Jeffrey Martin
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Dogs in the Daylight (Expanded Edition)
In the summer of 2014, indie-folk artist Jeffrey Martin partnered with Fluff and Gravy Records to release a full length album called Dogs in the Daylight. It was an ambitious 15-track collection, full of weight and intricacy, that found him thrust into the spotlight following a self-released LP and EP. Before long, the Portland Mercury was bold enough to suggest that he “might be the best songwriter in Portland”. But Jeffrey also had other ambitions, and found himself torn between teaching literature to high school students, and diving in full-time to be a touring musician. For a short time, teaching won out, leaving Jeffrey to perform on weekends and tour during summers. However by the summer of 2016, Jeffrey had made up his mind. He begun working in earnest on a follow-up record (to be released in October 2017) and has been steadily touring and honing the new tracks ever since.
While we await that much-anticipated follow-up to, we are digging into the vault to digitally re-release an expanded version of Dogs in the Daylight with 4 extra tracks recorded during those sessions. The tracks “Narrow Road”, “Old Good Friend”, “Soul and Bones” and “In the Dark” initially appeared only on the Expanded Double LP version and are being presented digitally for the first time.
Jeffrey likes to say that some of his earliest memories are of his dad’s old tapes, all kept in a ragged leather travel case. He would thumb through them in the backseat, and then hand the chosen ones forward; Jackson Browne, Harry Chapin, Neil Young, Graham Nash. He’d watch as his dad was moved by the power of word and sound, as he would rewind certain sections of songs to be heard again and again.
His dad was a pastor, a lyricist of sorts, and his grandfather was a life-long English professor. His mom encouraged him to learn to play the cello in 6th grade. For Jeffrey, music and words were suspended in tension from a very young age, not yet intermingling, but humming with energy to do so.
There was the day Jeffrey’s uncle gave him an old dreadnaught with a split down the face. It had been bought many years before, promptly broken, repaired, and then put away where is sat aging to perfection while nearly forgotten. Jeffrey disappeared into his bedroom and hunched over the radio, where with his softest touch he began to pick out the notes that fit. He didn’t reemerge from his bedroom for a year. Jeffrey has written every one of his songs on that old guitar and it is still the only guitar he plays today.
Martin’s inspiration comes in broad shapes and colors, not limited to music alone. On writing, Jeffrey had this to say… “Holden Caulfield makes me want to walk around in the cold and smoke cigarettes and get raw, and Neil Young makes want to grow old and gentle, and E.E. Cummings makes me want be more joyful. There are words filled with power, and those without; whether they are in song form or not matters very little. I want my words to make people want to do things.” Jeffrey Martin’s music has been compared to songwriters like Josh Ritter and Joe Pug. “I’m a writer more than I am a musician. If I could play guitar half as well as I can write I’d be wearing nicer pants.”
In 2012 Jeffrey Martin was selected to perform at the NPR Mountain Stage New Song Contest in New York City. Since then he has gone on to tour internationally. His songwriting has earned him opening slots for the likes of Anais Mitchell, Sean Hayes, Frank Fairfield, Joe Pug, Jeffrey Foucault, David Wilcox, and others.
Find Jeffrey Martin here http://jeffreymartinmusic.com/
Praise for Jeffrey Martin
“Jeffrey Martin… might be the best songwriter in Portland” – Portland Mercury
“He’s an incredibly rare find among today’s glut of singer-songwriters: as songwriter whose songs are immediately affecting. These are the kind of songs that can change you.” – Devon Leger, No Depression
Praise for Dogs in the Daylight
“Dogs in the Daylight is as close to a masterpiece as a folk album by an emerging singer-songwriter can get” – NoDepression
“Pretty much everyone we know in the music industry is just fed up with singer-songwriters… Jeffrey Martin is one of my last hopes, and the person I’d go to first to prove the worth of the singer-songwriter genre. – Kithfolk (Hearth Music)
“observational and piercingly honest while retelling stories of glory and defeat, much like watching the fall foliage blaze out and drift to the ground” – Adobe and Teardrops
“It’s tough to pinpoint exactly what it is that sets certain singer/songwriters apart from other singer/songwriters, other than the thoroughness with which their songs turn your guts inside out. And by that measure, Martin is way ahead of the pack” – Portland Mercury
“It’ll give you shivers” – The Bluegrass Situation
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