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ALEX MARTIN, Appalachian Fall: The Song-Poems of Michael Martin

Jonathan Widran

More than simply a hard-hitting emotional homage to the power of poetry via a fresh expression of acoustic folk-tinged music, veteran jazz guitarist Alex Martin’s heartfelt and glorious Appalachian Fall: The Song-Poems of Michael Martin is a meaningful immersion into reflections on a slice of American culture and the love of a dutiful son paying tribute to the voluminous work of his recently departed father.


Called “the foremost meditative poet of Appalachia” by former North Carolina Poet Laureate Shelby Stephenson, poet and visual artist Michael Martin (1936-2023) spent his most prolific years living and writing in a hand-built cabin on a southwest Virginia mountaintop. His poems are said to grant equal respect to his rural Appalachian neighbors and the natural world, with work that, as his website bio says, “begs us to remember the forgotten and notice the hidden.” As his father’s health was declining in recent years, Alex became a primary caregiver, prompting him to bring his artistry back to Appalachia.


From the stirring, motivational and empowering “Into the Desert” – the album’s lone spoken word selection, read by vocalist Jess Eliot Myhre – through the whimsical, banjo- plucked, natural image-filled closing title track, Appalachian Fall should be experienced as the magnificent, multi-faceted creative fruit of the father and son collaboration. Alex’s ability to set many of his father’s most beautiful works to music allows us to experience Michael’s life and work in a unique and easy to grasp way.


Yet on a deeper level, we should also appreciate it as an open door to encourage further exploration of his great writer’s voluminous works and legacy. Though Alex’s keen guitarisma, the invitingly infectious vocals of Myhre and Will McKinley Ward and the compelling instrumentation of some of the DC region’s top folk, Americana and jazz musicians may dominate our senses as we listen, let them not overshadow Michael’s unique choice of words, dynamic line to line flow, piercing narratives and fascinating, richly detailed character studies.


Perhaps the most dynamic stretch within the 10 songs is the luminous and often witty arc from “Philo Meets the Machine” (where he meet Philo Lightfoot, a central character originally from the hollers of the Jamison Gap) through “Mr. Plummer, Preacher Dan and the Moonshiners” (a seven and a half minute romp about local characters, told from Philo’s perspective) and finally “A Lightfoot Death,” a gentle elegy by Michael to the man he called his “mountain father,” sung with sweet reverence by Mhyre and featuring exquisite, mournful cello harmonies (by Jodi Beder) and a spoken word passage by folk musician (and Alex’s friend) Vernon Sears.

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