Articles

"Underground Blues is everything that the blues should be" - Victory Review

A compelling original repertoire - Soul Bag - France, March 2009

Offbeat Magazine - Jan, 2007

"James Taylor sometimes deceives himself into thinking he’s got the blues. If Sweet Baby James actually had them—or, more accurately, understood them—he’d probably sound a lot like guitarist Marty Christian, whose debut Bluesicana can’t help but come off genial and uplifting, even in the midst of heartbreak and/or seduction. The 10 originals here (accompanied only by Joseph Edwards’ rubboard) comprise the most jovial blues album to come out of the Sportsmen’s Paradise in many a year. Example? The song “My Mistakes” is all about how Marty can get past them."

"Christian can pick, native of Austin and resident of Lafayette that he is. (That “C” in the album title speaks volumes about his regionality). Check out the way the groove choogles from Memphis to the Delta and back on “Willow Tree Blues,” or the smooth jazz caress of “Lonely Man.” And even if his vocals are rich with the Hootiesque nuances that suggest there’s a little suburbia standing between him and the land. They’re still dead-on, sailing expertly through the Cajun nuances of the swamp pop gem “Walk Around With Me” and conjuring up just the right mix of John Mayer silk and vintage Ron Records belt on the closing lament “Pictures On Her Dresser.” He doesn’t sound that torn up. but there’s no law that says the blues, even acoustic and vaguely authentic, have to be steeped in misery or desperation. Sometimes it’s enough to understand the language." - Robert Fontenot

Review of Bluesicana CD:

Taking his inspiration from the legendary forefath."Taking his inspiration from the legendary forefathers of blues and soul, Marty Christian rises up from the soulful sludge of Muddy Waters to meet the acoustic slow burn of Jimmy Reed's Southern shuffle. His newest album, Bluesicana, is a roots-inspired romp through acoustic-flecked balladry marked by sure-handed guitar filigree." - Independent Weekly - Raleigh/Durham, NC, October, 2006

Even Whiteboys got to Shout

Times of Acadiana - Lafayette, LA, May, 2005
Feature Story by Nick Pittman

"It's kind of like I had all the keys but I didn't..."It's kind of like I had all the keys but I didn't have the doors yet. I know I had them damn keys for a long time, maybe my whole life." Marty Christian speaks metaphorically, his voice full of too much soul for a long-haired, sandal-wearing white boy from Cleveland. Despite his physical appearance, his Mid-Western upbringing and a name like Marty Christian, the guitarist and singer is well-versed in the blues, evident in the acoustic sets he performs in his new Lafayette stomping grounds.
Specifically, the doors he finally lined up his keys with are Thomas "Big Hat" Fields & His Foot Stomping Zydeco Band. Spurred by his love of blues and a knack for the French language, Christian -- a Texan at the time -- decided to check out zydeco music and happened to read about Café Des Amis breakfast sets on a Web site.
"See, I already speak French, I love blues -- zydeco is a natural thing for me," says Christian, also known as Whiteboy. When he came to the Zydeco Breakfast gig, he met Fields' wife Geneva, who informed him they were looking for a new guitarist. After the show, he spoke French with the band for three hours to prove himself.
Though he laughs about the trial, it's apparent he is not joking. It took 15 calls before Fields began to take him seriously and invited him to play a Labor Day gig. For a year he played with the band -- never missing a gig or practice -- although he lived in Austin, Texas.
However, the Lafayette life and music scene are doors he's been wandering toward since he was a teenager. In August 2004, he introduced his solo acoustic rhythm & blues performances to Blue Moon happy hours. To play here, he would crash on someone's floor or couch for a few days out of the week before commuting back to Austin. As he began to do the trip once a week, gas prices rose making it a costly venture. Two months ago he pulled up stakes, leaving behind the live music capital of the world to became a Lafayette resident.
His sets cross the charts of old blues and R&B. He does write original material, but he stresses the interpreter aspect of the blues, using his voice and tone to re-invent classics by Ottis Redding, Sam Cook, Albert Collins and the like. He sees it as writing music on stage as it comes to him through his record vault of a mind.
If you would have asked Christian about his new home a few years ago, he wouldn't have had the foggiest idea where Lafayette was or what life down here was all about. Lafayette is the latest stopping point for world traveler Christian. After growing up in Cleveland, a prime place for the blues he says because of its mid point between Chicago and New York, he got into radio. At 20, he left Cleveland for the first time, traveling to France for college, but admits "I didn't' do too much studying, but I did a whole lot of music."
Quickly, Christian learned French and says he blended into the lifestyle so seamlessly, people wanted to fight him, thinking he was a Frenchman pretending to be an American just to pick up chicks. From there, he touched down at various spots across the United States, even venturing up to Alaska. His most recent relocation, Austin, lasted about six years. He went through several bands before he built his own guitar and went solo -- because he says its hard for him to find someone with his range.
"I just wanted to learn the music. I just wanted to be somewhere where I could get in with good guys and that's it," he explains. "(I) never wanted any more than that until I felt like I feel now, like I understand what I am delivering, what's coming to me."
While it's not the France he felt so comfortable in, the Acadiana life and the diversity of American music make his new home a favorite.
"For me it's a perfect blend of the French life and the American music life," Christian says. " I don't know if that would fit everybody in Austin, and I don't know if it's going to be a good career move.
"If I got to work at a car place five days a week and I can only play music on the weekend, so be it, as long as I get to sing my music for people who give a shit, for real, that's what I want."

