Mike & Pam Martin - Fernwood Pacific - 1975 - Full Album
I don't own this recording, I just wanted to share this beautiful record with the world in it's entirety. Copyrights remains with the original owners. Listen and enjoy! :)
A1 Do It Right
A2 One Too Many Goodbyes
A3 City Sidewalks
A4 Stay As Sweet As You Are Now
A5 Your Lies
A6 The King Takes The Queen
B1 Eyes Of A Child
B2 For The Love That You Bring
B3 One Rose
B4 Hey Colorado
B5 Lonely Entertainer
Recorded straight from vinyl:
Turntable - Audio-Technica LP5
Cartridge - Audio-Technica AT440MLb
Phono preamp - Rega Fono Mini A2D
USB Output from the Rega used to record into Audacity. The record was still sealed when I got it, and it was only played 2 or 3 times prior to recording this version.
Track B5 was featured on the Numero compilation Wayfaring Strangers: Cosmic American Music.
Liner notes from the compilation:
Growing up in Canton, Ohio, Mike Martin thought country music was \"hillbilly trailer park crap.\" He only changed his mind after moving to Los Angeles as a young adult, when a former child star introduced him to a country legend. Once nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1953's Shane, Brandon deWilde was trying to make it as a singer in '65 when he met Martin. The two began performing as a duo, and deWilde took his doubting partner to meet a friend named Gram Parsons. \"This guy picks up this guitar and sings with the best voice I ever heard... I started trying to be him, started to act like him.\"
That is, until the National Guard called up in 1968 and ended his duo with deWilde. While this service seemed like an interruption in his music career, it proved to be crucial when he met his future wife and collaborator Pam. \"She was a roommate of one of the girls I was dating. She had a guitar and knew how to play it so we would sit down and harmonize.\" His service over in 1970, Mike and Pam married in Denver, Colorado. They stopped in Aspen on a whim and auditioned for a gig at a local creperie, were hired on the spot, and began to make a living playing country and folk songs to packed houses of hippies, ski bums, and tourists around the state.
\"Lonely Entertainer\" was inspired by a night when the crowd was so thick, Mike couldn't even find a seat for himself. When Gram Parsons died of an overdose in 1972, Mike found himself confused with another Michael Martin, who stole the body and burned it in the desert.
Honed by performance, the Martins cut a demo of covers and originals called Fernwood Pacific, the only material either of them ever released. The record was a friends and family affair, with a photo of the Martins and their daughter on the back cover, and their country music pals in the credits. The record featured the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's Jimmy Ibbotson on guitar and Merel Bregante on drums, the John Denver band's Mike Crumm on piano, as well as steel man \"Fast\" Eddie Steves. The Martins were lucky their more-famous friends took an unusual payment. \"They were all major players with tour buses and the whole deal... Each of them got one fifth of tequila.\"
In 1975, when no label bought the demo, the Martins decided to release it themselves on their own Augustus Records. In 1980, the couple had left the mountains and headed back to New Jersey to be closer to Pam's family. But as their musical partnership faded, so too did their marriage. \"Suddenly, I was in her hometown and she had divorced me and I didn't want to be there any more,\" Martin said. He quit the job, the town, and the girl and headed back home to Ohio, guitar in hand.
