Today we’d like to introduce you to Joel Martin
Hi Joel, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Most creatives have wild rides and mine has indeed been a long strange trip!
I was born in 1972 in El Segundo, CA, an actual LA native!
My mom played all kinds of music in the house as I was growing up, from Led Zeppelin to Doc Watson to Russian folk music. She also taught guitar so there were always instruments laying around.
By age 5 I was totally obsessed with rock music and listened to all the great LA radio that was around at the time, KMET…KLOS…the Mighty 690.
I started playing guitar when I was 1 1 and by the time i was 12 I knew I’d be doing it for my life.
I went through all kinds of journeys. As a teenager I went from 70’s hard rock to 80’s metal then to 70’s progressive rock, like King Crimson and YES. After being one of the youngest people to ever study at Grove School Of Music, I fell in love with jazz and fusion, so lots of Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Allan Holdsworth. Then as I was around 19, bands like Primus and Mr Bungle were coming out.
THEN I got really into the Beatles and bands of the 90s that wore their Beatles influences proudly, such as Jellyfish and Redd Kross.
All through my 20’s and 30’s I was living a double life of running my own original bands and also being a freelance guitarist.
After I turned 30, I started doing a lot of guitar work for major label and indie label acts. I did extensive touring with MCA recording artist RES.
This very well could have been the end of the story but somehow in the late 90’s I became aware of the magic that is pedal steel guitar! Living on the west coast, I have ZERO memory of ever seeing or hearing one. But then I got into some Neil Young & Matthew Sweet records and it was all I could hear or think about. It’s a hard instrument to get into because you have to buy the steel and maybe a special seat and things like picks and bar and a volume pedal, so it took me a while to feel like I could jump in financially but I finally bought a crappy starter guitar in 2002. It broke immediately. I fixed it. It broke again. Then it broke more. I couldn’t deal and put it in the closet.
Finally in 2008 I was ready to get a better instrument. Then I said this is IT. I want to be THE GUY in LA and put all my time into it.
I’ve done some incredible things. Played on Stone Sour’s Billboard #1 record Hydragrad. Almost played at Woodstock 50 if it didn’t get cancelled. Played with so many wonderful artists.
THAT could have been the end of the story.
But then things took a REAL turn! As I was studying great steel guitarists, I remembered Jerry Garcia went through a spell with pedal steel so I started to check out what he did. I liked the few Grateful Dead songs I had heard growing up, but when I got into the album tracks that he played steel on, it was glorious! This all became my favorite music. Then the rest of the music. Pretty soon I was taking in the entire Dead catalog. I started playing steel around LA with all the jam bands.
THEN: The Pandemic!
Wow – all the gigs…gone. What do I do? Week one, the day after the official lockdown in LA, I did my first livestream on Facebook.
Even a few days into having gigs cancelled, my community of friends was starved for music and scared with no social interaction. I had many people asking me to play as much as I could.
For 78 weeks I did up to 4 streams a week over Facebook, Youtube, Instagram and Twitch.
Talk about community looking out for each other! I did everything I could to fill people’s entertainment void while they kept me alive with tips. Really beautiful.
And then it was time for another change! The world opened up, people got back to their day-to-days and folks lost interest in live-streams but clubs in LA weren’t coming back. I wasn’t getting any offers for paid gigs. I was barely getting remote-recording steel gigs because other artists were struggling so much too.
Over the time I live streamed, I performed 900 different songs, singing and playing guitar. Hundreds of Dead or Dead-family tunes. I really wanted to make money PLAYING.
I decided to get a regular gig – EVERYWHERE. So I started booking shows for myself in Northern CA, around San Diego, into Oregon – this lead to me starting two endeavors:
Joel Martin’s Grateful Zone & Joel Martin’s Vintage Soundz. GZ is me playing exclusively Grateful Dead and Vintage Soundz is all great and eclectic songs of the 60s, 70’s and 80’s.
Since Oct 22 I have performed over 275 solo shows in 9 states. This year I even played in Barcelona!
My other big passion is Grateful To The Core, a Grateful Dead tribute band I started at the end of 2021. We have the most wonderful line up right now and are taking the show to San Diego, the Bay Area, Northern California and New Mexico this year! I could do shows with this band everyday and everywhere!
Also in all this, I scored several feature films and recently found out a lot of music I made was being used in about 20 cable shows! life is full of twists and turns.
Let’s see what happens NEXT!!!
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I got into music at just about the worst time I could have. When I started, it seemed like any half way decent musician could make a lot of money. In the 80’s, bands worked hard, got an audience and got signed to major labels and indie labels. Or you got a publishing deal. Then the bottom fell out of the recording industry. You could still make really good music playing with established artists, but then as the industry shrunk THAT dried up. In the new millennium, you could get your stuff to TV and movies. Then that all went south.
I’ve watch all these avenues be devalued. Now it’s a fight to get people out of the house to see live music. I mean, WE, society, are our own worse enemies. We use Spotify where the artists make nothing and kids stay in and play video games instead of going out. And that is tough on food service entrepreneurs as well – I play mostly at restaurants and breweries and in the last 2.5 years I’ve been touring solo, I’ve had so many places I played either close or limit their music.
The concert industry is ridiculously expensive, it’s hard to be a fan. How can kids love good music if the quality career artists are charging $200 a ticket or like $1000 weekend festival package!?!
I have no idea how to correct any of this, but I’m compelled to go out and keep playing and putting music into the world!
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I have three income sources. My life as a solo artist that plays shows all over the Western United States, as a freelance pedal steel guitarist mostly remote recording for folks all over the world and with my Grateful Dead band.
All three of these exist because I am also the Promotions Dept, Social Media Dept, Art Dept, Booking Dept, Driver, merch seller and…oh yeah – sometimes I play music!
Literally every morning starts with some kind of internet promotion. I make all my own posters and advertisements. I have to record new videos for my pedal steel ads as well as JM’s Grateful Zone and Vintage Soundz. I have to keep all my Facebook, Instagram, Reddit and YouTube accounts up to date and organized. That’s 9 ACTIVE accounts!
Musically, I feel like I have a special relationship to the Grateful Dead that most people don’t have.
It took me a while in life to “get on the bus”. By the time I had, I had eaten up all this amazing music from bluegrass to classic country and jazz and fusion as well as the Great American Songbook.
This was all the stuff that made Jerry Garcia who he was! When I started REALLY absorbing Jerry’s music and playing, I sat there and went “OH I know where THAT’s from!” “I GET IT”!
You can’t just love the Dead and come in and play this music. You have to have the background to make it effective.
Alright so before we go can you talk to us a bit about how people can work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
Email me at joelmartinsgratefulzone@gmail.com or find me on Instagram! I also keep all my tour dates on my website! My Youtube channel is a lot of fun too!
http://joelmartinmusic.com
https://www.instagram.com/tronmoog/
https://www.youtube.com/@GratefulZone
Contact Info:
- Website: http://joelmartinmusic.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tronmoog/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/iplaypedalsteel/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@GratefulZone
Image Credits
Joel Martin
Frank Vastano
Gary Davis
