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Martin Joseph Interview

Comparisons in the music industry are an inevitable occurence, but beware - they can often be more misleading than they are helpful. Singer songwriter Martyn Joseph should take his latest press release as a compliment, but I'm not sure that describing him as 'the Welsh Springsteen' will ultimately do him any favours...

Martyn has, of course, seen and heard it all before, having plied his troubadour trade for twenty seven years and seen the business from the constrictions of signing to a massive music corporation through to the relative freedom of running his own record label. I asked the Cardiff-based musician what he thought of being named in such illustrious company:
“Obviously I love Springsteen’s music and the body of work that he has created, but I do get a little bit embarrassed by the comparison; part of me says that’s lovely and the other part thinks oh, I’m not fit to tie his bootlaces! Actually I’m waiting for the day I see someone else described as the next Martyn Joseph.
I understand why we need to do these things, because if you’re trying to communicate what you do to someone who’s never heard of you, then you need to find some point of reference. To be honest Chris, I don’t know what I am sometimes. When I was signed to Sony in the early nineties, they tried to make me into a pop star; now if you go into one store I’m filed under pop and rock and in the next store I’m in the folk section, so it’s a little confusing even for me!”

What you will get from the eloquent Mr Joseph is a rollercoaster performance of passion and commitment, featuring original narrative songs that deliver a real message; on reflection, the analogy with The Boss may be closer than I thought. After many hard-fought years steadily building a loyal following, surely most people know what to expect from a Martyn Joseph concert by now? Martyn laughs -
“Well, many will, but there are still millions that don’t and that is the reason I still tour constantly. I’ve been at it for twenty seven years now and made twenty nine albums, so part of me is aching for a little bit of a rest, but you have to keep going to pay the bills. I work to a frantic schedule, but out there is where I’m happiest, I’m most alive when I’m on stage making that connection with people, it still feels authentic, still feels worthwhile and I don’t feel like I’m just adding to the noise. You have to keep asking yourself have I still got something to contribute and without sounding blasé or conceited, I think I’m currently writing my best songs, ‘Vegas’ may be one of the best pieces of work I’ve ever done.”

The recently released ‘Vegas’ is Martyn’s first studio album for two years and looks set to add more weight to a catalogue heavy with fine songs; Martyn outlined the story behind the title track:
“Strangely it was the last song I wrote for the album, as I had pretty much finished writing and half the songs were already recorded. I went to America on a golfing break with some friends - believe it or not, before I turned to song writing I was going to be a pro golfer –and afterwards the other guys wanted to hire some Harley-Davidsons and drive out to Las Vegas. We stopped off at the Grand Canyon, which is an amazing place and just screams out how totally insignificant and very small in the world we are – and then six hours later you ride into a place that says you’re the most important person in the world, as long as you’ve got dollars in your back pocket. So that set the creative juices flowing and I just absorbed this incredible city; I came away and wrote the song ‘Vegas’ and someone suggested it would make a good title for the album.”

Looking back, America and it’s music has always cast a spell on the guitarist from South Wales, as Martyn explained:
“Growing up, my influences as a musician came more from people like Paul Simon and Bob Dylan, and later on Bruce Springsteen, rather than The Beatles or whoever over here. I preferred the storytellers and I think the Americans always had a better handle on that, certainly outside of the folk idiom. The first person who inspired me to pick up a guitar was actually Glen Campbell, I can remember buying his single ‘Honey Come Back’ when I was about ten years old.”

Back in 1992, Martyn was signed by Sony, who groomed him for stardom and grazed the charts with singles including the top forty hit ‘Dolphins Make Me Cry’. For a while he appeared to be the everpresent support act, as the label paired him up with everyone from Joan Armatrading and Art Garfunkel to Celine Dion -
“And possibly that was a mistake, as I had quite an audience before I signed with Sony and because we took eighteen months to make the record and they then sent me out supporting everyone I think I lost some of the following I had built up. I should have kept gigging to the people who were there and I think it’s taken quite a while to gather them back.

Now that I run my own record label, I see that playing live is the easy bit, it’s something I love to do and it comes naturally; whereas when I get home, I spend most of my day pushing paper, telephoning, emailing and running the label. It’s interesting that when a big corporation like Sony finishes with you, they think you’ll go straight back to the day job and are surprised to find that you go on for fifteen years and have a career beyond them. I made great friends at the label and I’m very grateful that they crossed me over to a much wider audience, but I enjoy the fact that I can tour all the time and sell records and do it all at my pace, which is still frantic, but now I make all the choices.”

The UK leg of the Vegas tour will be a mixture of solo dates, while some will feature Miranda Sykes on upright bass and virtuoso sax player Mike Haughton. Although Martyn once tried playing with a full band, he much prefers the stripped-down approach:
“There is an edge and a passion that I can’t quite replicate in the midst of a lot of instrumentation; my music is about lyrics and creating an atmosphere and you don’t want that covered by a wall of sound. I think people have come to like the fact that no two nights are the same, I can improvise and change the set list at will and it’s hard to do that with a band. So these days it’s have guitar will travel and of course there are no arguments!”

Chris Groom

As an illustration of his improvisational skills here's a video of him doing a song about a travel lodge and an interview and everything going wrong...