Emerging from the same New England city as Jack Kerouac, Lowell, Mass native Bob Martin was greatly influenced by the beat poet's writing and career. While attending law school in Boston during the 60s, he became immersed in the local folk scene and played the Nameless Coffeehouse, Club 47 (now Club Passim) and eventually found himself sharing the bill at Gerde's Folk City in New York with some of folk's greatest songwriters. It was at Gerde's that he was "discovered" and the focus of a label bidding war that RCA Nashville eventually won.
In 1972, Bob Martin recorded his first album Midwest Farm Disaster for RCA at Nashville Studios. He worked closely with Chet Atkins, (an executive at RCA at the time) and many exceptional studio musicians including drummer Kenneth Buttrey, (a key player on Bob Dylan's Blonde On Blonde album). Although critically heralded, Martin's career was not given priority and in turn, he left the professional music business and "dropped out" of the mainstream, retreating to a remote mountaintop farm in West Virginia. Midwest Farm Disaster remains a cult classic and continues find new fans across generations.
Martin continued to write songs, poetry, novels and pursue his muse through various artistic endeavors. In 1982, he connected with some friends at June Appal Records of Whitesburg,KY, and eventually got back in the studio to make a second album, Last Chance Rider. The record was recognized as one of the top three folk albums in the country by the NAIRD and features the talents of Jerry Douglas and Jack Wright. Martin however chose to play music on his own terms and kept his live shows to a hobby schedule.
It was another ten years, until the release of The River Turns the Wheel on his own imprint Riversong Records. The album hosts backing vocals by friends Bill Morrissey and Cormac McCarthy and is considered Bob Martin's most commercially successful album to date. Despite his reluctance to engage the music business, "The River Turns The Wheel" was noticed by music critics around the country. The release reached number sixteen on the Gavin Americana Chart and was chosen one of the top ten albums in 1997 by Brad Kava of The San Jose Mercury News. Dave Perry of The Lowell Sun chose it as the best folk album of 1997 and Tom Flannery of The Electric City News also picked it as the best CD of that year. He toured nationally and opened for Merle Haggard in 1999.
Martin didn't wait as long to release his fourth album Next To Nothin (Riversong Records 2000), and received more rave reviews and extensive airplay on Americana radio programs around the country. In 2010 Martin issued his first live record Live at The Bull Run and he continues to perform nationally and internationally.