Recorded in 1972, Midwest Farm Disaster is just beginning to find an audience with today’s music fans. Long out-of-print since the 1970s, the album was recently re-issued in November of 2007 on Martin’s own label, Riversong Records, and should be hitting major stores in May of 2008. The album is already available at CDBaby and various other online music stores. But for those who’ve known of the album since its early beginnings it is one of the treasured records of its time. This speaks volumes when you consider that this also is the time period where artists such as John Prine, Billy Joe Shaver, Willie and Waylon, and a whole host of other singer/songwriters were just beginning their true musical introductions to the world. For my money, Midwest Farm Disaster stands shoulder to shoulder with every single one of the artists I’ve just mentioned. Someone right now is pulling out their original vinyl copy, staring at the worn cover, and nodding their head in agreement.
As luck would have it, I recently had an opportunity to meet Bob Martin. A professional acquaintance, who actually initially turned me on to Midwest Farm Disaster, also arranged a meeting between the two of us, knowing that we both were big Jack Kerouac and Boston Red Sox fans but also with the knowledge that I had become a quick fan of Martin’s debut album. So over a couple beers on a Virginia spring afternoon we talked of music, Kerouac, life, and the long and winding road. So how does a young singer/songwriter from Lowell, Massachusetts wind up in Nashville studio in the early ‘70s, under the direction of one of the city’s legendary music executives, record a monumental album, and end up as far removed from the music industry as possible by buying a farm in the West Virginia countryside and raising a family?
As it turns out, the road and the direction it decides to take us is sometimes defined, not by the place we wish to go, but by the time we spend traveling upon it. Or as Jack Kerouac writes in his seminal work On the Road:
“…the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old…”
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Bob Martin’s music career began in the folk clubs and coffeehouses of Boston, Massachusetts in the 1960s, writing songs and playing in places like the Nameless Coffeehouse and Club 47. But his big break actually took place in New York City, when he was discovered by a couple of label executives who heard him play at the venerable folk club, Gerdes Folk City. That discovery would then lead to Martin being flown to Nashville in 1972 and working with the legendary Chet Atkins, who at the time headed up RCA Records and had just signed on to record Martin’s Midwest Farm Disaster. The whole album was recorded in just four days and included a number of Nashville session players, who, to say the least, may have been somewhat leery of an unknown singer/songwriter from Boston coming to Country Music USA to record an album. When I spoke to Bob he told me how the session players were a little hesitant in the beginning, but after the first day and hearing the songs that Martin had brought with him, they realized this guy had something to say and that he said it pretty damn well. From there it just took off and before you know it, the album was done.
And what an album it is. Each song makes me want to take a long moment and write its praise but I fear that this review would then take longer to read than the time it would take to sit and enjoy the album by simply listening to it. With each successive listen I keep hearing something more: a phrase, a sound, a life, a character alive and entirely recognizable, a place in time, or a timeless place. There are hints of Bob Dylan’s late ‘60s records that hold a very similar Nashville connection, there’s the rhythm and spirit of Neil Young’s Harvest, the strands of vocals reminiscent of a young Stephen Stills, the loose nature and precise pen of Willis Alan Ramsey and Steven Fromholtz, and at times, the zest and zeal of Jerry Jeff Walker. But these are not their songs; these are Bob Martin’s songs.
These songs celebrate the hard truth of life in the mill Town of Lowell, Massachusetts. They lament the Midwest Farm Disaster as “dust blows down the empty plain / You can hear it whining through the barn / Door swing wide with the change of the wind / But there’s nothing left on this old farm.”
These songs are filled with characters like the black blind blues woman “Blind Marie” sitting on the street with her old tin cup “ringing voodoo chimes / And holy rhymes till the longest day is done” or old Charlie Zink sipping wine behind the filling station with the rest of the old men talking about hard times that have been and the harder ones yet to come. There is brotherhood and family in Martin’s songs, there’s drinking days and hard-fought ways, and there’s a snapshot of America in there too, a snapshot whose image hasn’t faded as much as it’s been forgotten.
