Samantha Martin & Delta Sugar are bringing the blues to life in a wonderful inventive and unique way. With incomparable musicianship, stellar songwriting, and a forward-thinking outlook on the state of the genre as well as the state of society, Martin as a bandleader, vocalist, performer and compositional master, is redefining what blues music is and can be, and opening up the style to legions of new adherents, while still retaining the essence of what makes the blues such an emotive and connective form of music for nearly a century.
Strong in talent, mind and spirit, not only is Martin a leading voice on stage, but her articulate, well-founded views on some of the more unsavoury aspects of the music industry, and some of the changes that need to happen within the blues genre to make it more sustainable, make her a truly exceptional voice for change.
In summation, she not only challenges stereotypes, she shatters them and is becoming a leader of a whole new generation of musical champions seeking to progress their art form and make it accessible and fun for all.
A multi-time nominee for a host of top music awards in Canada, and a critically acclaimed live act, Samantha Martin and Delta Sugar have a significant swath of concert dates in Ontario to wrap up 2019, while work is already underway on a new studio album, set to be released in May of 2020.
Martin grew up on the Bruce Peninsula in Ontario in the picturesque community of Lion’s Head, although she was originally from Edmonton, and the family did move around a little bit as her dad was a truck driver. Both parents love music and played instruments, inculcating a love for music in the young Samantha, as well as an understanding of the joy and fun that can come from performance.
“My dad would be the life of the party, bringing his guitar to house parties and that type of thing. And my mom loved rock and roll so we listened to a lot of music and she loved to dance and sing out of key; it was definitely a musical upbringing. And I remember there was one key moment for me, my mom was watching What’s Love Got to do With It, the Tina Turner biopic, and I was like ‘wow, that lady can really sing and look at all those dance moves.’ I think that was when I was first enthralled with that sort of soulful rock and roll music. My mom also listened to a lot of Janis Joplin too. And in Grade 4 I auditioned for a role in the school production of The Sound of Music. I remember my teacher being completely blown away with what a good singer I was, calling in all these other teachers and staff to come and hear me sing. That was the moment I realized I could get attention for a good thing, as opposed to from being a little brat,” Martin explained.
“In my early 20s I went to an open jam after doing karaoke for a couple of years and that’s where I got a taste for live music. After doing that for a little while I moved to Toronto and that’s where I started writing for the first time. I moved to Toronto with the intention of doing music. In Owen Sound I had been doing a lot of little pub night style performances, lots of covers and that sort of thing. I moved to Toronto because I wanted to get ‘discovered’ because Owen Sound was just too small. I had bigger aspirations that working as a bartender and waitress at the local East Side Mario’s and I thought, ‘well I can do this anywhere so I will try and see if I can make a go of music. So that was in 2006 and here we are 13 years later.”
And where ‘we are’ is a burgeoning reputation for Samantha Martin and Delta Sugar as one of the most vibrant and entertaining live acts on the circuit, and one of the most original and innovative blues-inspired acts in Canada. She earned a number of Maple Blues nominations for her most recent album, Run to Me, which was released in April 2018, and it also garnered her a 2019 Juno Nomination for Blues Album of the Year.
The paradox of Martin’s music is that, while she is most appreciative of the recognition, she is conflicted to some degree because she does not consider what Samantha Martin & Delta Sugar do as straightforward blues in the traditional sense, and actually chafes at the restrictions that have been put on the genre by fuddy duddy purists.
“I struggle with being defined as anything. I always think of myself more as a songwriter and as a performer. I am considered a blues singer right now, but only because vintage soul and R&B is not its own genre and under the category of blues. It’s kind of how roots music is a bit more all-encompassing and has a lot of different influences, I feel that the blues umbrella is also quite large. I think for lack of a better way to call what I do now, which you could call vintage soul – it’s much easier to call it blues music because it’s blues based. It’s more of a throwback to the vintage R&B and soul music coming out of Muscle Shoals and Stax, with a little bit of that Motown feel on a few tunes. But it’s not about the 12-bar shuffle or the 8-bar shuffle. And, for example of you go back to the fact that I get a lot of nominations but never win, when I get nominated in the blues category its because I can’t be nominated in the R&B category because R&B now is Rihanna. And what I do doesn’t stack up against Rihanna, because R&B now is way, way, way different than what R&B was back in the 1960s, so that style, which is more akin to what I do, gets lumped in the blues. It’s why I am getting recognized and nominated but probably why I am not winning those awards because I am not what a traditional blues purist would consider blues,” she said, warming to the subject.
