Bio from Rolling Stone

Billboard
By Timothy White

Martin Sexton’s Spiritual America

Martin Sexton has found that before one declares that faith is the answer, it’s best to first discover the question.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been a Catholic,” says the fervent singer-songwriter, whose commanding major-label debut, “The American," is due Oct. 6 from Atlantic Records. “When I was a kid living at home, my family would say 10 decades of the rosary each night – a decade is an ‘Our Father,’ 10 ‘Hail Marys,’ and a ‘Glory Be to the Father’ – and my mom would hold the rosary as we would chant them off every night between supper and dessert.”

While Sexton feels that he’s outgrown the dogmas and the ritual of the religion he was raised with, its influence is so strong that it inspired his favorite song on “The American.” An allegorical tale of a search for purpose and meaning, “My Maria” is based on an incident from his childhood in Syracuse, N.Y.

“It’s a real story,” he explains, “about my old parish, Our Lady of Lourdes, and a preacher there who wanted to take down a statue of Mary in the church. This man, the pastor of the parish, resented the statue and didn’t want it so prominently placed in the church because he felt it was a distraction from the Holy Trinity. In the song, she is gone, and I’m lamenting that. To give it a little drama, I don’t allude to the fact that the parish rose up against this and the people won out in the end.”

What provides the song’s greatest drama, however, is Maria’s ability to accept and forgive any scorn or sacrilege expressed in her presence, particularly the willful disregard of a delinquent altar boy: “In your glance / Recall my shady days of youth / Stealing altar wine and microphones / Not so blindly fueling my need / As rock and roll fueled my dreams…. / Back then you saw me as this child / In great need of the wildest sin / How sweet your grace I stumbled in.”

As he reflects on the odd allure of the banished religious icon, the song’s author has become a busker singing in the streets. “I know you see the silence on the sidewalk / And the anger in the street / All the voices of these children coming up to my feet.” And this corner troubadour wonders if there’s a symbol left in our culture comparable to Maria, an inspirational figure willing to wait patiently for people to locate the faith in themselves that defines the beatific support she extends.

Surveying all the legends, whether religious or secular, that explain us as people, the American in the title track of Sexton’s album realizes through this depoliticized patriotism (“Uncertainty I love you / Spacious skies I love you / I’ll always find new ways to love you”) that unless we hold on to our beliefs in ideas bigger than we are, we can’t learn as individuals how to live up to the unfathomed best of our own mysterious potential. Even his libido is explored on tracks like “Candy,” “The Beast in me,” and “Where it Begins,” which exemplify the sex-as-salvation credo that’s made eroticism the nation’s current mass-media statement.

Ingeniously, all the beautifully diverse songs on the album refer back to one another in spirit. The lyrics of “My Maria” ultimately relate that there’s wisdom in any worthy dream, be it religious myth or rational motivations, and that grave doubt is the crisis that faith requires in order to flourish: “Oh My Maria / How you stood for strength and sanity / Now is there someone poking holes in thee / I see now why you called me near / Maria my song can you hear… / I sing for my Maria.”

But the miracle of “The American” and its artistic victory isn’t merely in its ability to convey the cogent emergence of the finest new male singer/songwriter of recent memory, but also in its excellence in showcasing a vocalist of amazing proficiency and sensual conviction.

“He didn’t make a big point of going into the project,” says producer Danny Kortchmar, “but Martin made it clear almost immediately that his incredible vocals were the best musical instruments on the album. Every note is his. On ‘My Maria’ he did all the church choir backing vocals in about 10 minutes, and then he sang the solo that sounds exactly like an electric guitar. On other songs he came out with three-part harmonies that sounded like the Sons of the Pioneers and a solo yodel that was perfectly in pitch. Most phenomenal of all is when he sings like this in live shows. He stops the clock, and you can hear a pin drop in the largest audience.”

“Basically,” says Sexton, who sheepishly confirms that people have come to him with tears in their eyes after his concerts, “I think it’s still possible to communicate feelings and ideas with music that you can’t get out in any other way anymore in this society.”

Sexton was born on March 2, 1966, at Community General Hospital in Syracuse and lived on South Geddes Street. He was one of 12 kids born to Tom Sexton, an office-equipment salesman, and his homemaker wife, the former Ginny Corcoran. His parents met in the neighborhood, his father “a working-class guy who served in the Navy” and his mother a scion of former city mayor Thomas Corcoran.

“My father’s father, who had a rich baritone like my dad, sang in pubs in Syracuse,” says Sexton. “As for my other grandfather, when I got into trouble back to Corcoran High School, which was named for him, I’d have to go to the principals office and sit under Grandpa’s portrait.” Sexton says his worst school-days infraction was shattering a window with an arrow “on a dare” during archery practice in gym class.

