MARTIN SEXTON

Tell me a story / Let me bum a smoke and we can chat awhile...

Armed with little more than a guitar, a suitcase full of heartfelt songs, and one of music's most truly stunning voices, Martin Sexton has spent the Nineties winning over fans across the land and doing it the old-fashioned way. His breathtaking live performances have already been hailed by critics across America, including the New York Times' Jon Pareles, who declared that "the singer/songwriter jumps beyond standard folk fare on the strength of his voice, a blue-eyed soul man's supple instrument, adding that his unpretentious heartiness... helps him focus on every soul singer's goal: to amplify the sound of the ordinary heart."

An uninhibited performer, ardent storyteller, and genuinely original singer and guitarist, the Boston-based troubadour is now poised to release his brilliant Atlantic debut, THE AMERICAN. This extraordinary collection matches the fire of his gigs with an inventive, intricate production that only serves to accent this eclectic artist's many gifts. His renowned vocal pyrotechnics and equally impressive guitar work whether bashing out acoustic power chords or letting fly with cool jazz swing like Wes Montgomery are in plain sight on tracks like the achingly plaintive "Where It Begins," the turbulent "Beast In Me," or the album's mournful closer, "Way I Am."

"Whether it's boogie-woogie jazz or the blues, soul or rock n roll or folk, it's all American music," Sexton says. "Because of where I've been travelling, I am constantly living and breathing American things. At first I thought, I can't just call it THE AMERICAN, but really, everything about it is American. It's about the diners and the music, the places and the people."

Rock and roll fueled my dreams / You know rock and roll fueled my dreams...

A native of Syracuse, New York, Sexton absorbed the classic sounds of Seventies radio, from The Beatles to Stevie Wonder to Led Zeppelin (who led him towards blues legends like Howlin' Wolf and Willie Dixon). He got his first guitar at 14, a Sears & Roebuck acoustic, and played in a couple of high school bands whose names are best forgotten. The early Eighties saw Martin crooning Huey Lewis covers in a skinny-tie, New Wave-flavored wedding band (shades of Adam Sandler!). Eventually, he realized it was time to find his own voice, so the 22-year-old aspiring rock n roller packed his bags and moved to Boston. Like so many young artists before him, he took the first job that would have him: waiting tables in a cafe. Serving cakes and cappuccinos was not his destiny, however, and it was upon his termination from the coffeehouse that Sexton finally had his epiphany.

"I had been fantasizing about doing what I had seen other people doing, which was playing music on the subway and out on the streets of Harvard Square," he recalls with a wry laugh. "And so finally I had the incentive to do that cause I needed to pay my rent."

Martin began busking the Beantown streetcorners and passing the hat at innumerable cafes and clubs. He started writing songs at a furious pace and developing his distinctive vocal style. He worked constantly, but the good news was, people were listening.

"It was a pretty slow and steady build," he says. "I'd do subways and then I'd have a gig at a coffee house, but I'd be building my mailing list and selling my tapes on the street out of my case."

The steady performing brought Sexton closer to the heart of his music, as he found his artistic persona, both as a songwriter and as a singer/guitarist. Even better, Sexton discovered that he was actually making a living as a working musician.

"That brought me a whole lot of joy," he muses, "the fact that I never had to get up and go to some job ever again. That was such a great feeling."

Those hard-earned bucks would soon come in handy, as Sexton decided it was high time to make a record. He managed to scrape together 800 dollars and some borrowed recording gear, and in November of 1990, he and a few friends gathered in an attic space outside Boston to cut his first CD, IN THE JOURNEY. The self-released disc went on to sell over 25,000 copies, mostly from the stage after one of Sexton's sterling sets. The record, as well as his captivating live performances, cemented Sexton's rep as one of New England's leading musical lights, as proven by his bounty of Boston Music Awards, including Outstanding Male Vocalist and Outstanding Male Songwriter, not to mention the National Academy of Songwriters 1994 Artist Of The Year award.

"You know," Sexton grins, "that was the best 800 bucks I ever spent."