“Genres of music are constantly being reinvented and redefined and I feel that has a lot to do with artists who really try to push boundaries. I feel that the blues genre has a hard time reinventing itself because there are a lot of old white men in Birkenstocks and socks and tie-dyed shirts that are saying , ‘that’s not the blues.’ And I don’t say that to be rude or condescending, but it really is the problem with the blues right now; it’s not being redefined to push in into the 21st century. The blues is a beautiful, expressive art form. It was born out of a lot of great suffering, and I feel that the traditional styles of blues have been done so well and perfected. Without some sort of reinvention, we’re just going to be regurgitating what has already been done and already perfected, and I don’t have any interest in regurgitating.
“I think a lot of blues musicians aren’t comfortable pushing the boundaries because they’re afraid the traditional blues purists aren’t going to come along for the ride, and they’re afraid of losing fans. Contemporary blues artists that I can draw a line to who are pushing boundaries would be Gary Clark Jr., The Black Keys – they’re listening to the right stuff and then reinventing it and making it their own and updating it and modernizing. It. You look at The Black Pumas and Anthony Hamilton, these guys are really pushing the boundaries of what R&B and what blues used to be and I feel that’s why they are having as much commercial success as the are, because they have reinvented it and it’s appealing to a younger audience. And that’s sort of what I am trying to do. Now, whether or not I am succeeding remains to be seen.”
An objective answer to that questions would say that the success is coming for Samantha Martin & Delta Sugar, as evidenced by the aforementioned award nominations and critical acclaim, regardless of what the purists may say, as is the rapturous reception each show she and her band performs. As well the boldness of her stance and the growing confidence Martin is demonstrating as a composer continues to evolve, as is evidenced by the success of Run to Me and the excitement and adventurousness she is exuding when talking about the next album, which is well into the writing process.
“I have put out several records. In 2008 I put out Black Hole, and in 2012 I put out a record called Samantha Martin and the Haggard with the band that I played with before Delta Sugar. With Delta Sugar I’ve put out Send the Nightingale [2016] and Run to Me, and then we have another record that we’re working on. Each time that I put out a record, I feel that I push myself to write better songs. I push myself to think outside the box every time and reinvent what I do. So that keeps it fresh for everybody, for the fans, for the band but not too far away from what they already love,” Martin said.
“I’ve grown as a songwriter, definitely, and its come from writing with people like Curtis Chaffey and Suzie Vinnick, like I did on Run to Me. I love to have another perspective to a song that I have written, and they helped me finesse things. I have also written with Jake Chisolm and Paul Reddick and others, and they all are really great at their guitar playing and their song crafting. And that has helped me because I am really just an acoustic rhythm guitar player which has limited my songwriting ability a bit. So not being limited by working with these people has allowed me to advance the songwriting. Because lyrically and melodically, the world is my oyster, but when it comes to writing the music and the parts that go along with it, I have always been sort of handicapped in that way. Writing with other people who are really great instrumentalists opened up my writing quite a bit.”
Her lyrical approach is also part of how she is striving to broaden the scope of what can be considered blues music. She does deal with the usual tropes of the various aspects of love – love sought, love gained, love lost, unrequited love, lust masking as love and misplaced love. But she also digs deeper, and upends some of the traditional stories, particularly when it comes to the stereotypical ‘my woman done me wrong,’ cliché. Only So Much, from Run to Me, is just such a song. Potent and powerful on many levels, it sees Martin examining the aforementioned lyrical chestnut from the woman’s perspective, having to deal with a ‘hard living man’ so to speak.
“It’s about domestic abuse. And not that I personally lived through it, or that there are any family members that personally went through it, but I did know someone who really struggled for a while to lean an abusive partner, and she had a kid. I was there for her and I tried to help as much as I could, and it ended fine. It ended with her leaving and having a healthy life and her child grown up enough to understand that you don’t treat people like that, which was important, because I feel that abuse begets abuse sometimes and when you grow up in a household where you know daddy is mean to mommy then that little boy grows up to be mean to his girlfriend or wife. It’s a super heavy topic, and it was a hard song to write, but it was necessary as far as I was concerned,” Martin explained.
“Lyrically, when you listen to old blues tunes it may touch on stuff like that, but this is more in depth than what a typical blues song would get into. And I feel that with women being more and more empowered over the decades, they’re coming forward to share their stories as they happen, as opposed to trying to play down things and pretend like, ‘oh it wasn’t that bad.’ I think women are becoming more emboldened to say, ‘hey listen to how awful this was,’ without fear of retribution. I just feel like songs like this are needed because in the blues community it’s very male dominated. And then you have the old Madonna and whore trope, that antiquated trope that still permeates a lot of blues music,
“Women are neither the Madonna nor the whore. The encompass both of those things and more. In the old, simplistic way of thinking, if the woman is doing right by her man, she is the Madonna. But when things go south, as they do in a lot of relationships, then she is the whore – and it’s the same women. And this is a larger issue in music in general. Every genre tends to be very male dominated, so you only get one side of the story, you only get on side of the coin, and you rarely get a lot of the female perspective.”