“I didn’t go to college,” he relates. “ I stayed in Syracuse after high school and joined a band called By Design. I had an awful haircut, wore a skinny tie, and sang the hits of the ‘80s by Huey Lewis and a-ha. I had to get out of Syracuse because it’s a wonderful city but just too isolated.”

He followed an older brother to Boston and took a job waiting tables at the Café de Paris on Arlington Street. When off duty, he strummed his Stratocaster through a Mouse amp in Harvard Square. A 1992 self-made album of demos, “In the Journey,” sold some 25,000 copies; it helped earn Sexton several Boston Music Awards and the National Academy of Songwriters’ 1994 artist of the year award. “Black Sheep,” his 1996 studio follow-up on the Eastern Front Label, sold 30,000 units.

“The American” deserves to make Sexton a household fixture and an ecstatic example of the everyday power of faith.

“I started out singing in the schoolyard of Our Lady of Lourdes, a joyful thing,” he says. “And I still sing the same way, I guess. I sing for the joy.”

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The Boston Phoenix
by Tamara Wieder

Sexton Appeal

You know you’ve made it as a musician – at least on a critical level – when the New York Times calls your voice a “blue-eyed soul man’s supple instrument.” Or when Billboard announces that you’re “the real thing, people, a star with potential to permanently affect the musical landscape and keep us entertained for years to come.”

And yet despite such accolades, Martin Sexton has remained a mystifyingly small presence on the music scene since his collection of self-produced demos, In the Journey, was released in 1992. Though his ensuing albums – 1996’s Black Sheep (Eastern Front Records), 1998’s The American, and 2000’s Wonderbar (both on Atlantic) – all won praise, and Sexton has his share of rabidly loyal fans, his name remains largely unrecognized in the mainstream music world.

It’s a shame, really. Martin Sexton arguably has one of pop, rock, and folk’s most stunningly versatile voices. Add to the mix able guitar work and heartfelt songs, and you’ve got a musician who deserves a bigger audience than he’s found thus far.

Q: When did you first know that you’d be a musician?
A: I think I was probably about nine singing in the bathtub, making up songs, splashing the rhythms. That’s when I knew.

Q: Did you ever think you’d be able to make a living making music?
A: I dreamt about it. I remember thinking more seriously about being a musician when I was, like, 15; I had a guitar, and I used to run home from school to listen to Stevie Wonder’s Talking Book record. I just discovered that somehow or other, I think in the basement. It was my older brother’s record or something.

Q: How long did it take to go from that to finally being able to make a living making music?
A: Oh, that was a pretty long road. I was just out of high school, and was working a job, and it wasn’t until I moved to Boston and I started singing in the streets. I think I was about 23, and got canned from my job at the Café de Paris on Arlington Street –

Q: Wait you got fired?
A: Oh, I don’t know. I Just didn’t really get along with the boss. They were good people I just hated. I basically hate work. I had been talking about, for the longest time, singing in the street and subway; I’d been meaning to do it, and this was the kick in the ass that I needed to go out and do it. I had to pay my rent.

Q: Where were you living?
A: I was living right in Coolidge Corner, in Brookline.

Q: Did you have a favorite T station to play in?
A: My favorite station was Porter Square station, from like 7 to 11 a.m. on a Thursday or Friday. Payday, you know. And then Harvard Square, outside in the warmer months at night, basically from 8 to 11, was brilliant. And it was a great community of players, you know? We would watch out for one another. And I just remember it was such an inspirational time – people like Mary Lou Lord playing, Adrienne, Flathead. And we were all just like brothers, you know? And I started really writing at that time: I didn’t really have any songs, and I figured I didn’t really want to sing “Brown-Eyed Girl” for the rest of my life, so I started making things up, and actual songs started coming out if.

Q: How different do you think your music career would have been if you hadn’t started out in Boston?
A: I think it could have been extremely different, because when I left Syracuse, I had no intention of singing on the street and being like, a solo-singer-songwriter guy. I had more intention of just heading a rock band, singing in a rock band. I had even auditioned for a couple rock bands when I landed here, and didn’t get the jobs. Oh, jeez, I don’t know – it could’ve been very different. As I say, I didn’t know anything about singer-songwriters or guys with acoustic guitars; I knew more about funk and rock and roll. So, vastly different, if I had moved anywhere else.

