LELAND MARTIN: Simple Traditional

The story behind new artist Leland Martin’s debut CD is a modern day miracle. In an age where youth rules, Leland Martin is twice the age of most new artists, has a handsome but weathered face, is a walking encyclopedia of real-life experience and is as down home humble as a politician at the pearly gates. “I’m forty-five years old, we don’t make no beans about it and I’m proud of the fact that we’re not trying to hide my age,” Martin says with a hint of pride. His debut CD Simply Traditional is everything the title implies, but behind Martin’s unlikely trail of high hopes and hard knocks is a fascinating tale or turning an “Impossible Dream” into an American dream come true.The story behind new artist Leland Martin’s debut CD is a modern day miracle. In an age where youth rules, Leland Martin is twice the age of most new artists, has a handsome but weathered face, is a walking encyclopedia of real-life experience and is as down home humble as a politician at the pearly gates. “I’m forty-five years old, we don’t make no beans about it and I’m proud of the fact that we’re not trying to hide my age,” Martin says with a hint of pride. His debut CD Simply Traditional is everything the title implies, but behind Martin’s unlikely trail of high hopes and hard knocks is a fascinating tale or turning an “Impossible Dream” into an American dream come true.

Martin was one of nine children and his father divorced his mother when he was about six years old. He grew up on welfare and says, “it was pretty tough, puttin’ up with welfare people bothering you and acting like you were a criminal because you were wanting help.” He went through some tough times growing up and credits his mom’s faith and inner strength as the major reason that family values. Traditional country music business became the foundation he built his career on. Martin recalls that his dad’s rare visits had a lasting impact on his future as a singer/songwriter.

His dad played guitar and had a pretty good voice. On the rare visits his dad did made to Martin’s hometown or Success, Missouri (population 25) his dad tried to teach him a few chords on the guitar but Martin never seemed to get the hang of it as first, and was about to give up the guitar when his dad made another visit and as Martin put it, “That time for some reason, when he left, it stuck, and then from there on I was self-taught; I learned just by watching and going to gatherings in people’s living rooms on Saturday nights where people would get out banjos and fiddles and guitars and play.” His eyes get a little misty when he tells how he got his first guitar, an expense that always seemed out of reach to young Martin. “I was raised in a poor family. Finally mom broke down and ordered me a thirteen dollar guitar fro Christmas because she could make payments on it. That’s what started it all.” It was the best and most important Christmas present he’d ever had.

He learned to play that guitar so well that by age 17, he was working honky tonks of Missouri, which was the kind of dues-paying that prepared him for his job as lead guitar player for Freddie Hart, whose self-penned tunes like “Easy Loving,” Bless Your Hart” and “My Hang Up Is You” not only made him a huge country star but established him as a songwriting guru. It was Hart who became Martin’s songwriting mentor and whom he credits with really turning on the lights for him about what it takes to write a great country song. Martin admits that when he first began writing songs, “I started off pretty terrible; I was sixteen or so, and I thought ‘you’re either a songwriter or you’re not. What’s there to practice or learn.’ Then when I got with Freddie Hart, he was a big help to me.” Hart told me to keep the story short and tight and that the more I wrote, the better I would get.” Martin says he didn’t understand at first but later realized that Hart’s advice was dead on. “I was leaving the second half of the song pretty loose until I learned to take my time and come back to it in a few weeks and make sure the story was tight. It’s not very often I write a song in a short period of time. I’m one of those who has to work at it.” And his hard work is paying off with songs that are getting him a lot of attention in the press and in the top 40 of the Music Row chart. Recently his tongue-in-cheek tune, “If I Had Long Legs (Like Alan Jackson)”peaked at #37. The song was inspired buy a chance remark a niece of his made a Thanksgiving dinner when he was playing some new songs. She said, “Why don’t you ever write a song about all the hunks in country music us girls like? Everybody laughed, but the idea stuck with me and several days later I started putting the song together.” The flawless songwriting on his debut CD “Simply Traditional” is a testament to his value of hard work. He has lived enough life to write with great insight about everything from his grandfather’s patriotism to the lonesome life of a big rig trucker to the kind of true love that survives all adversity. It doesn’t hurt that his Haggard-tinged vocals are simply irresistible either on his self-penned tunes like “Hey Love, No Fair,” “Love Ain’t Love,” and “Flags On The Christmas Tree.” When he was recording “Freddie’s Hart,” his producer asked it her thought Freddie would consider singing the song as a duet with him. So Martin called Hart in California and Freddie eagerly agreed to sing on his ex-lead -guitar player and star songwriting student’s debut CD.
He’d all but given up on ever getting a record deal until independent label IGO Records hear a ten-song demo Marin had made, and jumped at the chance to sign the “real deal” talent who is on the leading edge of the new “good old days” sound of some of today’s emerging country acts.
With a video of his big rig lament, “Stone Cold Fingers,” getting strong response and a strong presence in the truckers market -not to mention an extensive radio promotion tour including local gigs and PR stops -Leland Martin’s life is as busy as an interstate highway on Memorial Day weekend. Martin says, “If you actually wrote all about my life, people wouldn’t believe it.”

If you loved Alan Jackson’s song, “Murder On Music Row,” about the lingering death of traditional music by artist like Haggard and Jones and all the country great who made country “America’s Music” through the years, and think the only justice is increased respect for traditionalists old and new, you owe it to yourself to check out Leland Martin’s new debut CD, Simply Traditional. It’s what “real deal” is all about.