Martin sees that things are changing, but slowly, as more women begin to assert their power within all aspects of the music industry, often by bypassing the standard music industry infrastructure. Perhaps idealistically, she still hopes for the day when artists such as herself can be referred to simply by what they do without the qualifying ‘woman’ or ‘female’ in front of their profession.
“Why does it have to be ‘female singer/songwriter Samantha Martin?’ Why can’t it just be ‘singer/songwriter Samantha Martin? Listen, people are still blown away that I have a female drummer at a lot of my shows, not all the time because she is a very busy and in-demand drummer. Not an in-demand female drummer, just an in demand drummer, Dani Nash. It’s because she’s good that she gets so many gigs. People want the best drummer for their project or tour. I have had the extreme honour and privilege of working with a lot of women. I have a lot of female singers, I have a male singer, I have a female drummer, I have played with female bass players, I have played with female keyboard players, I have had a female lead guitar player. There are women out there who are the top of their game and they are being held back by their gender, and yet someone like Emily Burgess can rip a solo as well as any one,” she said, again warming to the subject of the sort of sexism and outdated thinking that is still ensconced within the music industry.
“When I first wanted to sign to a label, and this is only a little over 10 years ago, they asked me if I was planning on having children. Why are you asking me that? There are plenty of male musicians, male frontmen who plan on having a family, but they’re never asked that in a business sense. They ask me because they are afraid if I have a child, I am going to quit music, or that I might take a year off. Listen, not long ago I had a person want to book the band for a show, like a year in advance, and asked me if I was on birth control. So that’s the kind of crap that women go through that holds us back because men in the industry still feel its appropriate to ask if we are going to start a family or are on birth control.”
As if her bold stance on innovating within the blues genre, her strongly held, fact-based opinions on the gender imbalance and outdated views still infusing the music industry aren’t enough to convince you that Samantha Martin is an artist to be reckoned with, the story behind the song Good Trouble from Run to Me, will convince you that she is a serious badass. After reading the tale, one could be forgiven for thinking that Good Trouble could easily be Martin’s theme song.
“I wrote the song with Suzie Vinnick. I was at a folk conference in Toronto a few years ago and I experienced the aftermath of a drive-by shooting. I didn’t have a vantage point to see it happen, but I heard the shots and as everyone else was running away from the scene, I ran towards it and saved a guy’s life. I did first aid, tried to plug the holes with napkins and stuff, called 911. It was a really intense experience and a lot of people close to me, like my dad and my boyfriend thought I was crazy for running towards the scene. But I think it was instinct: I had taken first aid, because I worked in restaurants and bars, so I felt maybe I could help,” she said.
“I guess some people in a crisis situation, their mind melts and they don’t even know where to begin. In my mind I kind of go into checklist mode, and just focus on the task at hand. So, Suzie and I were talking about it before our songwriting session and she told me about Rep. John Lewis, a congressman in the U.S. and how he used this saying ‘good trouble.’ He used it in reference to civil disobedience during the Civil Rights movement, because he marched at Selma with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and has always been a Civil Rights leader. He said it’s okay to get arrested and get into good trouble for the right reasons – for protesting injustice and inequality.
“So, we spun my experience, because I kind of got myself into good trouble with family and friends after. I could have put myself in a lot of danger when you look at it. Say for example the people who shot that man came back to finish the job. I put myself in danger to help someone because I thought it was the right thing to do, and that was sort of the impetus for the song. It sort of grew into this commentary about how its important to have empathy and compassion and help each other out, but how there’s also a whole lot of disconnect these days, especially in politics and public policy. In many ways we’re going backwards. Too many of us are passive observers of life these days. During the Civil Rights movement there was no room for passivity. People got involved, people didn’t stand by and watch; people marched, people physically participated. That’s what I hope for the future and should I ever decide to have children, how I would raise my children that the they don’t passively walk through life. Good Trouble is saying you have to get involved, you have to step in when you can.”
Fans of the sort of effervescent, high energy, compelling and soulful blues music offered by Sarah Martin have a chance to see it up close and personal at a number of shows in Ontario in November. She is taking a seven-piece version of Delta Sugar to shows in Burnstown, ON at the Neat Coffee Shop on Nov. 22, followed by a show at the Tamworth Legion on Nov. 23, before heading up to the shores of Georgian Bay for a show in Collingwood on Nov. 26.
For more information on other tour dates, and forthcoming music, visit http://samanthamartinmusic.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for nearly three decades. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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