Martin Pleass - Long Biography

 

                     

 

The musical world of Martin Pleass began its roller coaster ride of adventures with him standing on tables playing the ukulele banjo aged six.  “My Mother would take me to Rushworth’s and Dreapers (the famous Liverpool music store) and buy  plectrums and new banjo bridges for me,  I must have been really rough with it !”

 

Piano lessons and clarinet lessons would follow, but it was not until Martin discovered the guitar that choices had to be made. “ I was just learning guitar aged 12 or so, I couldn’t have been very good but I loved it more than anything.  My guitar was once confiscated  because I was doing so badly at school.”  Fortunately Martin was sent for lessons to a  “wonderful old skiffle musician”  by the name of Stan Jardine who taught Martin a wide variety of styles, and often sent him home with a mandolin or banjo to borrow for the week.  It was during this time that Martin grew to love the songs of Leadbelly, Big Bill Broonzy, Flatt and Scruggs and many others. “ Stan would show me the chords to a tune and I would go and find the vinyl re- issue in Cheverton records in Liverpool. I had a fantastic time in the 80's, but I was still in the folk boom of the early sixties.”

 

Martin’s devotion to the music of those great artists continue to this day with the banjo playing of Earl Scruggs being a lifelong obsession, however academic achievement had not become an obsession to this slightly strange sixteen year old and so the career prospects were bleak.  “Somehow, and I will never know why, my Mother wrote to the great Classical guitar maker David Rubio to ask his advice”  Martin had graduated to taking instruments apart to see how they worked.  David Rubio wrote back and recommended The London College of  Furniture guitar building course.  By the time Martin got a place he was working in his first band with traditional Irish musician’s around Liverpool.  “I got £10 a night playing rhythm guitar,  some young bands in Liverpool now don’t make that !”

 

Although Martin still plays a couple of instruments he made during his four year apprenticeship as a guitar maker in London, he couldn’t wait to get out of it.  He was not exactly the greatest craftsman the college had known and it was playing more than making that interested him. “Most luthiers work late into the night to finish their guitars, I would be sneaking out of the college early to get home and practice.” However, a love and understanding of fretted instruments and wood is still a big part of his life.

 

It was during these college years that Martin first visited the U.S.A to study guitar during the summer vacation and the experience was a real ear opener.  It was during a lesson with jazz player Larry Coryell that Martin first learned of the music of Michael Hedges, Alex Di Grassi and Pierre Bensusan.  “ I still listen to music I first heard then with total wonder” and to an 18 year old it was a revelation, not without it’s problems. “It’s difficult to study the techniques of Michael Hedges and then go and do a dodgy pub gig to pay the bills.  For years I longed to be a part of the acoustic guitar revolution but I couldn’t find a way to contribute, I couldn’t find an audience. I was too rock for the folk clubs, too folky for rock audiences and I am not a  mainstream classical or jazz player.”

 

Despite obvious problems finding work,  Martin left college and his first job was with The National Youth Music Theatre playing banjo and guitar in a Brecht play.  This production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle won awards and a run at the Saddler’s Wells theatre followed.  The West End was to call again some years later when Martin was asked to work with  The Who’s  Pete Townshend paying guitar in his adaptation of  “The Iron Man”   “It was like having a birthday everyday. I’d rush to the theatre in the hope of having a coffee with Pete and getting him to tell me stories of Hendrix and Clapton.  It was a young guitar player’s dream come true.”

 

It was the years that followed that taught Martin the true up and downs of showbiz.  He played as a sideman in a couple of bands and toured Europe and Ireland extensively.  This was a learning experience that taught him as much how not to do things as well as gaining good performing experience.  Touring with cajun rock band  “Le Rue”  was cut short when members were arrested and deported.  On another occasion an argument about being paid for a gig late at night in a street on the South side of Chicago ended up with Martin staring down the barrel of a gun.  Most of it was just mundane misery. “I can’t remember how many times I have sat in a broken down transit van in the middle of the night after a gig,  no money and far from home. For every good gig there seemed to be three bad ones.”

 

It was during these “paying the dues” years that  Martin started seriously songwriting.  An earlier friendship with Texas legend Steve Young had inspired him but it was the difficult times that proved songwriting fodder. “Being the girlfriend of a struggling musician is a shortlived novelty.  One girlfriend ran off with a famous rock star, one went off with a lorry driver….my personal life was a disaster and I was more often than not broke” 

  

Martin’s solo gigs had always been a feature of his working year, but he had hoped one of the bands he had been in would have hit the big time.  In 1993 a BBC producer interested in his music gave Martin a live T.V. appearance on the popular daytime show “Pebble Mill at One.”  It didn’t prove to be the big break he needed but as he explains “Gigs improved for months afterwards and I enjoyed the attention.  The BBC also paid well and for the first time I felt like a singer/songwriter. I sold hundreds of cassette tapes at little gigs up and down the U.K.”  Still Martin never felt that he was playing the music he wanted, as he explains, “When you are gigging in a pub, you are thinking about what the audience wants, what the promoter or Pub landlord wants, or anything that will get you asked back and improve any chance of a pay rise. You cannot lose the audience and your job by doing too much original work.

 

Martin thought he had the perfect solution when in 1999 he did his last acoustic guitar playing gig with his own band at Birkenhead Priory and went out on the road with “Cat Scratch Fever”  a top Liverpool pub band  who needed a replacement for their frontman who had left. Martin was playing the piano and organ and electric blues guitar.   By day Martin indulged himself in classical and flamenco guitar studies,  by night he was a “rockin’ rollin’ boogie woogie honky tonk piano man.” (Martin’s piano work was always a bit of a secret up to this point, he remains a student and fan of boogie woogie and New Orlean’s piano)  All seemed well for a while, Martin met and married his wife Leonie and they opened a music shop.  Things got busy, Martin had by this point also become a respected guitar teacher.  Things got busier when Cat Scratch Fever started to play major Jazz festivals in Ireland, the U.K. and Norway.

 

“Sure I wanted to be out there playing, but with my own music. . . something had to go. . .  Cat Scratch really put an edge to my voice, maybe it was the smoke and the Guinness”  Martin called it a day with rock and roll to concentrate on his own songs and recordings. However, he can still be persuaded to rock away the occasional steamy night in Cork,  if there is enough Guinness on offer.. . . .  

 

 

            

 

The turning point in Martin’s career was when Martin wrote and recorded the groundbreaking work “Water’s Edge” released in 2006.  This collection of songs and instrumentals recorded in the Caribbean and in his own studio continues to be one of his most popular works. Featuring mostly mountain dulcimer (an easy instrument to travel with) and lap steel  (a growing obsession) this album is much praised and “Guardian Angel” remains one of Martin’s most enduring  songs.  “I made those recordings for myself,”   It is an intensely original, honest and personal work.

 

Martin Pleass continues to take his music to international festivals and venues.  This website www.martinpleass.com distributes CD’s around the world.