Marty Christian is into the Basics
Baton Rouge Advocate - Baton Rouge, LA, May, 2006
Marty Christian is into the basics, and it’s refleMarty Christian is into the basics, and it’s reflected in the blues and soul music he plays, as well as his original music.
“Where it comes from is like the guitar of the blues guys is really my focus on the guitar work. And then the singing is a soul sound. Even though I may be doing a blues song, I may sing it like a soul singer,” he said. “Or I might do a soul number and throw some blues guitar in there.” And then there’s Christian’s original stuff. “I guess it combines a lot of my favorite music from Louisiana and even Texas,” he said, adding “and Chicago blues and Memphis soul as well. It’s not to say I’m a master of any of that stuff. I’m just influenced by it all.”

You can hear it for yourself Saturday evening at the Blue Moon Saloon when Christian performs at his CD release party for “Bluesicana.” Christian said playing his acoustic guitar helps him “get there,” but, when he plugs it in, “I can even get to a different place that’s real close to electric blues,” he said. “With the washboard and the electric acoustic kind of turned up it’s very cool. You can get very powerful with it, but you can also turn the volume down for the acoustic soulful ballads.
“I didn’t think about all that stuff; it just started happening,” Christian said. “I’m a real, well, I don’t want to use the word ‘purist,’ but I’m a real, real big fan of the electric blues of the ’50s and ’60s and the soul music.”

As a blues disc jockey in Cleveland, Christian got immersed in the music of Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters, “to the lesser known cats like Johnny Littlejohn, Magic Sam …,” he said. There was also the soul music of Otis Redding, Sam Cooke and William Bell.

“They had so much going on that they never even really got very popular,” Christian said. “The music that became popular was more Motown and real over-the-top stuff like James Brown and Aretha Franklin — who I love to death — but even in their beginning days it was a much simpler style that they were doing that really, really motivated me.”

It’s here you’ll find the essence of Christian’s music. Call it rootsy or earthy; a back-to-basics style that may well have brought him to Lafayette as a resident last year after commuting from Austin for three years, almost all of it playing guitar in Thomas “Big Hat” Fields’ zydeco band. “Playing old-school zydeco with ‘Big Hat’ was great because it wasn’t watered down at all,” Christian said. “Everybody (in the band) was so attentive to what everybody was doing. I didn’t see it like, ‘Oh, it’s a very simple form. You do one or two chords and you know the music.’ I saw it as every single song needs to have as much power as possible, and that’s the way they saw it, and we just jelled right off the bat. In those 2 and a half years, every single song was important. It was amazing.

“And that’s the way I see blues and soul music,” he said. “I’d never seen that before.”

Then something from within, a muse perhaps, kept tugging at Christian’s guitar strings, and it wasn’t zydeco music, either. It slowly started about five years ago, then about three years ago he wrote a couple of songs and put them out on CD with some covers.

“The weird thing that started happening was that I started writing my own music,” he said. “And people really remarked on the original stuff, and I thought that was pretty wild. I was really excited about the covers I’d done — they’re not really covers, they’re interpretations — because they’ve really been changed up.”

Inspired and enthused, if not perplexed, Christian left Big Hat’s band to pursue a solo career.
“I ended up writing so much music that it kind of became more of my focus to do what I was writing. I had to figure it out. I had to figure out what was going on,” Christian said. “I tried to do both, but eventually we started booking our same gigs the same nights.”

Christian stayed with the band until Fields found another guitar, then he jumped into his own music with both feet and a guitar.