Q: You seem to have finally broken out of the folk bins at record stores. How does that feel?
A: It feels good. ‘Cause I think the folk bins are usually the hardest to find, so it feels good to show up in the, whatever they call it, rock and pop. That’s always good. And in fact, because of where I’ve come from, and the indie background, I show up in both bins in a lot of places, which is kind of cool, because various records come from different distributorships, so it’s kind of neat, because I’ll show up in the folk bin – I think at Tower even – I show up in the folk bin, and then it’ll say on the card SEE ALSO POP. I dig that.

Q: Are you tired of people trying to classify and categorize your music?
A: No, I’m not tired of people trying to classify the music. I think it’s just the nature of what I do. It doesn’t really fit into one particular category. I’d like to think of it in the vein of, like, a Van Morrison: if you asked me, what does he do?, I wouldn’t really have a one-word answer. It’s everything: it’s soul, it’s rock, it’s jazz – you name it.

Q: I read that you’re not a Catholic anymore, and yet your music has a real feeling of spirituality. Where does that come from?
A: Well, Culturally speaking, I’ll always be a Catholic, so there’s a lot of it in the fabric, in the fiber of my being. It’s just in there, you can’t go to church every Sunday as a kid and survive Catholic school and say the rosary after dinner every night and not have it be somewhere deep in there, in my sauce. Yeah, so it shows up. And I like it. I think it provides a rich texture for a lot of the music that I do, and it gives me a background to come from. And there were also a lot of good parts about being raised that way: it was very meat-and-potatoes, very down-to-earth, very common sense. My parents are very smart in a common-sense sort of way. Being out here on the road for years, I’ve discovered – in fact, I discover every day; it’s sort of a pain in the ass – but common sense is not that common.

Q: A lot of people talk about your voice being a gift. Do you think of it as a gift?
A: Yeah, I think it’s a gift from my grandfather. Well, the timbre of it, and the ability of it, that sort of built-in inclination to be able to use it – talent, I guess it’s called – comes from my father and his father before him; they were both really good singers, and had that innate sense of music. So in that sense I think it’s a gift, but all the rest is work. Singing on the subway at 7 a.m. and all that, for several years.

Q: Do you ever listen to your own Cds and think, “Damn, that man can sing!”?
A: Oh, I don’t know. Sure. I mean it’s great to be able to sing. It’s wonderful, it’s fun, I think it provides a huge amount of joy. So much of what I do is about joy, and I think that’s why people enjoy it like they do, because whenever I see an artist, anyone, even if it’s a mailman, or a plumber, and there’s joy in what they’re doing, you just like ‘em more. They’re just more attractive. I do sort of step back sometimes in a live show and just groove on what I’m doing, recognize that, like, I don’t take it for granted. I recognize that this not a normal thing, so I get this sense of gratitude for being able to do this, to share this, to get paid for this. It’s a dream come true.

Q: As someone who spends so much time on the road in the United States, how does this country feel different, post-September 11?
A: I think people are more cautious about going out, spending their dollars. That’s the only side I’ve seen of it. Well, it’s also, people seem to be more, there seems to be more of a unified base, even, a spiritual side to people, and a little more emotional, too. They’re easier to get to come along with me on choruses. They sing a little louder. And they’re showing their emotions. I’m seeing more laughter, and more tears, in the audience.

Q: Do you feel a greater responsibility now to entertain people with your music?
A: I wouldn’t say just to entertain. That’s part of it. But I’ve always, from the subway days, I have always tried to just carry a message of hope, as cliché as that sounds, a message of – I wish I could print “fuck it.”

Q: It’s the Phoenix – you can.
A: Oh, great. A message of, you know, fuck it. Fuck the job that I hate, or screw these people who are telling me that I should be doing A, B, and C, when what I’ve dreamed about as a kid is X, Y, and Z. To follow a dream, whatever the dream is. And to try to be some sort of power of example that dreams do come true, because my dreams have come true: I’m able to do this, sing and play, Fuck – what was the question?

Q: Whether you feel a greater responsibility to entertain…
A: Oh yeah. Well, definitely. I want the show to be entertaining as well. I mean, I love being an entertainer. My show is a show. I’m not looking at my shoes during the show. I think if I came up the ranks playing at T.T.’s and the Middle East, I’d probably look at my shoes more. But I came up playing where I did, and it worked, and I don’t know, its’ just fun.

Q: Do you ever have a day without music in it at all?
A: Oh, yeah. Sometimes I go up to the woods. I go up to the Adirondacks. I got this cabin last year, and I haven’t yet brought a guitar up there, or any music. It’s kind of cool, though; I just go up and veg out in the woods, go out in the boat and get lost.