1996 saw Sexton release his first full-fledged studio recording, BLACK SHEEP, on the the Hub-based indie, Eastern Front Records. His increasingly-packed gigs began to take on the fiery fervor of an evangelical revival. Acoustic Guitar raved about Sexton's remarkably visceral live shows, calling the singer "a master of dynamics, reducing a room to silence with his blustering baritone, then teasing that silence with a fluttering falsetto... Set lists are out of the question. Spontaneity is the rule of the game."

"I go into a different world on a good night, which is most nights," Sexton says of his onstage life. "It's almost like I get high. My manager refers to it as 'getting my heaven on.' But you can see it in my eyes by the middle of a show if I'm really into it. It's kind of a blank stare, but yet very much in the present as well."

"It's totally based on energy," he adds, "like the energy coming out of me to the audience and vice versa. When I'm getting that energy back from them, it's almost like sex. It's these two parties engaged in this dance, and one reaction creates another which creates another which creates another, and it becomes this whirling dervish of activity."

Amidst rave reviews, the troubadour took to the highways and byways of North America in his Suburu Justy loaded with guitars and boxes of records and dirty underwear.

"It's the cheapest car you can get," he laughs, remembering his trusty steed. "It's got a three-cylinder motor in it and gets like, 80-miles-to-the-gallon. I drove it all over the country, through Texas and Tennessee and out to New Mexico and California, and I literally wore the motor down.

"Y'know Johnny Appleseed?," Sexton continues. "Well, it was like the seed-planting mobile. I went out and played for a few people here, a few people there, and planted the seeds. Then when I came back the next time, each time it would grow."

Now Sexton is ready with a full crop of expressive and poignant songs. THE AMERICAN sees Sexton melding blues, folk, soul, country, and rock n roll, resulting in songs that are a rare breed, indeed: intelligent, emotional, witty, and utterly endearing. Produced by legendary producer/session guitarist Danny Kortchmar (Jackson Browne, Don Henley, James Taylor), THE AMERICAN captures the vibrancy of Sexton's performances, while at the same time expanding and experimenting with the intimate spaces within his songs (check out the Spaghetti western-bossa nova and "Riders In The Sky" prairie harmonies of the striking title cut).

"Kootch didn't try to change what I do," Sexton says of his producer. "What he did was get the best and most emotional takes. We did it the old-fashioned way, going until we got the right take, however many takes it took.

"He was the one guy who I thought was going to let me do what I needed to do," he continues. "I wanted to warn the guy I was going to work with that I have pretty specific ideas and Kootch just stopped me in mid-sentence and said ïThat's cool. I'll hold your coat.' He was a real groovy guy and I could tell that I'd get along with him. He gave me the free rein I needed, and at times it was just enough rope to hang myself with."

THE AMERICAN is clearly Sexton's show, with the musician taking on all vocal, guitar, and bass parts. The newly fleshed-out arrangements featuring Joe Bonadio (drums, percussion), Cliff Carter (B3, piano, keys), and John Widgen (pedal steel), not to mention some additional guitar work from Kortchmar showcase the power of Sexton's melodies. The basic tracks were laid down simply, with Martin singing and playing guitar accompanied only by Bonadio; the vocals throughout THE AMERICAN all come from those sessions, so its actually kind of a live record, according to Sexton.

"Songs like 'Candy' and 'Glory Bound,' I'd always envisioned them being what they are on this record," he notes, "which are, you know, real rock n roll songs."

Lyrically, Sexton's potent and poignant stories traverse an American landscape both heartwrenchingly real and vividly imagined, an America of endless highways and abandoned railroads, of cowboys and Indians, streetwalkers and holy fools, of beautiful women and rock n roll dreams. Amazingly, a great deal of Sexton's finely-etched tales of the heartland are as honest and true as his music.

"I'd probably say 90% of it is from personal hand-to-hand combat," Martin says. "I've lived through all kinds of stuff. A song like ïLove Keep Us Together' is directly about getting my girlfriend pregnant when we were teenagers, and living through that, and having a son now."

Sexton's natural straightforwardness pervades THE AMERICAN, a sense of authenticity and unadulterated passion that marks him as one of our most exciting songwriters. And as if his deeply literate word-spinning werent enough, the creative musical palette and charismatic performance of his album stand as testimony to the strengths of this powerful artist. With THE AMERICAN, Martin Sexton is truly glory bound...

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