Meet Kathleen Martin

Any listener who takes the time to read my thorough production notes and lyrics over at Bandcamp would soon discover I could likely write a short essay about each of my compositions from the past decade. If songs in this mix of six below interest you, I do recommend you to locate my track notes while you listen to any given production. For one thing, my more playful lyrics often contain puns that might be missed by the ear alone. - Kathleen Martin

Love Reigned - Remastered 2016
Love Reigned is my first composition as a fully formed singer-songwriter and is based on a personal journey in, and finally out of, The Wilderness. I had always wanted to cover Neil Young's After the Goldrush, but I needed some unique angle and determined a reggae rhythm might work very nicely. While I was scanning through Goldrush lyrics and fitting it to a reggae beat, I noticed in the same text file a personal poem I'd jotted down months earlier that fit with the rhythm just as smoothly. So I got to work writing four additional verses with a couple of repeated chorus lines and set these to a minor-key melody for a multi-track piece using most all of my instrument arsenal.

Recorded layers include interwoven vibraphone parts on my Korg, a bongo beat throughout, Epiphone drones for the bottom notes, intertwining melody parts, touches of harmonica, and an ending of metal kitchen trays struck with a cloth-covered tenderizer mallet for the gong sounds. I decided the vulnerability heard in an initial test vocal while sitting at the PC with only a desk mic actually helped convey the power of my emotional experience, so I did no further main vocal takes. Love Reigned manifests my greatest wish for every being on the planet to experience a mystical rocky shore moment such as mine that ultimately allows love and unity to reign over hate and division. - Kathleen Martin

Transistor Sister - Released 2015
The first moment I heard the song of Comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko as recorded by the Rosetta probe lander and posted by the European Space Agency, I hoped to work it into a composition somehow. Transistor Sister is the result. This unedited version showcases Comet 67P's clicking sounds beneath strums of my Kantele (Finnish harp) in longer intro and outro sections. I had also always wanted to feature, in a song, a wordplay bit I wrote decades ago, to wit: So he says to the shapeshifter waitress, keep the change.

A third element tying this pun-filled production together is referenced in my FMA Biography, where I note that a trusty transistor radio always in hand was a major musical influence for me as a child. In Transistor Sister, I've given her a rather unREALISTIC perSONYfication as Rosetta Ray, a shapeshifting singing waitress at the Comet Cafe. - Kathleen Martin

Shanghaied - Released 2016
Shanghaied is not the last composition I posted on FMA, but both lyrically and musically, it may be the best of my latter-day productions. Some Choice Words could be this song's subtitle, since its inception began with hearing rhymes in my head for certain unusual words that have caught my attention over the years. I even found a way to include bulwark, which is the first word I consciously recall having a fascination with whenever singing A Mighty Fortress as a preschooler in church. The melodies that arose for the intro, verse, and bridge were completely driven by the lyrical content as it spilled out of me, always minding the need to hit accented syllables and to make the rhyming pairs stand out within the lines.

As the narrative took shape—"ship" shape and "naughty-call" as it turns out—I channelled my experience with Noël Coward's songs and plays to complete the piece. When I portrayed Amanda in Coward's Private Lives, I was asked by the director to sing a bit of Cole Porter's Easy to Love, and also Coward's Mad About the Boy. It was after completing this piece that I recognized the couple showcased in Shanghaied are cut from the same spoiled rich brat cloth as Amanda and Elyot. I could hear the British Music Hall influence of Coward's song in this piece as well. For Shanghaied I played the violin part on my synth keyboard, and a huge debt of gratitude goes out to my Nice-st friend, Damien Riba, for providing his delightful cabaret piano track. Merci, Damien! - Kathleen Martin

Nice to Be Naughty - Released 2016
Nice to Be Naughty is a spoken-word piece conceived from a personal challenge by Kim of My Hot Air Balloon to cover Eartha Kitt's I Want to Be Evil. After checking out her delightful YouTube performance, I decided the lyrics didn't speak to me personally, so I wrote my own version on a similar theme. The music beneath the nice opening is recycled from my very twee Maria Von Trapp-esque Waltz to a Wood Thrush and beneath the naughty section is my instrumental track Busier-than-thou Blues.

But I also encourage you to hear my very first production of Nice to Be Naughty over at SoundCloud using Earle Hagen's own musical duality: his famously sweet Andy Griffith Show whistle under my nice opening followed by his steamy Harlem Nocturne as performed by Johnny Otis and his orchestra for my naughty section. - Kathleen Martin

Gracewater Waltz - Released 2014
Gracewater Waltz is an acoustic blues improvisation on my Guild using a brass slide for an ending bit that I've coined as being a lamenstrumental. I did two different guitar takes of this lament, the second one while not directly listening to what I played the first go-round, and then sort of matched them up in two separate layers. So, though sloppy here and there and everywhere, still I think it's somehow fitting for the melancholy feel of the piece.

I later layered in some cello, bottle flute and string tinkles from my synth keyboard. The title explains this instrumental was inspired by and dedicated to the shining brilliance of Jeff Buckley in memory of his tragic loss to the muddy Mississippi River. Memphis has its legendary Graceland, of course, and for me, now a legendary Gracewater as well. Gracewater Waltz has been used as a soundtrack for various video projects, including my husband's Meerkat's View. - Kathleen Martin

Play on Words - Released 2014
Play on Words proves that Weird Al Yankovic and I were clearly breathing some of the same ether in the noösphere and crossing brainwaves in the Zeitgeist in the months preceding his July 2014 release of Word Crimes, a month after my Play on Words. For quite a while I'd had it in mind to develop a song around the characters of a cool kitten copy editor, Grammar Puss, and the village Wordsmithy, Wilder Witt III, her cool cat cunning linguist. I would jot down a punny lyric once in a while, but couldn't settle on a musical style to deliver the song.

I was leaning toward Minnie's If You See My Rooster or Simone's I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl, but even if my suggestive lyrics are right up their alleys, my pipes clearly are not. I was considering something more Eartha-ly coKitt-ish when, out of the blue, a notion of doo-wop style landed in my lap or thereabouts. Wasn't certain if it would work well with my words, but in the end I actually appreciate the dissonance of double entendre lyrics set in such a sweetly innocent musical genre. I might note all vocal and instrumental parts are my own, even the deep bum-bum-bum-bums without any digital voice lowering effect as I did for the end of Transistor Sister. I sure hope Play on Words brings a smile to all you super cool cats and kittens out there! - Kathleen Martin

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