Martha Redbone - New York, NY
Home of the Brave - Feature
By Kelley Guiney

Martha Redbone is a singer-songwriter based in New York City who can put together a great groove and sing it with a voice on par with soul legends like Chaka Khan, Al Green and Stevie Wonder. Her debut CD, Home of the Brave, is a stunning combination of her amazing voice and refreshingly original, entertainingly clever lyrics, riffs and hooks. Almost every song sounds like a potential hit. Highlights include Say U Love Me,which features a vocal performance in homage to seventies pop that will bring true soul fans to their knees; the musically challenging Someday We’ll B Friends,with a classic chorus; the truly entertaining and honest Boyfriend; the sweet, inspiring, and ultimately moving Underdog; and the lazy, smooth, romantic Superman.This is a classic debut from a dynamic, highly gifted artist who is just getting warmed up.

Redbone’s optimistic, confident attitude and quirky table-turning sensibility is exemplified by the name itself. She is half Native American and half African American, and in her mother’s native Kentucky where Martha spent part of her childhood, “Redbone” was a derogatory term for this combined heritage. Her choice to take on the name as her musical identity is a testament to her empowered spirit as an artist. After a move to London in the nineties, Redbone formed a solid musical partnership with musician/producer/songwriter Aaron Whitby that’s still going strong. The songwriting and performing duo radiate a consistent mutual respect and delight in working together, and their collaborative energy is magical. The two and their band have a limited touring schedule which will hopefully expand as their exposure increases – I’m sure Redbone’s live performance is unforgettable.

I am a long-time fan of soul music, and was thrilled to have the opportunity to talk to Martha Redbone, who is currently in Sedona, Arizona working on songs for the next record.

HotBands - I wanted to ask you about your songwriting process. Based on this CD, you’re really good at coming up with hooks.

Martha Redbone - Oh, thanks.

HotBands - And every song has them. They’re really good. So I’m curious about how you approach writing a song, music and lyrics. And your music really brings the lyrics to life.

Martha Redbone - My partner Aaron and I were songwriters first. We had a publishing deal back in London and then came to New York and continued the same – we were with Warner Chappell. We were Warner Chappell slaves.

HotBands - So you were hired songwriters and that’s it?

Martha Redbone - Well I was always an artist doing my own thing, but we kind of fell into it. People liked my songwriting, they always said that my lyrics were quirky, so if you wanted a quirky lyric, as a new writer they’d send me new artists and I’d write these quirky kind of lyrics with attitude. We’d have to work to a brief, specs, you know, “she’s 18,” or “it’s a three girl group, 14 through 16, make it sound like Brandy meets Britney Spears and this and that” –so you have to come up with that. And so you’re sweating bullets and hope that they like it and if they don’t like it it collects dust on your shelf until later.

HotBands - That must have been really good practice.

Martha Redbone - It was. It was good because you learn to think on your feet. And that’s how we lived, thank God for publishing deals, because we wouldn’t be able to survive. People always say don’t sell your publishing, but to be honest with you when you’re a new writer, when you’re a new artist, you do need a hand. You really do. And I think it was a blessing, the money was great and it really got us to dive into the music industry and we were able to build up a little reputation as New York writers. It was a lot of pressure, but it was fun and it was really good. I wouldn’t trade it for anything, it was a great experience, I loved it.

HotBands - Well there are a lot of really amazing people who did that, for example Paul Simon.

Martha Redbone - Carole King, Gerry Goffin. Even people who you don’t think of like Sam Cooke, George Clinton from Funkadelic, my mentor, he was a staff songwriter for Motown.

HotBands - And Sam and Dave.

Martha Redbone - Curtis Mayfield, I mean there are so many, Neil Diamond.

HotBands - Kris Kristofferson’s a great songwriter and Warren Zevon, who just passed away, and J.J. Cale. These are a lot of my very favorite artists, period.

Martha Redbone - Yeah, Carly Simon. What I enjoy and still enjoy about songwriting for myself as well is that it’s a craft, it’s an art, like painting and dance and anything else that you do, ballet, it’s a craft that you just work on perfecting your whole life, it’s something that never dies. And that’s what I really like about it. You just dig deeper and deeper and it’s something that you can never stop learning from.

HotBands - What was that time period when you guys were doing that?