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When Midwest Farm Disaster was released in 1972 it never saw commercial success. Instead Martin would end up touring for the next two years, playing bars and clubs, moving from town to town playing these songs. RCA never really got behind the album, so there was little promotion and maybe even less tour support. So after two years of being on the road, Martin decided that the business of music was probably better suited for businessmen and decided to drop out. He took what was left of his advance from RCA, bought a small farm in West Virginia and there he went to live and to raise a family.
Eight years would pass before Martin would release his next album Last Chance Rider on June Appal Records in 1982. That album would be chosen as one of the top three folk albums of the year by the National Association of Independent Record Distributors. After moving back to Lowell, Massachusetts, Martin made a second attempt at working within the music industry before abandoning the endeavor once again to continue to support his family through hard work. Another decade would pass until Martin’s third album The River Turns the Wheel, released in 1992 on his own independent label Riversong Records. The album would find considerable airplay on Americana radio, reaching into the Top 20 on Gavin’s Americana chart. Martin’s fourth record, Next to Nuthin’ was released in 2000.
And now music fans have a chance to go back and re-discover where Martin’s recording career began. I’ve read the reviews written by fans that are just now discovering the return of this long, lost treasure. They speak volumes. “This is one for all time,” writes one fan. “…one of my top five artists in a very extensive collection,” writes another. And then there’s this one: “If you are looking for truly great folk music then Midwest Farm Disaster is the highest I could recommend.”
Bob Martin’s stunning debut album has returned once again to hopefully be enjoyed by those who loved it the first time around and to be discovered anew by a whole generation of current songwriters and music fans. Midwest Farm Disaster is an album of the highest order. Over thirty-five years since its original release, the record now sits alongside not only some of the very best albums of its day but alongside the best of those that have come in the days since. Quite simply, it is a master work by a master songwriter.
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I wanted to add one last footnote to the story of Bob Martin because in some ways I find something quite fitting in the tale as it was told to me. As I’ve mentioned a couple times in this piece, Martin is a huge fan of the writings of Jack Kerouac. I believe I could go so far as to say that Kerouac is indeed one of Martin’s heroes. As we sat and talked, he told me of the one time where he had the opportunity to meet his hero. Bob was in his late teens and was walking up to a local bar in Lowell when he noticed Kerouac standing outside, leaning against the wall.
He recognized him almost immediately and suddenly he became so nervous that he had no idea what to say. What does one say to one’s heroes? He ended up simply acknowledging Kerouac just before he headed inside the bar. But here’s the clincher. Just as Martin was opening the door a blast of rock n roll from inside the bar came barreling out onto the street and in that moment Kerouac turned to Martin and said something, but the sound of Kerouac’s voice and the brief words he spoke were lost in the music from inside the bar. Martin never heard the words his hero spoke to him. For all we know it could have been something as simple as “Hey, buddy can you spare a dollar or a smoke?” or it could have been a short string of words deeply profound or meaningful to a young writer and soon-to-be singer/songwriter. But that’s something that Martin was obviously not supposed to know.
In some ways this story is very similar to what happened to Martin’s Midwest Farm Disaster. Imagine for a moment that it’s 1972 and you’re walking up to a sidewalk bar and there leaning against the wall is a young man with a guitar. Just as you walk up to the door, you say hello, and in that moment the young man begins to play. And just as the first words are set loose, you open the door and those words are lost by the sounds of 1970s rock ‘n’ roll; Alice Cooper, Led Zeppelin, and the like, all blasting and blaring from within. You head through the door and into that wall of sound, never hearing that crisp, clear, wandering voice or the tales he unfurls from the heart of America. But unlike the ending of Martin’s brief encounter with Kerouac, we are obviously supposed to hear these songs and that voice.
The road, as many travelers know, sometimes dead ends but every once in a while, just when you think you’ve come to the last stop on your journey, the road has a way of unwinding itself and taking you to the place you were supposed to go. With that in mind, it’s nice to know that Midwest Farm Disaster is out traveling the highways once again. Here’s hoping it finds you well and that you discover all of the beauty that road has to offer.
For more on Bob Martin, Midwest Farm Disaster, and all of his musical offerings:
http://www.myspace.com/bobmartinriversong
http://www.riversong.com/