Layng Martine Jr – Music Man (Album Review)

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Layng Martine Jr is a veteran Nashville-based songwriter, a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and has written songs such as Way Down, the last song Elvis recorded. Now aged 81, he has finally made his own solo recording debut, an album instigated and produced by his son, Tucker Martine.

Music Man started out as a Christmas gift of five days in his son’s studio, Tucker picking songs from his father’s extensive catalogue, playing the drums and gathering a clutch of name players to accompany him, among them Peter Buck, Bill Frisell, Laura Veirs and k.d. lang.

Featuring string, pedal steel and baritone guitar, with Veirs and Karl Blau on backing, originally a single back in 1974, the title track Music Man opens proceedings, a laid-back, organ-accompanied country-soul number inspired by hours spent listening to late-night radio that reveals him to have a soft and warm vocal burr. Going back further and written in college before he owned a guitar, Surabian Lament was a 1964 B-side, a woozy psychedelic pop swayalong about whether his temperamental girl actually loves him, here with woodwinds, congas and Buck on sitar.

Buck switches to acoustic for the shimmering lap steel flavoured Summertime Lovin’, another from 74, a Beach Boys-tinged song about finding love at a drive-in restaurant that scraped the bottom of the country charts and was later a hit for Johnny Tillotson, on which lang provides the harmonies.

Originally recorded in 1966 but never released, the puttering drum rhythm feeling lonesome Let The World Go By went on to become the title track of a Glenn Yarbrough album and was covered in 2016 by Blau, who plays accordion, electric, and harmonica on this marching rhythm revisiting while, deceptively opening on a southern gospel note before turning to a more honky tonk pop sounding number, Try Me Again with Buck on 12 string, Frisell on electric and Veirs on backing was inspired by Don Williams’ records and provided a 70s B-side for both Judy Miller and The Kendalls. From Don Williams’s influence to Ray Charles, the most recent composition, from 2012, is the standout, I Can’t Be What You  Want; Annalisa Tornfelt provides strings and gospel harmonies with Steve Moore on piano, a heartfelt number about not living up to someone’s expectations (“as hard as I try/I’m a failure in your eyes…You had an image oh so clear in your mind/Of  the good life you thought that we would lead/Now we hardly speak at all/I see the writing on the wall/I can’t be what you want me to be”).

It’s back then to 1964, and some scratchy rockabilly guitar for the scampering Love Comes And Goes with Tornfelt and Veirs on backing and Frisell laying down a rockabilly guitar solo; the 60s also mined for the bluesy, acoustic strummed Get Your Things inspired by working on an Oklahoma oil pipeline in his 20s  and, judging by the sound, the Beatles too. Two of the remaining numbers date from the mid-70s, one being the piano-pumping Love You Back To Georgia, recorded by  Freddy Weller and Savannah, that, Buck on electric and Tornfelt on fiddle, is a celebration of driving in a car with your best girl and best friends “just to hear a rock ‘n roll band play”, the track channelling traces of  Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee and Ricky Nelson. The other, a slower gospel-infused ballad, is a rework of his 1974 single You Don’t Need  A Ring, a throwback to the hippie 60s declaring that you don’t need to be married to show you’re in love (“I couldn’t love you any more if you had my name”), though, conversely, from 1983, again summoning Holly thoughts, A Little Bit Of Magic was written about how much he loves his wife, so it obviously works for some.

It ends with the piano, violin and chiming pedal steel-based walking rhythm ballad Too Young For Paradise, a wistful reflection on experience (“days full of sunshine/Boatloads of rain/Now that I’ve seen them both they’re both the same”) and looking for direction (“Lemme see the road/Lift up the runway til it touches my toes/Turn on the landing lights/Let me come down/I need a moment with my feet on the ground”) with a chorus (“Lord I’m/Too young for paradise/Too high to fall/Too weak to let my weakness show/I’m afraid of the darkness/But I’m too old to cry”) that feels like a meeting between Kris Kristofferson and Andy Kim.

Lyrically, the songs feel very much of their time, and it would be interesting to hear a second album featuring more recent songs and responses to the current climate. That said, Music Man is a fine and extremely listenable collection of musically catchy Americana, gospel and country pop, showing that he knows how to sing them as well as write them.

Pre-Order/Save Music Man: https://pocp.co/music-man-lp