Martha Redbone - That was 1998, ’99, during that time.

HotBands - How would you classify your music?

Martha Redbone - Soul music. There’s a thing with soul music, they gave it the right name. They should call everything soul music, if it doesn’t touch the soul then it’s irrelevant no matter what it is.

HotBands - I love soul. I think it’s because I grew up on the south side of Chicago and I heard tons of it growing up. I called Pat Ferris to thank him for turning me on to your music and I said “this music makes me feel like I’m in Chicago.”

Martha Redbone - It’s funny, the majority of my band are from Chicago, from Hyde Park. And our bass player’s dad was one of the Impressions, Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions. His dad was one of the singers on “People Get Ready.” Fred Cash was his dad and he’s Fred Cash Junior.

HotBands - That’s interesting.

Martha Redbone - Yeah, he’s an amazing bass player. And one of our drummers’ dad was the original drummer in Earth, Wind and Fire. Isn’t that awesome?

HotBands - Yeah. That’s cool.

Martha Redbone - I’ve got a kick-ass band.

HotBands - You can hear that influence, too. So regarding your songwriting process, can you kind of tell me how it starts.

Martha Redbone - God, it can come from anything, I can be driving in the car or sitting in the subway and I’m just humming something to myself, I’ll hear a melody or something someone will say will ring a bell. Something really quirky.

HotBands - So then what happens next?

Martha Redbone - I’ll just kind of remember it, especially if there’s a rhythm of something then I find it’s usually easier to remember, like from the time I’m out of my car and in my house. In fact sometimes I go through waves where I’m really much more creative than at other times, and I’ll walk around with a Dictaphone in my handbag.

HotBands - That’s smart.

Martha Redbone - Cause if I heard something then I can sing it and I have it by my bedside at night so at three in the morning I’ll kind of roll over in the dark and click this thing and go hmm hmm hmm…and hopefully in the morning it’ll be something that I’ll still remember and if not oh well. But that’s how I do it.

HotBands - Well, that’s what I’m wondering, is it lyrics that come to you that way or is it melodies?

Martha Redbone - Everything. Everything. And sometimes you’ll hear a guitar riff or something on piano in a certain key and that’ll – it can come from anything, it really can. It can be from like right now I’m in Sedona and Sedona’s great for writing because well number one being from New York where I love the buzz and everything, it’s such a huge contrast. And it is so beautiful out here and the red rocks and the country, it’s quiet. No one from New York knows I’m here so the phone is not ringing off the hook like it does in New York and I can really just have time to just get to into myself, you know. And even these red rocks are kind of inspiring something totally unexpected. It’s something that and also I’ve been spending a lot of time doing a lot of Native events and that’s inspiring as well in a way that even that is coming out in stuff that I’m writing.

HotBands - So I have to ask you what was the inspiration for the song “Boyfriend”?

Martha Redbone - That was just a New York story. My girlfriend does Internet dating, she’s always meeting different guys and we were talking about it and she met this one guy who was bisexual. Real simple.

HotBands - That chorus is just great.

Martha Redbone - It’s funny isn’t it. We were talking about that and she’s like you know a lot of those guys out there they don’t care, they’re really freaky. And so I said there’s a song in that. It’s just fun. And I talk about that stuff because those are issues that are relevant. I mean it might be silly and kind of flippant, but shit, so is life, right?

HotBands - The other one that I thought was just really clever, too, it’s the chorus to “Someday We’ll B Friends” where it goes “love affair, love affair,” the way it’s all kind of layered into the music, it’s almost like a waterfall.

Martha Redbone - Well you want a real laugh, basically at that time we were laughing about Pulp Fiction, when people got pissed off we’d say “I’m going to get medieval on your ass,” that line from Pulp Fiction. So I was saying, cause I’m angry in that song, it’s like you cheated on me, it’s really being flippant. Okay, someday we’ll be friends, the tables will turn and then you’ll be needing me but will I be there for you. And so I was saying “I’m going to get medieval on your ass,” when we were writing the song. And Aaron does all this medieval music in the section, that’s where all that stuff, the “love affair” melody, comes from.

HotBands - Oh, that is so interesting.

Martha Redbone - It’s like we’re getting medieval on his ass.

