Martyn Joseph was back at The David Hall, South Petherton for the fifth time, a venue and an artist who seem made for each other. Standing under the iconic dome (which used to be the organ loft) the acoustics seem to lift the singer songwriter’s passionate songs.
As he approaches his sixtieth year, Martyn shows no signs of easing up on his punishing touring schedule. Speaking to him before the show, he cites one of his heroes, Bruce Springsteen, as an example of why he intends to keep this up for a few more years yet. Martyn undeniably keeps himself fit and when asked about whether there are still things that he wants to write about the answer is a swift and unequivocal yes, there is still so much that fires him up. He says he genuinely believes that his best material is still ahead of him and who could argue with that given the quality of the output of songs.
As a performer, Martyn says that he does not expect or want his audience to come to see him just to be entertained and if they happen to be, then this is just a by-product. While in years past, a spiritual aspect was more prominent, now it is the humanitarian which is prevalent. But an evening with Martyn is, in many respects, like being with a fervent preacher, albeit not one that beats you about the head with biblical texts but one who lays bare their beliefs and invites you to examine your own. It, therefore, seems wholly appropriate that the venue tonight is a former Congregational Church.
He opens with two songs from the last studio album, Get Back To You and title track Here Come The Young, a song that reflects Joseph’s passionate paean to the generation that he believes will not make many of the mistakes of their elders. He follows with Tom Waits’ Way Down In The Hole; despite being a prolific writer, Joseph regularly incorporates at least one song by another artist in his set. Driving Her Back to London, Joseph’s song for his daughter Harriet, portrays the proud father dealing with the changes to a relationship with your child as they move to adulthood.
Every guitarist has a slightly different technique, and Joseph is no exception. He plays an instrumental piece on his 12 string which, filtered through his effects, opens with almost sitar-like cascades before picking up the pace with echoes of Gordon Giltrap’s Heartsong in some of the patterns. He later tells me that the piece currently has no name (he calls it 12, after the guitar) and is a work in progress, but he has it in mind to do an album of ambient guitar music. This revelation comes as no surprise considering his love to subtly alter the guitar’s tones, his ever-changing array of pedals being a testament to that quest.
He then treated us two Phil Ochs songs, which are to feature on an album of Phil Ochs covers being released in January. He speaks of his initial introduction to Phil Ochs when an American review compared him to the singer and then how many years later, by chance he met Ochs’ sister, Sonny. They are now friends, as became apparent when he texted Sonny in the interval to tell her that he had played two songs off the new album, at South Petherton.
The second half kicks off with The Luxury of Despair, taken from the Sanctuary album. Joseph is a performer who deliberately wears his heart firmly on his sleeve, in doing so sharing some of his inner turmoil. He tells us that he had a text earlier about his father, who has Alzheimer’s, before performing Her Name is Rose, a song about his mother.
He reveals how he had a guitar for his tenth birthday before being made to have Classical guitar lessons, and to prove the point, plays the first song he composed, four weeks after he started learning guitar. Jumping forward in time, he tells us when on a trip to the middle east, having signed for Sony, he had, in his words an epiphany and the focus of his songwriting changed. He says he realised that he didn’t have the answers, but he had a lot of questions which leads into two of his earlier songs, Treasure Question followed by Cardiff Bay, probably his best-known song (if you discount Dolphins Make Me Cry). Cardiff Bay is a song that he must have played thousands of times, but he always sings it with feeling and tenderness.
After this moment of introspection, it is back to the punchier songs with warnings to politicians and his homage to the father of the NHS, Nye Bevan and naturally more audience participation, on the chorus of I Searched For You. There is an expectation at a Martyn Joseph gig, an unwritten contract of audience participation and the South Petherton crowd duly fulfil their part. ‘That was great, I want to pack you into a case and take you to Cornwall tomorrow’, says Joseph. It’s a great line, and we secretly wish he would.
A couple more songs and it is over, and Joseph stands on the stage under the blue dome with painted stars. We applaud this great humanitarian who has guided us through the last couple of hours, pouring his heart and soul into the performance and encouraging us to be better people.