Q: Whose Cds are in your CD player right now?
A: Um, let’s see…And Difranco, “To the Teeth,” Jeff Buckley, “Grace.”

Q: You started out singing in the bathtub; do you sing in the shower now?
A: Sometimes, yeah. It sounds great in there.

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Acoustic Guitar Magazine, Reviews Section
Bill Meyer

Mad Scientist: Singer-Songwriter Martin Sexton’s Extraordinary Live Performances are Captured on CD

Martin Sexton’s live, double-CD set Live Wide Open captures him at his untamed best. Accompanied onstage only by longtime touring partner and drummer Joe Bonadio, Sexton – whose sensual fusion of folk, funk, blues, and jazz has been wowing audiences since 1989 – reveals what authorized tapers have known for years: He puts on an outstanding live show. Comprising performances captured during his 2001 tour through New York, Chicago, Ann Arbor, Duluth, Boulder, and San Francisco, among other cities, Live Wide Open has the sort of energy and vitality that can only be produced in communion with an audience. It is far more than a greatest-hits rehash, thought it does feature material form all four of Sexton’s studio releases.

The quality of performances captured on this disc are uniformly high. Sexton and Bonadio don’t miss a cue, making seemingly free-form arrangements sound airtight. The intuition that connects these two musicians brings to mind the tight-knit guitar-and-percussion duo of David Lindley and Wally Ingram.

Sexton has been touring regularly for years and is really just putting the perfecting touches on his already fully developed style here. He is in full command of his talents: an explosive falsetto, an unusual guitar technique that incorporates heavy bass, and his electric guitar0like vocal soloing. What’s more, Sexton is no longer banging listeners over the head with these signature techniques, as he tended to do on his early studio releases. His vocals are more even and satisfying, those improvisational pastiches are more surprising and exciting, and his vocal references to greats like Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway are less intrusive.

It’s hard not to appreciate Sexton’s technical chops, which make this guitar-and-drum folks opera work. Alone, he carries the guitar, bass, vocals, and solos, armed with just a microphone and a Godin acoustic-electric plugged directly into the house PA, with the bass turned up high. He doesn’t set the guitar up in any special way but still creates a very believable, cool slap-bass sound with his thumb, while fingerpicking the higher strings. He’s not the first to mix bass and guitar sounds in one instrument (think of Tuck Andress and Charlie Hunter), but his playing is really satisfying, full of beefy walking bass lines, clever rhythmic tags, and tasty blues/jazz licks in the upper register. Most impressive is the fact that he’s usually singing over the entire circus act. It isn’t just lyrics, either. If you didn’t know better, you’d swear there was a lead guitarist and string section onstage occasionally. Nope, it’s just Sexton and his primary instrument – his voice – creating a whole new sound that’s both human and electric.

The selections on this release get high marks as well. The best of Sexton’s new materials is here, along with such old standards as “Black Sheep”, “In the Journey”, and “The Beast in Me.” And it seems as if Sexton has picked the best performances, not just his favorite songs. It’s not a stretch to say that the audiences heard in the background are universally under Sexton’s spell. He tightens and loosens the knot like a pro, moving smoothly between cathartic singer-songwriter ballads, such as the beautiful “Freedom of the Road,” and “Women and Wine,” (In the Journey) and risky jump blues, like road favorite “13 Step Boogie” and cover “Ice Cream Man,” which features the CD’s sole guest, guitarist Nils Lofgren.

At every step, Sexton is deepening the mood, adding new layers, creating new highs and lows, and making his listeners feel that they’re on a journey. At one point, he channels Bootsy Collins on “Angeline,” a cool new funk/pop hybrid. The second disc opens with a 16-minute opus, “Gypsy Woman,” which goes from psychedelic to experimental and features tribal chanting, Easter European polkas, vocal guitar leads, percussions solos, and even a jam on Led Zeppelin’s “Dazed and Confused.”

Live Wide Open proves that Sexton isn’t just a good singer, songwriter, and musician. He’s a musical adventurer and innovator, and this recording captures his mad-scientist approach in all its glory.

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New York Times

Martin Sexton
Town Hall
123 W. 43rd Street
Manhattan, NY, NY
(212) 840-2824

Martin Sexton is a down-home virtuoso with a voice that can groan like an alternative rocker, slide like a soul man or leap up to a pearly falsetto. Singing about restlessness and love while he picks syncopations on his guitar, he can turn an ordinary song into a jazzy showcase, and a good one into a transmission from the heart.