HotBands - Because when you’re listening to that chorus you’re expecting it to end and then it doesn’t. It gets even more clever.

Martha Redbone - Yeah, that’s what that is. That’s just like someone being so angry that they go into this rage.

HotBands - And it also sounds like you’re making fun of him, like a nursery rhyme.

Martha Redbone - Yeah, that’s exactly what it is.

HotBands - I love that, that you can express so much, musically and – there’s so much that’s said there.

Martha Redbone - It’s all intrinsic isn’t it. And that’s when you got the stuff really working, when the magic’s really happening that’s when you really can have fun, you know. I wish we could have that on every song that we do, I wish we could make that connection with every song. You don’t always but when you hit it right, boy. It’s like Marvin Gaye’s What’s Goin’ On, album, that’s just like one thing into the next, you know. You can never get tired of it.

HotBands - How long have you been writing songs and performing?

Martha Redbone - Well I’ve been writing songs for about five years and performing two years.

HotBands - Two years?

Martha Redbone - Yeah, Home of the Brave is my first CD and we released that in May of 2001.

HotBands - You didn’t sing and stuff when you were a kid?

Martha Redbone - No.

HotBands - Wow.

Martha Redbone - No, I was an art student.

HotBands - When did you figure out that you had this amazing voice?

Martha Redbone - Well my dad sang in church and stuff and I’d sing in the shower like when no one was around. But I ended up having an art career instead and did graphic design and painting and ended up painting portraits and stuff like that. And then started doing cartooning, just all kinds of graphic stuff. And with P-funk, they’re like a whole conglomerate, everything arty, it’s music and art and when they needed background vocalists they were making a record and everyone wanted to get on it, we just would go in the studio and sing some background. The buzz that I got from that was a weird connection, it was like this is what I’m supposed to be doing. And then I was like oh my God, this is such a thrill, but I was terrified of performing. So I took some classes, group classes to get me used to singing in front of people and on command. And I just got used to it, I just thought if this is what I want to do I have to set a discipline. Like with anything. And now it’s like I feel like when I’m on stage it’s like I’m in my living room. And it’s fun and I really feel like I’m a home and I hope that I make the audience feel like they’re at home, too.

HotBands - Yeah, that’s wonderful.

Martha Redbone - That’s what really turns me on.

HotBands - People really respond to that, too.

Martha Redbone - Yeah.

HotBands - To get back to your songwriting for a minute, again I was really curious about your process partly because of the hooks – I hate to use that term, it’s sort of a cliché, but I can’t help dwelling on that a bit.

Martha Redbone - Yeah, I think, you know what, we grew up with Prince and I love all the stuff that my dad, that we had in the house growing up and I think it’s just something that you hear.

HotBands - I guess you said it happens all different ways – I’ve talked to lots of songwriters about their process, I’m kind of fascinated with the subject, and I couldn’t imagine that you sat down and wrote the lyrics and then came up with that music for them. In your music the two seem too perfectly integrated for that.

Martha Redbone - No, it all kind of happens at the same time.

HotBands - That’s kind of what I thought. I bet sometimes it all comes all as one piece almost.

Martha Redbone - Yeah, sometimes and that’s great when that happens. It’s so great cause it’s like I don’t have to sit around banging my head about how to make this fit or that fit. Sometimes you’ll come up with a wonderful piece of music, like “Underdog” for example, that particular song took the longest to write and it sounds almost the simplest. All I had was “we are the underdog,” that’s it, that’s all I had for six weeks. I had the rhythm, I had the melody that I wanted but I just didn’t know how to put it to have it make sense and so I’d leave it and come back to it. You should see my lyric book, I have all these notebooks all around and I got pages and pages of just “we are the underdog” with nothing. And then finally it started to come together one day. I stopped banging my head.

HotBands - Did you ever think about just giving up on it?

Martha Redbone - No because I knew it was something good. That’s when you use your gut.

HotBands - It’s almost like being a scientist. How does your collaboration with Aaron work?

Martha Redbone - Well he’s amazing because he can – he draws, he helps draw things out of me and he also hears like no other person on this planet. And he’s coming out of the Beatles and Stevie Wonder and I’m coming out Aerosmith and Prince.

HotBands - He’s English.

