The Official Martin Zellar Blog

Up & Down & Speeding All Over the Place

   Let me indulge in a bit of gross generalization...

   There are two types of musicians in the world: those that have traveled in a tour bus, and those that have not.* I am a member of the latter group. I've never even seen the inside of a tour bus except in movies and on television. I have, however, parked in the shade of tour buses belonging to groups that I was opening for.

   Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with touring in a bus. I would have loved to have toured by bus, but never came close to realizing that kind of success. I'm one of those guys who has survived for years somewhere in the lower-middle rungs of the music business ladder, considering myself lucky to be on it at all.

   My experience performing on The David Letterman show in 1989 is a perfect example of the huge swings between the very cool, and the very humbling, that have marked my career.

   For a young guy from a small meatpacking town in southeastern Minnesota, the very idea of performing on national television was mind-boggling. We flew into New York on the morning of the show and were met at the airport by a chauffeur holding a placard with our names on it. After checking into a posh hotel right on Central Park (complete with a fruit basket!), we were driven in a black limousine to the NBC studios. It was hard not to feel like a rock star.

   When the limousine pulled up in front of Rockefeller Center, a big crowd gathered around to see who was inside. The driver walked around, opened our door, and in the split second that it took for the crowd to realize that we weren’t famous, they disappeared. 

   We taped the show that afternoon, and it aired that night to an audience of millions.

   Less than a week later we were playing a club in Lexington, Kentucky to an audience of exactly five people, including the bartender and the sound man.

   That's kind of the way it's gone, more or less, and I really have no complaints.

   Oh, and by the way, David Letterman was really nice to us. So were all five of the people at our Lexington show.

*Technically, there is a third type: musicians who tour in buses, but shouldn't. These are the bands who are playing nightly to an audience smaller than the capacity of the bus that they are traveling in.

More About Songs

   A couple more things about my songs and my song writing.

   Not every song I write is autobiographical. My early songs were probably more so, with emotions going straight from my heart to paper, with no real filter between. The feelings were captured raw (which seems common in many songwriters early material) and that's part of the appeal. As I got older the feelings and emotions going into my songs were just as honest, but I spent far more time working my way through them, trying to express what I was feeling as accurately as possible. Spending more time with your emotions invariably makes the process more complex. The extremes are fairly easy to pin down, the subtleties are far more difficult to capture.

   Like I said in my first post, my songs are like diary entries. Each song, like individual diary entries, represents only what I was feeling or thinking at the moment and time that I wrote it. Each song represents a truth, but only the truth of that moment. Pulling back from there, each album represents a specific period in my life. It may be inaccurate to read too much into any one song, but as you pull back and listen to the songs in a wider context, patterns definitely emerge that paint a more accurate picture.

   I've also written songs where I've attempted to tell stories from the lives of people around me, trying my best to see and feel things from their perspective. I'll only do this if I feel like I've had experiences in my own life that give me some insight, so I suppose these song are indirectly autobiographical as well.

   Finally, I've written songs just as an exercise in writing a certain style of music or just to screw around. I'll leave it up to listeners to decide which songs are which.

The Neil Question...

   One of the most common question e-mailed to my site is "when are you going to do the Neil Diamond show again?' The popularity of that phenomenon still astounds me.

   A little background: The Neil Diamond show was originally conceived and executed as an Andy Kaufman type performance art piece. Our friends in the band Soul Asylum had gamely agreed to let a group of us (Nick being the only other original participant) open for them at a New Years Eve show at the Hyatt doing only Neil Diamond covers. This was many years back, and Soul Asylum drew a crowd that leaned toward loud, fast, hard-edged music. We fully expected to be greeted as objects of scorn, anticipating a 45 minute barrage of beer bottles and profanity. It would have been a great evening of self-amusement had it not gone over so well. I guess it was just strange enough to come off as oddly hip. Not one beer bottle or gob of spit made it's way to the stage. Imagine our disappointment.