Tomorrow night at 8; tickets are $25 in advance, $30 tomorrow (Pareles)

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Wall Street Journa
Bryan Gruley

The packed house at the State Theater is howling “Marty! Marty! Marty!” But in his dressing room, the headlining act, Martin Sexton, is preoccupied with the House of Blues T-shirt he left in the back of his Land Cruiser. “Man, I wanted to wear that shirt,” he says. He’ll have to make do with the black pullover he wore on the five-hour drive from Vermont.

Mr. Sexton knows about making do. After turning out two major-label records that brought warm reviews but tepid sales, the white-soul singer with the multihued voice left Atlantic Records last year to start his own label. He tours almost constantly in his blue Land Cruiser, towing a trailer stuffed with equipment and pasted with refrigerator magnets from the states he’s crisscrossed while logging 80,000 in the past year.

He’s playing bigger clubs, theaters and arenas than he played as an Atlantic artist. He still rouses his audience once minute with a Van Morrison growl and hushes it the next with a falsetto that conjures the ghost of Marvin Gaye. His new double-CD, “Live Wide Open,” is selling at about the same pace that his Atlantic releases sold.

Peculiar Stew of Sounds

“It’s a great thing to have a career, to make a living and support two kids, to have basically all the things you wanted in life,” Mr. Sexton says. “I thank God probably every night that I don’t have a day job.”

Yet there’s something missing, and it isn’t just that T-shirt. Mr. Sexton, 36 years old, would love a hit single, a platinum album, a tour bus – all unlikely without a major label’s support. Blessed as he says he feels, he can’t help grousing that the music business is dominated by teenagers on cable TV. “You want to annoy me?” he says. “Just tell me that I should have one of those videos on VH1.”

He left his hometown in Syracuse, NY in 1989 to chase his dream, busking the Boston subways and streets for spare change. He used savings to cut his first album, “In the Journey,” in a friend’s attic, and it sold 15,000 copies in a year. “Best $800 I ever spent,” he says.

After a second release, “Black Sheep,” on an independent label, Atlantic gave him $100,000 to make two records with an option for more. Critics praised his 1996 Atlantic debut, “The American,” and its 2000 follow-up, “Wonderbar.” Billboard heralded the “finest new male singer/songwriter of recent memory.”

Atlantic gave Mr. Sexton great freedom in the studio. But radio didn’t take to his songs, and sales of each record came up short of 50,000. He yearned for the promotional attention he saw bestowed on other Atlantic artists. “I had some radio-friendly songs, but they were too busy selling the latest Jewel record.”

Atlantic co-president, Ron Shapiro, an avowed Sexton fan, says, “We tried really hard.” But he can’t pinpoint why radio play proved so elusive. “It’s just a guess, but… I literally think he’s too unique and fabulous, in a sense” for radio. “The voice is too good, too unique.”

Bringing People to Tears

Mr. Sexton says he concluded that his live performances were selling most of his albums, while Atlantic got the money from record sales. He figured he could sell just as many albums on his own and pocket more of the proceeds because he’d own his music. “If I had stayed with Atlantic, I was never going to be a platinum-selling artist,” he says. “Owning your own record is worth the effort. It’s like real estate: it keeps earning the rent.”

He started Kitchen Table Records, cut a deal with a distributor and produced “Live Wide Open,” recorded on his 2001 tour. The album was cheap to produce, his fans wanted it, and it showcases Mr. Sexton as an impassioned performer who can bring women and mean to tears when they see him live.

A Melodic Racket

He makes most of his money touring, helped by fans who volunteer for “street teams” that put up posters and sell T-shirts in return for a free ticket or a visit backstage. Mr. Sexton’s SUV carries his stripped-down entourage of drummer Joe Bonadio, sound technician Steve Barry, and tour manager Dave Tobey. Making do onstage, Mr. Sexton substitutes his right thumb for a bassist, while his voice trills the sound of a trumpet and wails lead guitar-tricks learned in the subway. Helped by Mr. Bonadio’s use of shells, watering can, and wooden pegs, Mr. Sexton fills the Portland Theater this night with a melodic racket that brings young women into the aisles to dance. “Hallelujah, my sweet angels,” he cries.

For all his ambivalence about the business of music, in concert he becomes the giddy teenager with porkchop sideburns who once belted out Led Zeppelin at church dances. Sweat flies from his unruly black mop as he grins his way thru the scat singing in the flirtatious “Digging Me.” His face contorts with the lovelorn pain of “Where Did I Go Wrong?” and gasps rise from the audience at its soaring falsetto ending.

He finishes the 90-minute show with “Black Sheep,” a plaintive meditation on his departure from Syracuse: “I had a dream in my heart, an aching in my soul.” Now he’s playing his songs while paying his bills. Yet a little of the dream and the ache stay with him still.