“I always wanted to do this kind of ‘pure’ music, I didn’t know how I was going to do it,” he said. “Originally, I wanted to do it in a band. Then I wanted to do it with somebody else’s band, but my singing became real important to me,” he said. And when you’re not fronting your own band, well, singing your own songs for three hours a night could be considered somewhat presumptuous, if not outright tacky.

“That was really a different thing. My guitar was so important to me most of my life (since age 12; Christian is 36), but the past 10 years, singing has become just as, if not more, important to me as a musical instrument,” Christian said. “And then the writing became a way for me to sing even more. I guess the stuff I write has more of my soul, as opposed to me trying to understand Otis Redding, or B.B. King, or Muddy Waters.”

Blues on the Bowery - Concert Review
Winnsboro Today, Winnsboro, TX
Fans of the Blues had a real treat on Saturday, Ju...Fans of the Blues had a real treat on Saturday, June 23, as the Trails Country Centre for the Arts in Winnsboro hosted Marty Christian and "Joe the Washboard Musician" for an evening of exceptional music.

Marty lives in Lafayette, LA where he was one of the lead vocalists for Thomas “Big Hat” Fields’ Zydeco Band in 2003. After collaborating with Fields for over two years, Marty began to focus on his own songwriting and powerful acoustic shows that often feature the well-seasoned accompaniment of Zydeco/Blues veteran Joseph Edward on washboard (formerly of Clifton Chenier, C.J. Chenier, Thomas Fields and Rockin’ Dopsie.)

Joe has been playing music for "long about 56, 57 years now." He said he learned a "little bit here and a little bit there."

He also said that you really have to listen to the music. "If you hear it and think you can do it, then just do it. But you do have to practice."

It was obvious that Marty and Joe could hear the music deep inside as they performed and they were really connected through the music. It was like a conversation, with each one acknowledging the other and picking up on their lead. At one point Marty said one of the best things that happened to him was meeting Joe about four years ago. "The first time I saw him perfom, I had to stay to the end of the last set. He's amazing, and I'm honored to share the stage with him."

Marty also joked about some lady in Tyler that maybe Joe would like to see again, but Joe didn't commit himself.

The patter was fun, but the music was even better. Some people just play a guitar, but Marty gives it life. It's like the guitar is a third performer, with Marty coaxing the music out and drawing the audience in.
 
How blues meets up with soul
Yellowdog.nl - The Netherlands - Dec, 2007
Can white guys sing the blues? Well, if you take ...Can white guys sing the blues? Well, if you take the time to listen to Marty Christian's music your only answer to this question can be: yes, this white boy can.

Marty's music can best be described as a strong mixture of different kinds of southern music. He plays the blues guitar and sings like a soul singer: Chicago blues meet Memphis soul, so to speak. His interpretations of blues originals are mixed with soul influences and the zydeco from the Louisiana swamps.
One night in May 2005 in Lafayette, Louisiana, my friend Peter and I and a student from France were so lucky to get a private concert from Marty and in an hour's time he effortlessly switched styles from blues to swamp pop, from cajun to zydeco and from soul to rock. The whole rich musical heritage of the South concentrated right there in that room and his enthousiasm and love for the music kept him going that magical evening.
In an interview from that same period Marty said: "If I got to work at a car place five days a week and I can only play music on the weekend, so be it, as long as I get to sing my music for people who give a shit, for real, that's what I want."
It was clear to me that it was only a matter of time for him to start off a successful career as a professional musician.

Marty Christian is originally from Cleveland, Ohio, where he was a blues radio host for a while. In 1992 he settled in the live music capital of the world Austin, Texas, where he went on developing his music mostly performing for local audiences .
In 2004 Marty Christian – nicknamed Whiteboy - became guitarist and vocalist in a true Louisiana band: Thomas "Big Hat" Fields and His Foot Stompin' Zydeco Band. Having studied French doubtlessly contributed to him feeling very comfortable in this old-school Zydeco band from the Louisiana swamps.           

While touring the South with "Big Hat" Marty Christian kept on playing solo and he gained some fame with his solo performances in the Blue Moon Saloon in Lafayette. After a few years Marty left Big Hat's band to concentrate on his own songwriting and interpretations of blues and soul classics.
Lafayette became his new homebase in 2005 and gradually his popularity grew and he brought his music to the clubs and festivals in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and other southern states, very often accompanied by washboard player Joseph Edward, who played with Clifton Chenier and others.

In 2006 Marty released his first solo album called Bluesicana, with ten original songs all dripping with that great southern flavor. Instead of trying to find more words to describe Marty's music, my advise to you is listen to it! He won't disappoint you.

www.yellowdog.nl