Martha Redbone - Yeah, he’s a Londoner. And he also comes out of jazz, so he knows all these crazy chords and all these weird ways of playing something that sounds really simple but really isn’t. And I love that. Sometimes when you’re a woman and you’re working with a guy sometimes the guys are very aggressive in getting their ideas across and sometimes they can really muscle you.

HotBands - Walk right over you.

Martha Redbone - Yeah, and I had done that, I’d written with a couple of guys before and you know you just end up with song ideas that aren’t what you heard and aren’t necessarily that great. But he’s not like that, he’s someone who helps me to think clearer so that I could explain things to him and to my band. After years of working with him I know how to separate my ideas in my brain. Like I can hear a bass line now and I can sing him a bass line, and I’m not a pianist by any means, but with the melody and a bass note I can show him exactly where I’m thinking. And that’s something that is a real strength; it helps make writing as a team a lot easier. Sometimes I’ll sing a whole song, I’ll sing all the parts, like Bobby Mcferron, you know. And just put them all together like this is what I hear and all these voices will come up one doing the bass line, you know, I’ll do the high hat and all that kind of stuff and then sing the song on top of it. And he’ll hear it and he’s like oh yeah, you know.

HotBands - So he’s a pretty solid musician. It sounds like he’s studied music pretty seriously.

Martha Redbone - That’s the only thing he’s ever done. Music is his life. And done it for years, he’s basically been a musician since he was 16. He’s a pianist firstly and he plays guitar.

HotBands - Do you play any instruments?

Martha Redbone - I play very very bad keyboards and just one very bad guitar. But I’m a shit hot singer.

HotBands - I am really floored that you just started singing over the last couple of years. I am absolutely stunned by that.

Martha Redbone - Well I mean when you’re from Brooklyn you tend to yell a lot, but you get the strength there.

HotBands - Have you ever taken voice lessons?

Martha Redbone - I took a couple of lessons to get over my shyness and I did take a couple of lessons, one-on-one lessons with a jazz teacher in London who told me basically that I don’t need to come to her anymore. It was just confidence that I needed, and that was really nice, that was a huge compliment and a big boost of confidence.

HotBands - I noticed this and when I read all your press materials it seems like there are these things that people over and over mention, and one thing that people mention a lot is you have amazing control over your voice.

Martha Redbone - Yeah, I think it’s just a gift. I really think that’s my dad coming through there. My dad was an amazing singer. His whole side of the family, they have musical speaking voices, their voices are soft and kind of velvety and soothing. And I think – as singers they all sang in church and stuff so all the boys were gospel singers and stuff. So they just have these wonderful wonderful voices and I think I inherited that. They started with a good grounding and then I cultivated it myself and just developed it from there. That’s really lucky, I feel very blessed with that. There’s nothing I can say about that, it’s all from him.

HotBands - When did you become interested in songwriting, or why or how.

Martha Redbone - It was practically instantly. The minute that I decided that I wanted to sing, that I felt that this was where my soul was I immediately said okay, this I get high off of, okay. Now what am I going to sing. And so I talked to this DJ friend of mine and I said what do I have to do from here and he said oh, well you need a demo and I said what’s a demo and he said it’s a demonstration of your voice. He said you get a bunch of other people’s records that you like and you sing them. And I thought well that’s not going to work with me because why should I go around singing other people’s songs, I have a lot to say. It was just like that, just in that conversation, after he said that I thought to myself, hmm, that’s not going to happen to me, I’m not going to run around town getting people’s disco songs, club songs and sing that crap, you know I have a lot to say. So instantly I just started writing. It was like no discussion, to myself, it was just no, I’m a communicator, I’ve got stuff that I need to get out and I want people to hear and maybe they feel the same way. And it just went from there really.

HotBands - What are your strongest musical influences?

Martha Redbone - It really is kind of like – I guess it’s like Led Zeppelin meets Marvin Gaye, you know what I mean. Because I hear that stuff. And I have been in love with Tom Petty’s songwriting since I was in high school. And Bruce Springsteen – between the two of them I think they got it covered, you know. In the house growing up when I was like in first grade and second grade my mom was listening to Simon and Garfunkel and Peter, Paul and Mary and Carole King, you know. And then when my dad wanted to hear music we were listening to Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye. That’s what was in the house and then he had like a funk band, like a club date band.

