An interview with Jeff Martin

Carol meets up with Jeff Martin to talk about his debut album...

Sidling through the upstairs door into an empty pre-gig Whelan's swept with the air of a deserted ballroom, it strikes as most appropriate given the circumstances. Jeff Martin is playing later in support to Dublin's van-guitar merchants, Redneck Manifesto, having launched his debut album only weeks previous. 'Still' is a collection of quiet but stark life-examinations, the sonic equivalent of shadowy reflections in a late-night mirror, with moments of bitter-sweetness that sound like the morning after. Now we sit on the central balcony with a bird's eye view of the bare stage as the 24 year old songwriter outlines his 'of' and 'about'.

Although the album is mostly bare-boned acoustic, Jeff Martin is wary of the increasingly restrictive 'singer-songwriter' tag: 'The term singer-songwriter just brings to mind an A-minor, C, G, D strumming person singing in a Bob Dylan accent about their soul and their spirit. I love Bob Dylan, I love Neil Young, Nick Drake? but I came from a band background. It was always bands that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.'

It is too easy to pigeonhole up and coming artists in any case - what begins as a handy reference point becomes a hanging albatross - but where solo songbirds are concerned, the perceived sphere of influence must feel like a spastic sphincter; everyone who plays a quietly picked guitar bears Nick Drake-Dylan-Buckley as a sole mentor and is possessed of a record collection that peters out after 1972. So often though, that simple marriage of guitar and voice arises out of frustration or impatience - more a product of default than design: 'I was a guitar player originally. You feel so precious about something and if you're in a band and you're working on writing songs for 2 years and the band breaks up, everyone walks away with nothing. If you get to record a CD you're very lucky, but most bands don't. You bust your ass rehearsing twice a week and thinking about it all the time. For a band to break up because someone wants to go to Australia or because the guitarist is not going out with the singer any more, all that stuff happens, and it's just too hard to put that amount of work into something and get nothing back.'

Admittedly, when a song is pared down to its basics, it may take a learned ear to note the structural similarity to, say, Slayer, but the influence may all the same be there. 'I'm going to see Slayer on the 19th. I went to see them last year - it was the best gig of the year.' And then there are the skeletons clogging up all our closets. 'Michael Jackson, great in its day. You can hear that in the music of course, it's the dance moves I think.'

In Jeff's guitar style particularly, there is a keen rock influence - he plays the sort of steely and strictly controlled arpeggio riffs that one can easily imagine being played on a Telecaster. It lends a distinctive edge to his sound. 'I listen to a huge amount of rock music. It's what I always loved and I was a big metal fan. I still am to a point. You see I always wanted to be in a band, play in a band, but I always thought it should be rooted in a song. I always try and write songs so that they can be expanded out, it could be a rock song. It's all the package, the accent it's sung in, how loud your distortion pedal is. If a song is a good song it can be conveyed in many different ways.' There is also the factor of 'filling out' the parts of a tune that might be played by other instruments in a band arrangement. 'I also try to write things a little more intricate and it does sound fuller because I'm also conscious of the fact that it's on its own.'

Still, Jeff Martin has chosen to pursue this lonesome road and when asked if a band might be a likely development, he stands firm. 'Jeff Martin and his backing band' are not likely to be hitting a town near you at any point in the near future, preferring to augment instrumentally as the individual song requires. 'I used a French Horn on a song because I heard it in my head and I thought it would work, but you can't be bringing 100s of people along to a gig just to bring them on for 30 seconds. Live I would like to do things a little differently in the future. It gets a bit boring. I'm a lot more relaxed on the stage when I have people on as well. It takes some of the pressure off.'

On the point of live performance, the Jeff Martin story thus far subverts the 'norm'. 'The whole live thing wasn't necessarily that important to me. The record was sort of recorded by default. I was just recording it for my use and then it turned out that we would be releasing it. Normally you start gigging and then record a record, I did it the other way round.' This unusual course has resulted in his arriving on the city's live scene as a more complete entity than is expected of newcomers but, by Jeff's own admission, many of the milk teeth have yet to be cut. 'My live experience is virtually zero. I've done 8 or 9 gigs in my entire lifetime. You're very vulnerable when you're up there on your own with just guitar. I find the hardest thing is the in-between song banter. All you can do is try and do your best each time. It takes time, time and practice.'

'Still' has been released on Casino Gravity, a new independent label in which Jeff has whole involvement. 'I think it's terrible what has happened to a lot of bands. The way they've been squeezed by labels trying to turn them into something they're not and then the market, if you can call it that, changes and they don't see a place for you any more.' So with clarity of purpose and sufficient modesty to continually develop his craft, it is easy to see how Jeff Martin will deliver on the early promise shown on his debut release. 'That's my definition of success. To make a record that you're really proud of and I don't think most people do in their lifetimes.'

Jeff Martin is, sure, another young man with something to say, but he is surprisingly headstrong and mature about his expressive metier and his forward trajectory. When questioned on his primary motivation in songwriting, he is concise. 'It's a way to document things. I very much like to document things that happen in my life. You see things that went by. No one is the same person they were 2 or 3 years ago.' As to the subject matter itself, 'Experiences. Every day stuff that happens. You try to put your own spin on it. I try to disguise it a little bit, to protect myself, not to leave it wide open, and also to make it more interesting for the listeners.' Interestingly, to date, he has never written a love song. 'It's such an easy subject matter to write about that I very much stay clear of it. I think you ought to be seriously in love to do it well, which I haven't been to this point.' Altogether now, Awh!

Girls, you heard it here first.

Carol Keogh

Click here to download Jeff Martin's song 'Tired' (MP3 & WMA formats) for free on CLUAS.