John Arthur Martinez

Who is John Arthur Martinez?

“I tell people I went to the Hank Williams school of songwriting: I always try to capture his ability to marry a lyric with a melody,” says john Arthur martinez. With his most recent release YOU PLAY MY HEART, a self-produced Austin, Texas area project PURGATORY ROAD in 2009, martinez has definitely earned himself an A. His flowing melodies carry stories told by a true Texas songwriter, with evocative lyrics inspired by wide open spaces, friends, family and the wayfarers who populate our lives in unexpected ways. Martinez’s latest, his first for Apache Ranch Records, is filled with the spiritual and creative energy of Texas’ Hill Country, where he lives in Marble Falls, and musical influences that range from Dan Fogelberg and James Taylor to Carlos Santana, Cuco Sanchez and Asleep at the Wheel. An alumnus of the Cheatham Street Warehouse singer-songwriting class that spawned the likes of Todd Snider, Terri Hendrix, James McMurtry, Bruce Robison and Hal Ketchum, martinez’s pedigree as an Americana artist of the first caliber was already stamped well before he attracted the attention of Bruce’s brother, Charlie Robison, who encouraged martinez to audition for TV’s “Nashville Star.” Martinez won second, ahead of Miranda Lambert. That opened doors to a record deal with Dualtone (LONE STARRY NIGHT, produced by Matt Rollings of Lyle Lovett’s band, hit #49 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart), his debut at the Grand Ole Opry on a bill with Charley Pride and Carrie Underwood, as well as several European tours and other proud moments. But martinez’s roots, and his heart, lie squarely in Texas, not Nashville. His music, further nourished by his Mexican-American heritage, contains an earnestness one can’t always hear in the output from Music Row. Born in Austin, he grew up listening to his relatives harmonize on mariachi ballads and watching his father struggle to make a living as a musician before giving up that dream. Raised by his mother and stepfather on a ranch in Round Mountain, between Austin and San Antonio, martinez started publishing poems at age 9. Trying to head in a more traditional direction, he graduated from Texas State University with a bachelor’s degree in English and broadcast journalism (and minors in speech and philosophy) and then entered graduate school at the University of Arizona in Tucson. But he couldn’t stayaway from music and continued to hone his song craft in collegetown coffeehouses. Eventually, musical passion overwhelmed his plans to serve academia as a writing teacher and tennis coach. (One nod to his writing-major past is the inverted capitalization he uses to spell his name and for initials — jAm: it’s after poet e.e. cummings, with an acknowledgment to people who know him by the middle name he’s used since kindergarten because there were so many Johns in his class.