as easy. The one thing about making people up is nobody really gets angry at you for writing a song about it.
TI: That is a good point; you won’t have an ex-girlfriend calling you up being like “you wrote that song about me!”
TM: Seriously! I could get into trouble if I take it down the wrong path. I definitely find it easier to write a song about something personal to me. It kind of flows naturally that way, opposed to me narrating a story from something else that I see. It’s not that it doesn’t happen that way, but 75 percent of my songs are probably about me.
TI: This might be a little bit repetitive, but how would you describe your music to a person that has never heard of you?
TM: If I had to describe it without using any other artist, I’d say contemporary folk to like a folk-rock kind of thing. I do try to focus most on story telling, so I could be like singer/songwriter. But not a lot of people know what that means; it could mean so many things. You could be a singer/songwriter that plays piano and writes Polka-ballads, there are so many different ways it could go. So I usually just say I’m a singer/songwriter playing acoustic-folk-rock.
TI: Have you started to notice a growing fan base for yourself? Because I’ve certainly been hearing your name a lot lately.
TM: Yeah, I definitely think things are rolling. I hooked up with a couple of great people last year, almost a year ago last month. Some people that have become good friends of mine since then have really helped me out musically just like as mentors to me. I first played a show with Stephen Kellogg back in February. I was a fan—I went to shows for years before I got a chance to play with him or even meet him. He’s a great guy, he helped mentor me through some decision-making processes that I probably wouldn’t have come to quick conclusions on, and he kind of guided me through some of that stuff with his experiences. Things have been building really quickly. I moved to Boston a couple years ago and started dedicating all kinds of time to making this work. It’s good that I’m seeing results and it’s great that you’re hearing my name a lot.
TI: I noticed when you were playing that you used the looping pedals. How’d you get into that?
TM: My buddy that I played with in the Philadelphia area, his name is Brad Saville, he’s the guy that I’ve grown up playing with. He first started using one after he saw a Howie Day show, and I saw him using it, and thought “that’s gotta be the coolest thing I’ve ever seen” so I started using it a couple months after I guess. And I’m actually kind of a gear head with electronics and stuff like that. I had a home studio and I just took a lot of electronics and the theory and concepts behind how they work together and kind of made up my own custom pedal boards using one of the loop stations, so I made it for vocals and guitar and got hooked on it right away and kind of started writing with intentions of using that in my performance. So it can be used as a doubling mechanism so I don’t come across as just a single guy with a guitar, it’s more of a rounded out sound. Its fun, it’s been a work in progress. Every time I have extra time I change my board around and add a couple new pedals. So much fun, I’m kind of a geek about it.
TI: It seems really complicated. I always figured you had to have really good, hand, eye, singing coordination to use it.
TM: It takes a little bit of time to develop, but once you get it, it’s just a tool really. Like learning to drive your car! Once you understand the feel of all the pedals at your feet, it comes together. I don’t want to go around saying it’s so easy, but it really isn’t that difficult.
This thing is so cool (talking about his recorder) its like a little Olympus voice recorder I actually carry it around all the time, so if I come up with a melody or set of lyrics that I want to work on later and I don’t have access to my guitar, I just whip this thing out and start singing into it, get stared at in crowds, its great.
TI: That’s awesome—I bet that makes a few people turn their heads.
TM: Yeah like “that guys singing into his phone!”
TI: What a weirdo!
TM: What a wacko!
TI:
I’ll have to keep an eye out for that when I’m in Boston, if I see some guy just
randomly singing I’ll be like… “Todd Martin!”
What are some other artists that have been particularly exciting or fun or unexpected that you shared a stage with?
TM: I’m a big fan, and I’ve come to know him since then, of my buddy Syd. He plays with a band, incredible live performance from those guys. Himself, he’s a singer/songwriter and a talented arranger. His guys and his band, they are studio musicians, and they nail every part. It’s just exciting to see them play. Some of my other most favorite artists, they gotta be like, Damien Rice, local acts Syd’s one of my favorite local. Nation, Damien Rice has got to be one of the most captivating guys around, he’s amazing.
TI: Ok, if you could pick anybody, who would be your dream artist or band to go on tour with?
TM: Ummmmm, that’s tough! I think it would have to be Lindsay Lohan. Nooo, I think I would fit best with someone like Matt Nathanson—he’s a little bit more national than some of the other people that I’ve played with. I played with him once, not too long ago. Amazing time. It seemed like our fan bases could blend, 100%. Probably Matt Nathanson, because like I said he’s one of my favorite artists and he’s definitely got a great thing going and I think it’d fit really well. That’s my number one I think.
TI: What’s the craziest thing that’s ever
happened to you while playing a show? And I’m only asking this because when I
saw you play at Bates College when you opened for Stephen Kellogg and the
Sixers, I witnessed you getting attacked by the guys—shoved into walls and
smooshed in a pig pile.
TM: Yeah those guys are nuts! Stephen is all of about 100 pounds but he can just throw you around. I wouldn’t want to be caught in some rugby scrum with him, he’s an animal! The craziest thing that’s happened to me? Well, anything with those guys usually turns into a great time and a little bit off the wall, but um…
TI: Any bras thrown at you?
TM: No, not bras…I had, well this is kind of a bad story but I think it was this time last year, kind of a work party that we went to, one of my friends work parties, just to stop in and say hi cause we didn’t get a chance to get him out to a show. We had a show pop up the next day and he came out and I think he brought his mom or his friends mom, or something like that, and by the end of the night…no wait, I guess her work party was there…yeah I’m kind of piecing this together as I go as I try to recall it. In some way she was just hammered. She’s like a 50 year old woman or something like that, and all of a sudden, my buddy and I were playing, Brad and I were playing, and closing out the night, all of a sudden she’s just dancing around flashing us, RIGHT in front of us, I mean, God love her, she had a lot of confidence and apparently loved to show herself off. It was pretty crazy getting flashed by a 50-year-old woman, and to top it all off it was my friend’s mom or something.
TI: Aww, your poor friend.
TM: It was my friend’s friend's mom, somewhere along the way. He came up later and was like...”Sorry about my mom.” And I didn’t know it was her at first and I was like…oh man! And that’s happened like, once…twice or something like that. I get thrown around by Kellogg constantly. That guys an animal.
Getting beaten up by Stephen Kellogg or not, Todd Martin is certainly a singer/songwriter that is standing strong on his own two feet. Keep an ear out for him, because he is someone you don’t want to miss. Oh and ladies over 50, don’t hold back around Todd.
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| Little Todd Martin |