   One gig turned into two, and eventually a weekly Sunday night show at the 400 Club that became wildly popular (relative to our modest standards) Fast forward a couple of years and the thing had taken on a life of it's own. It was a lot of fun to do and it didn't induce the anxiety that performing my own music did (it was hard to take it personally if no one showed up to see a Neil Diamond cover band) and it didn't require a lot of emotional energy on my part. It just went on too long. After a while, I was becoming known more as the Neil Diamond cover guy than a singer and songwriter. Though it was far more profitable doing the Neil show, in the end it was an easy decision to give it up. I really needed to get back to doing my own music to stay sane.

   Never say never. Maybe we'll resurrect it down the road for a show or two. I really do miss the money and the crowds...

Numero Dos...

    I thought maybe I should post a couple of things in anticipation of expected questions and complaints:

   I have no idea how often I will add to this thing. It may be sporadic. Go figure.

   This blog won't be interactive. Don't take it personally. I am, as my dear friend Jess used to say, a total nerve bomb. The occasional nasty comment or creepy entry that showed up on my old message board used to totally freak me (and my family) out. I don't read reviews or stories about myself, nor do I listen to or watch my own interviews. The negative reviews are too hurtful, and I always feel like I sound like an idiot in interviews. It's just easier to avoid it all.

   Please send your e-mails with any questions or comments to info@martinzellar.com, and we'll do our best to have someone here at the sprawling ZelCo Enterprises complex get back to you in a timely fashion. Messages eventually do reach me. Unfortunately, the satellite signal on my yacht is spotty.

Take Care,

MZ

 

 

My First Ramble

   I've paid for this blog feature on my site for quite a long time but have never been able to bring myself to use it, largely because I'm not sure I have anything to say that anyone wants or needs to hear. I'm no more interesting (nor are my opinions any more valid) than anyone else you will encounter on any given day. That's the truth. The only things I know for sure are in my heart. My head is not nearly as reliable. I'll try  to use this space to post information, stay in touch, and answer question that are being asked.

   Why haven't I put out a new recording in the last five years?  It's a question that I'm often asked, but have never really given an honest answer to. I usually say that it's because I'm lazy and hate being in the studio. Both of those things are true, but they aren't the real reasons. It would be too hard to give the true answer on a person-to-person basis. Even as I write this, I'm unsure if I am comfortable explaining it at all.

   I have always written songs because it fills a personal need. I'll do it until the day I die. When I first started writing, I gave no thought to how things might change once my songs left the privacy of my bedroom and became publicly performed. I didn't think about it because it just didn't dawn on me that it would ever be a reality. I sat alone in my bedroom and poured myself into songs that were very personal and important to me, and that was enough. It wasn't until I sat down to record for the first time that the terrifying reality hit me; other people were going to hear this stuff. My parents and friends were going to hear my songs and it scared the shit out of me. Did I really want anyone to hear this? It was like letting everyone read my diary. My songs, for the most part, are my diary.

   Obviously, I swallowed my fear and crossed that line. I kept on moving forward, but it didn't get any easier. It became what I did for a living, which brought a whole new set of anxieties.  You release these pieces of yourself to the public not having any idea whether they will connect with, or even make sense to, anyone. What was once something you did only to get yourself through a bad night has become your means to pay the bills. This is no small thing when you have a family, and it creates a lot of pressure.

   I have continued to write songs for the last six years. I still sit alone in my bedroom and pour myself into songs that are very personal and important to me, and it still is what I love/need to do. I probably have written enough new songs to put out three or four albums. I just can't bring myself to record them. These songs mean a lot to me and I really needed to write them, but I don't think I want anyone else to hear them. Letting go of these pieces of myself has definitely grown harder and harder as I've gotten older. I feel that I have nothing left to express that I haven't expressed many times before. Right now I feel like I'm a broken record, but it's my truth. To try to write around that would be a lie. To release it would be redundant and pointless. I am hopeful that other songs will come along that I feel I can share and will be worth releasing. I just don't know.

   Incredibly, over the years a fair amount of people have connected with my music, and for that I am truly grateful. When people tell me that my music means a lot to them, or that it has helped them through a tough time in their life, it nearly breaks my heart. I am deeply appreciative for all of the support and kindness that I have received over the years. I don't want anyone to think that I have taken any of it for granted. Thank you all so very much.

   I am slowing down, readjusting, and trying to figure out where I fit into the scheme of things these days,  but I'm not going away. Thanks for sticking with me.

MZ