Bob Martin (born 1942, Lowell, Massachusetts) is an American folk singer-songwriter.[1]
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While attending Suffolk University in Boston during the 1960s, he was influenced by the Cambridge folk scene and played at the Nameless Coffeehouse, Club 47 (now Club Passim), and other folk clubs. Emerging from the same New England city as Jack Kerouac, Martin was heavily influenced by the beat poet's writing and career. It was in 1972, fifteen years after Kerouac's On the Road was published, that Bob Martin made his first album Midwest Farm Disaster for RCA Records in Nashville. He worked closely with Chet Atkins, an executive at RCA at the time and many exceptional studio musicians including drummer Kenneth Buttrey, a key player on Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde album. Due to personnel changes at the label and the onset of disco, Martin's career was not given priority.
In 1974, he "dropped out" of pop culture and moved to a farm in West Virginia with his family. He continued to write songs, poetry, novels and pursued his muse through various artistic endeavors. In 1982, he recorded his second album, Last Chance Rider for June Appal Recordings of Whitesburg, KY. The record was recognized as one of the top three folk albums in the country by the National Association of Independent Record Distributors. Martin however chose to play music on his own terms and didn't pursue the music business as a way of life.
It was another ten years, until the release of his third album The River Turns the Wheel (1997), which contained backing vocals by Bill Morrissey and Cormac McCarthy and was on Martin's own label, Riversong Records. It reached number sixteen on the Gavin Americana chart, and was chosen one of the top ten albums in 1997 by Brad Kava of the San Jose Mercury News. Dave Perry of The Lowell Sun chose it as the best folk album of 1997, and Tom Flannery of The Electric City News also picked it as the best CD of that year. He toured nationally and opened for Merle Haggard in 1999.
Next To Nothin was released on Riversong Records in 2000. In 2006, Martin completed his first non-fiction novel, and he continues to perform nationally and internationally.