I grew up in Dallas, TX, migrated to the beautiful front range of Colorado for 10 years and recently pulled up stakes and landed in Brooklyn, NY. I play electric and acoustic guitar and have been fortunate enough to work with a lot of great musicians over the past decade or so. Even though I've never seriously pursued playing other intruments, I feel like my concept of music has been heavily influenced by some, especially piano, mandolin, sax, fiddle and banjo.
When I first started playing guitar, I was mostly interested in learning to play songs I was hearing on the radio. Through most of my high school years, guitar took a back seat to other interests at the time such as watching every episode of The Dukes of Hazzard, Fantasy Island, etc... When I graduated however, I started attending the nearby University of North Texas which has had a long-running jazz degree program that attracts students and faculty from all over the world. It was there that I developed a love for new (to me) kinds of music such as jazz and classical and learned how to approach the study of music in a thoughtful and structured way.
After graduating from UNT in 1993, I started to become interested in styles of music I had heard growing up such as country, bluegrass and folk. I was especially drawn to the great telecaster players like Brent Mason, Albert Lee, Danny Gatton, Ray Flacke and others. When I moved to Colorado I met players in the vibrant acoustic music scene there and started listening to flatpickers like David Grier, Clarence White and Tony Rice.
While living in Colorado, I had the opportunity to play with some amazing musicians: Matt Flinner, Ron Miles, Mollie O'Brien, Tony Furtado, Drew Emmitt, The Motet, Caroline Herring, Leslie Helpert, Kyle Hollingsworth, Paul McCandless, Art Lande, The 3 Twins and many others. I picked all night in the campground at Rockygrass and drove back and forth across the state about a thousand times. I'm extremely grateful for all the great friends and good times I had there.
I'm happy to announce that my new album (as yet untitled) will be released in the coming months. It was produced by Matt Flinner and features Darol Anger on fiddle, Ron Miles on trumpet, Dominic Lalli on sax, Matt Flinner on mandolin, Greg Garrison on bass and Marc Dalio on drums. I've posted a couple of partial tracks from it on the site here. My first album, Volley, is available for purchase on my website, rossmartinguitar.com Thanks for looking around. Free MySpace Layouts by Iron Spider
