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Biography Originally from England, Martin got his
first guitar at the age of 8. Soon afterwards he heard a new form of pop
music called “skiffle” and took to it immediately – not realising that it was
basically up-tempo folk music from the USA. He played in small rock, jazz and
folk groups while still at school, and after leaving and taking up climbing
and walking, he found his interest in folk music was shared by most of his
companions. From the day of his first visit to a North London Folk Club he
was hooked. Martin emigrated to Australia in 1969, and
almost immediately began performing. Within a year he founded and was running
his own folk club and festival in Tennant Creek and became an integral part
of the Northern Territory folk scene. Later while living in Perth he first
met recent immigrant Eric Bogle, and was so inspired by his wonderfully
written yet simply constructed songs that Martin changed his style
completely, eventually leading to him becoming a songwriter. His passion for mountains brought him over
to New Zealand with his family in 1975, and he was very soon established in
the remote Cardrona Valley in the high country of the Southern Alps, running
a horse trekking business and a small transport company. In 1976 he organised
the first Cardrona
Folk Festival, which proved so successful that the event
is still on the calendar every October, having become one of the highlights
of the New Zealand folk music year. Soon after this he began songwriting,
composing several ballads about the historic gold mining area in which he
lived. One of these songs, "Gin & Raspberry" – named after a
famous gold claim across the road from his house - soon became a folk club
standard and has since been recorded by over a dozen musicians in the USA,
Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK. The song was also the title track
of his first album, which is still rated as N.Z’s best selling folk album.
This success led him to continue writing and recording whenever funds would
allow. His third album (“The Daisy Patch”) was a finalist in the Folk Album
of the Year awards in 1990, run by the Recording Industry Association of New
Zealand (RIANZ). To date he has released 9 albums of New Zealand music. About this time he also purchased his
first mandolin and mandola, and formed a Central Otago based ceilidh band
called “Snowgrass”. At one gig he found himself compelled to do the dance
calling when a band member left, and has enjoyed this role ever since,
collecting many dances on his tours around the world. His skill at performing and acting out humorous bush poetry has also led to him being much in demand as an MC, especially overseas where he regularly comperes large concerts at festivals such as Orkney and Shetland.
Martin took his songs overseas with a tour
of Australia in 1986, followed by an exploratory tour of the U.K. in 1987 and
then a bigger tour of Britain in 1991. Since then he has returned regularly
to the UK every alternate year, and in 2009 completed his eleventh and
busiest tour yet. One of the more
unusual highlights of his UK tours was sailing around the isolated Orkney
Islands on a chartered boat for eight days with three other top Scottish
acts, giving concerts each night in tiny and remote island settlements. As
well as the usual folk clubs, festivals and concerts, recent tours have
included performances in Austria, Norway and in many schools around the
islands of Orkney, Shetland and Mull. He has also put on several shows for
schools in Kent, Sussex, Hertfordshire and Somerset, a unique and rewarding
experience that compliments his schools programme
in New Zealand. He has performed his songs and humorous
bush poems in a wide variety of venues; from isolated islands in the Orkneys
to busy cities like London, Bristol and Glasgow; and from tiny pubs in Wales
and the Isle of Mull, to St David’s Hall in Cardiff, the national concert
hall of Wales. On route he has given concerts in Perth, Darwin, Melbourne,
Hong Kong and even Nepal. He has featured on BBC radio in Glasgow, Cardiff,
Swansea, Shetland, and on Radio TV Hong Kong. In 1998 he was commissioned by the Otago Primary Principals Association in 1998 to write the linking song for a big event at the Dunedin Town Hall, commemorating 150 years since the first settlers arrived in Otago. His composition “Otago My Home” became extremely popular and on the strength of this, he made the decision to sell his mail contracting business and go into music full time. Martin put together a special heritage programme for schools called Let's Sing a Kiwi Song, which involves the children in songs about their own country. This has taken him as far north as Northland and as far south as Bluff, and also included the release of an album and songbook of the same name. In 2005 Martin returned to the magnificent Dunedin Town Hall to perform “Otago My Home” with the Dunedin Symphonia as part of their annual Last Night of the Proms. He describes this as one of the hardest but most satisfying performances he has ever had to do, with the orchestral arrangement of his own song making it almost unrecognisable to him.
In December 2003, Martin released his
first DVD
Otago my Home, a project that he had been working on
for some years with a professional cameraman in Wanaka. This is a video of
some of his Central Otago material, and is set and filmed in the very
surroundings that inspired the songs. A new DVD production is now under way,
incorporating many of the conservation and wildlife songs and involving
filming in many isolated parts of the New Zealand mountains. As the South Wales Echo, in
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