Jeff Martin swaps Tea Partyfor Tabla Ensemble

Thu 24th Aug, 2006 in Features

When asked to describe the audience reaction to his most recent live performance, Jeff Martin hardly pauses, “with tears of joy,” he says, “honestly, there were grown men were crying in the audience, it’s that moving.” 

Martin’s flair for the grandiose was an essential ingredient of the epic and instantly identifiable music of his former band The Tea Party. In recent times, he has kicked some bad habits and set out on his own, but he still has an enviable ability to charm while talking-up his own talents.  

The Tea Party’s cross pollination of rock and world music won them a cult following world-wide in the mid-nineties, perhaps nowhere more than Australia. Fittingly, he is now married to an Australian, and his 19 month old son was born here.  

“There’s not another audience around the world that is more appreciative of the music that I’ve made, in the past, and present, and probably will be in the future than the Australian audience” Martin enthuses, ”It’s just a place that, for whatever strange reason, since the beginning of my career, has embraced me and taken me in as one of their own, and it’s a deep respect that I have.” 

Throughout his career, Martin has embraced an enormous variety of global music influences.  Still, when Martin mentions his affinity for “world music”, I involuntarily flash to a mental image of George Harrison clad in orange hemp drawstring pants, playing his sitar somewhere atop of a mountain in India. But cliché’s are so called for a reason.  In his next breath, Martin credits the Beatle and the Sitar in question with sparking his own love affair; 

“I was always a very big Beatles fan – and when I was about twelve a cousin of mine bought me Sergeant Peppers, and it was the first time I heard a sitar. Even though I’d never heard it before, I’d heard it before,” he says, 

“I don’t know if you believe in reincarnation or Buddhism, but I have to tell you that honestly, it was something that struck my soul so hard that I knew it,” Martin pronounces, pausing repeatedly for dramatic effect, “I felt it. I respected it. I loved it. Even at twelve”. 

The precocious youngster started out haunting local record stores buying “any album that had a picture of a sitar on it, and any instrument that I couldn’t pronounce on the cover”, and went on to form The Tea Party with high school friends Stuart Chatwood and Jeff Burrows.  

The 2005 break-up came as a shock to fans, and there were reports that his fellow band members were just as stunned by the impromptu public announcement.  While Martin admits that things could have been handled differently, he has no regrets about his decision, “I certainly don’t want to repeat things I’ve done in the past, but I don’t regret it,” he says, “everything that you go through as a human – it’s experience that you chalk up to, hopefully, wisdom.” 

Self-preservation played a decisive role, and in a move that he has candidly described as self-imposed rehab, Martin stepped out of the rock ‘n’ roll fray and relocated his family to Ireland.

“My decision to move here, and move my family here, probably saved my life.” he says, “especially the last couple of years with the Tea Party, I wasn’t in a very good state, mentally speaking. There were a lot of drugs, alcohol and all that stuff, I was depressed towards the end and I was using that stuff to help me get through it.”  

“So for a man in his middle thirties now I’ve lived a very, very big life and I just try to use those experiences responsibly.” 

It puts things in perspective to recall that The Tea Party had been playing together for 15 years, practically a lifetime in an industry where most bands are here today, looking shaky tomorrow. Martin says “passion” has kept him writing and performing for so long, and this has been rekindled by his exodus.  

“A lot of people in rock and roll, once you go down that downward spiral, it’s a vacuum and it can be really hard to come out of it. It just took a lot of soul searching on my part [to] try to figure out again, who was I, who do I want to be, what am I becoming, where am I going? This part of Ireland gives you time to think about those things. I think I’m a better person for it.” 

“Now that my head is a hell of lot a clearer than it was, finding that passion again is…I wouldn’t say easy…but it’s apparent, and it feels like there is a reason to create music.”  

The re-invigorated Martin is touring around Australia with Ritesh and his Toronto Tabla Ensemble, playing a “fusion of acoustic rock music with Indian classical music”.

Martin advises audiences to “prepare yourself for a very emotional evening, because it’s going to be very powerful,” and adds a quiet afterthought, “it’s going to be fun”.

Jeff Martin Tour Dates:
Friday September 1  – Metropolis, Freemantle
Sunday September 3 – HQ, Adelaide
Monday September 4 – Prince of Wales, Melbourne
Thursday September 7 – Enmore Theatre, Sydney
Friday September 8 – Great Northern, Bryon Bay
Sunday September 10 – Tivoli, Brisbane

FasterLouder is giving you the chance to have a half hour Guitar lesson with Jeff Martin at one of his shows. [Click here] to enter!