Barrett Martin: Map

Categories: Western Washington University alumni > R.E.M. > Musicians from Washington (U.S. state) > Screaming Trees members > Mad Season members

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Barrett Martin (born April 14, 1967 in Olympia

, Washington

) is an American drummer, composer, artist, and writer. He was the drummer for the Seattle

, Washington group Screaming Trees, as well as the supergroups Mad Season and Tuatara. A multi-instrumentalist and composer, he was also a session musician in Los Angeles for several years in the 1990s and has played on, or produced, over 60 albums to date. He is primarily known for his powerful tribal drumming style, which has been featured on dozens of albums and several films. Notable collaborations include work with REM guitarist Peter Buck, Iraqi master musician Rahim Alhaj, West African Griot and master musician Foday Musa Suso, delta bluesman CeDell Davis, Rumi scholar and poet Coleman Barks, and Native American poet and songwriter Joy Harjo.The PBS short documentary on Barrett's drumming and Zenga painting titled, "Zenga and the Art of Percussion", won a 2009 Emmy in the New Media Arts category.

History

Martin grew up in Olympia, WA and studied jazz and classical music theory at Western Washington University

in the mid-1980s. He completed both his bachelors and masters degrees in anthropology and ethnomusicology at the University of New Mexico

, graduating summa cum laude (highest honors). Moving to Seattle in the mid 1980s, Martin was witness to the early music scene there, joining grunge pioneers Skin Yard in 1990, and making two albums with the band, 1000 Smiling Knuckles (1991) and Inside The Eye (1993). When Skin Yard broke up, Martin was asked to fill the recently vacated drum seat in another seminal Seattle band, Screaming Trees. The Trees went on to make two more studio albums with Martin, Sweet Oblivion (1992) and Dust (1995), before calling it quits in the summer of 2000.

In 1994, Martin formed the supergroup Mad Season with Mike McCready of Pearl Jam, Layne Staley of Alice In Chains, and Chicago blues bassist Baker Saunders. The band released its debut album Above in 1995, playing only a handful of local shows before disbanding.

In 1996, Barrett and Peter Buck of R.E.M. founded the revolving-door music project Tuatara, which has released seven albums to date. He also founded his own record label, Fast Horse Recordings, which releases traditional and contemporary world music. In 2004 he released his first solo album titled The Painted Desert, and in 2006 he followed up with a second solo album titled, Earthspeaker. His third solo album titled, Zenga, was released in June 2009.

In the late 1990s, Martin went on to become a top session musician in Los Angeles

, playing drums and percussion on records by R.E.M., Luna, Stone Temple Pilots, Queens Of The Stone Age, Air, and singer-songwriters Victoria Williams and Mark Olson.

Aside from his collaborations in various projects as a professional percussionist during and after the dissolution of the Screaming Trees, he has focused his musical endeavors on the study of percussion styles from various cultures around the world, primarily African tribal rhythms and the music of Latin America. The most early and apparent influence of tribal techniques on his style can be heard in the opening drum riff of the Screaming Trees' song, Nearly Lost You (as a side note, this riff was performed during Bill Clinton's 1992 inauguration ceremony) and "X-ray Mind" during his stint in Mad Season.

His field work in ethnomusicology has included work with Garifuna drummers in Belize, Wolof Griots in Senegal, Ewe drummers in Ghana, Santeria drummers in Cuba, Candomble drummers in Brazil, and the singing Shipibo shamans of the Peruvian Amazon. Between 2000 and 2003, he also worked with Brazilian singer Nando Reis, playing on three of Nando's studio albums, and touring much of Brazil in the process.

In 2000, Martin was ordained as a Zen monk in the Soto tradition , through the Detroit Street Zen Center in Los Angeles. In addition to his musical projects over the last two decades, Martin has also been cultivating a nascent career as a Zen artist, creating numerous paintings and ceramic sculptures. His first official gallery show was on June 5, 2009 in Portland, Oregon, and featured a series of Zenga paintings and sculpture, a 500 year old Japanese tradition that focuses on the circular form of the enso (Zen circle). His Zen paintings and sculptures have been shown in galleries in Seattle, Portland, and Santa Fe.