HotBands - Your dad did?

Martha Redbone - Yeah, for fun. And they played all those kind of Gap Band songs, so we had everything in the house, every single thing. Then when I went to school in Kentucky, Kentucky is like the Midwest, you have one radio station and the radio station plays everything.

HotBands - I wish it was still like that.

Martha Redbone - I wish it were too.

HotBands - I swear I’ve heard “House on the Moon” in Chicago.

Martha Redbone - Yeah, you probably have.

HotBands - So you’re getting airplay in Chicago, right?

Martha Redbone - Oh yeah, we’re in over 100 radio stations.

HotBands - Great.

Martha Redbone - It’s amazing what you can do in spite of having no major label support and the whole corporate thing.

HotBands - It’s tough.

Martha Redbone - It’s tough but it’s not impossible. And I’m proof that it’s not impossible cause I have my freedom. I might not be riding around in limos, but who gives a shit. I love my car. It’s wonderful when the machine actually works for you, it’s a dream, you know, that everything runs, like if you’re Beyonce or J-Lo or whoever, No Doubt, you know. But when you’re in the machine and the machine is not working for you it’s a nightmare, it’s like having your hands tied. So for me doing this all on our own has been a lot of work but also an awful lot of fun and I don’t know because I haven’t ever had the machine ever working like that I don’t know any other way. But I love it. It worked for Dave Matthews.

HotBands - Yeah, and Ani DiFranco.

Martha Redbone - Yeah, and I’m really into it, I love my freedom. My ancestors have already been slaves. I don’t need to go there again.

HotBands - I’m wondering – and this is just me personally, after listening to your CD and your voice, which I just love – I’m wondering if you’ve thought about, I don’t quite know how to say this –

Martha Redbone - Spit it out.

HotBands - The slower kind of ballad kind of song.

Martha Redbone - Always. Yeah, and that’s to come. That’s CD number two.

HotBands - Cause I would just love to hear that.

Martha Redbone - Oh you’ll love it.

HotBands - How do you feel the Internet has influenced your music?

Martha Redbone - Oh, thank God for the Internet. If we didn’t have that – that’s the one blessing that independent artists have today is the Internet. It would have been a lot harder I guess back in the eighties, bands going around in a van all over the country kind of in search of, you know. It makes it a lot easier.

HotBands - How do you feel about file trading, people swapping songs over the Web.

Martha Redbone - Well, I’m kind of in two minds about it because I do feel that if someone has your record they should pay for it like anything. But in my other mind, someone who is a new artist like myself, we need that to spread the word. See what I mean. The more people listening when you’re new, the better.

HotBands - I do think that a lot of people who download music end up buying the album.

Martha Redbone - That’s what happens in theory, but I think most of the people who download music are kids, and they’re downloading the famous people who are actually losing money. But they’re not downloading Martha Redbone. So people like us are kind of like well, yeah, okay, spread the word, but people like Metallica where they’ve been making money off of record sales, they’re losing big time because their audience are kids. So I am really in two minds. But I do think that people should pay. How many of us actually sat down and taped whole albums for our friends.

HotBands - It never felt real to me, either. I would have a tape of an album so I could hear it in my car, but I would always buy it. It just wasn’t the same.

Martha Redbone - It isn’t the same. But these kids don’t care about that, they’re walking around with 250 songs and earphones. They’re from a different era than us and they don’t think like we do. Everything is easy accessibility. I think humans are probably going to lose all their extra fingers, I think we’re just going to have index fingers and thumbs. Because you know of convenience, laptops, using index fingers and thumbs, forget the other three fingers. I think that’s what has happened. I think kids don’t even think about oh I want the real thing. The only reason we want the real thing is because we know how vinyl felt. But they don’t know how vinyl feels. We came from something different, we love the feel of a big square record with all that artwork on it and all that kind of stuff. At the end of the day we should pay. It’s like oh I like this jacket, I’ll just walk out of the store, I’ll just borrow it for a while and keep the tags tucked in. I mean do you just steal anything that you want? Why do we trivialize music? Everyone thinks just because we do it for love we shouldn’t be paid.

HotBands - So when you play shows do you have the same band all the time?

Martha Redbone - Well we try to keep the same band, but when we – like I said we’re doing everything ourselves so around New York we tend to have a home band, a full band, but when we go on the road, we do the broke tour, we take a trio. The three of us, it’s just guitar and keyboards. You would love it. It’s just like being in the room when the song is just being formed.

HotBands - So it’s you and Aaron and who else?

Martha Redbone - And the guitarist. Either one, it’s either Mike Campbell or Alan (“AB”) Burroughs, whichever one is free, depending on the money and stuff. They both play great guitar. They play totally different from each other and they’re totally complementary together as well. Our dream is to have them both on stage. Once we start building up to where we can have the full band outside of New York, which is just beginning to happen now, they’re just the most amazing guys you could ever imagine hearing. They just make me sound amazing. They make me sound like a veteran.

HotBands - You know what, you do sound like a veteran. That’s what I was trying to say. You just don’t sound like a beginner at all.

Martha Redbone - People have said that, but do you know what I think it is, I think it’s because I started late, I started as a woman. Number one, my voice is fully developed. I’m not going from a teenage voice, a young woman voice into a woman voice, so my voice is fully formed and it’s only getting richer, you know what I mean. I’m not going through puberty or any of that stuff.

HotBands - Yeah, you’re in your prime. That’s part of it, yeah.

Martha Redbone - I was never a stage kid.

HotBands - And I would have assumed that you were, that’s why I said I was so shocked, but I also think you really have a gift and you just naturally know how to use it. It’s like you said, something in you woke up and you went this is who I am right here.

Martha Redbone - My parents always raised me to follow my dreams no matter how crazy they seemed and just go for it.

HotBands - Are your parents still around?

Martha Redbone - My dad passed away three years ago, I buried my dad on my birthday. But my mom’s still around. There’s a song about her on the new CD and I play it live now.

HotBands - Did your dad get to see you perform?

Martha Redbone - My dad never got to see me perform but he got to hear the record. And he was dying in the hospital when I was making the album, he died when it was done, but he heard the rough cuts. We were in the studio with the band and I’d send him everything, he’d call me up from the hospital, he’d just put on his Walkman. He said, “I cried like a baby when I heard you.” He was just so proud.

HotBands - Oh, I bet he was.

Martha Redbone - I think it’s him in me. His voice was amazing, he and Marvin Gaye are from the same area of North Carolina and their voices, the diction, you know the way, their accents were the same number one and just the singing, there are certain songs of Marvin Gaye that I can’t listen to because they sound just like my dad.

HotBands - Do you have any recordings of your dad?

Martha Redbone - I do, I have a couple of gospel tapes, if I ever want to cry I’ll just put it on. Yeah, I think it’s him in me.

HotBands - You really have a beautiful voice and you’re doing really original music. I can’t wait to see you live. I’ll bet your live performance is amazing.

Martha Redbone - You know someone told me, they said we come out there and play our songs with the conviction of a cover band. You know, like a song, if it’s –

HotBands - Like they’ve already been big hits.

Martha Redbone - Yeah. We perform the songs as though the audience already knows them.

HotBands - That’s great.

Martha Redbone - That was wonderful to hear, I love that analogy. And that’s what I dream about, you know. I guess we do go out there like hey, remember this one?

HotBands - You really own them.

Martha Redbone - And that’s kind of what I’m trying to do, you know, I’m trying to write something classic. I don’t know if the machine is ever going to come forward and work for me, but I tell you the few people who are hearing my stuff, as long as they’re hearing me my job is done.

HotBands - There’s a band out of Seattle called Maktub. Boy, would I love to see you and this guy Reggie Watts, who sings for them, would I love to see you guys on stage together. I might drop dead. This guy is amazing, amazing range, great songwriter. You guys should record together or something.

Martha Redbone - I’ll check them out. I’ve heard of Reggie.

HotBands - What’s your ultimate vision or goal for your music, what do you fantasize about?

Martha Redbone - I’m trying to dig in deeper, I’m trying to be like someone with the voice of a legend like Chaka Khan or Marvin Gaye or Stevie Wonder but with the songwriting of a Tom Petty or – you know what I mean? That’s really hard to do, that’s kind of what I’m trying to do. Maybe with this new CD I’ll get a little bit closer. But that’s kind of what I hear in my head, you know.

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