Martyn Joseph

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Martyn Joseph (born 15 July 1960) is a Welsh singer-songwriter whose music exhibits primarily a brand of Celtic and folk, while his songwriting is often focused on social lament or protest.

From independently releasing his first studio release, I'm Only Beginning in 1983, Joseph's career has spanned over thirty years.

In 2004, he won the Best Male Artist Category in the BBC Welsh Music Awards.

Early life

Born in Penarth, Wales, Joseph grew up as an avid golfer, having started to play at the age of 10. At 15 years old, he was playing off a handicap of one, and at 17, he became the youngest ever winner of the Glamorganshire Golf Club Championship. He has won that title four times and also played for the County of Glamorgan and in the British Youths and Amateur Championships in the 1980s. Joseph remains a keen amateur golfer and plays with a handicap of four. However, Joseph would gradually focus his career path on music. Growing up, he participated in school eisteddfods and, at his own estimate, he had already written several songs by his early teens.

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Recording career

Joseph began recording in 1983 and released five albums in the 1980s, culminating in his 1989 self-financed An Aching and a Longing (Myrrh Records), which sold 30,000 copies and gained him a large enough following that he later signed to Sony Records. In 1992, he made his first appearance on Being There. It was designed by Ben Wisch to produce more stripped-down arrangements. Joseph performed with Pete Brookes and Stewart Henderson on several of the tracks, as well as colluding with lyricist Stewart Henderson. Joseph made live recordings of the songs on the album and announced it under the name Undrugged a year after the initial release of Being There.

Martyn Joseph, a self-titled Martyn Joseph, was produced by Mick Glossop, whose previous work included albums with The Waterboys. Martyn Joseph's first single, "Talk About It in the Morning," co-written with Tom Robinson, was released in 1995 and debuted in the Top 50 in the UK Singles Chart.

Joseph's brief major label career saw four UK Top 75 singles including "Dolphins Make Me Cry (#34), "Working Mother (#53)," "Mexo Icons" (#40)), "Please Sir (#43)" and "Because (#45)" in the United Kingdom, including "How Does It Happen" and "Talk About It" during his time as president of the United Kingdom.

He released two albums for the UK independent record label Grapevine: Full Colour Black and White and Tangled Souls after being rejected by Sony. He was the first to be released under Grapevine's fourth album "Ballad of Richard Lewis," a tribute to Welsh labourer and hero Dic Penderyn, who was sentenced to death after leading the Merthyr Rising of 1831. The song will be released in new albums (including the Thunder and Rainbows collection, the Don't Talk About Love live album, and Evolved as a re-recording in a different style) as "Dic Penderyn."

Joseph founded Pipe Records in 1999, citing "creative freedom" and "absolute control" as the key benefits he received over those who were not familiar with him. Joseph suggests, "I'm not dependent on Robbie Williams' diary or Madonna's film schedule for when [my songs] are out." Joseph began releasing work under a new medium, The Passport Queue, a news journal that is based on a line in the song "Everything in Heaven." The magazine's subscribers get free annual CDs of rare artists.

Far From Silent, Joseph's first release on Pipe Records, delves into fame and fortune in his second album "Celebrity." Joseph's eighth track, "The Good in Me is Dead," written from the perspective of a Kosovo immigrant in the aftermath of the Balkan atrocities, echoes Joseph's penchant for writing about social tragedies and injustice. "I pick up the guitar for the first time is a selfish one," Joseph says. "It's because I have to deal with the world." I'm in the world and it's horrible, so what can I do? I'm just getting this stuff out of my computer as it should."

Joseph appeared on various recordings, the first of which was a 2000 limited edition EP, The Shirley Sessions, which he worked on mainly during a tour with Shirley Bassey gone awry. Joseph released Thunder and Rainbows – The Best We Could Discover album, containing 31 of his previous favorites and two new songs. He came out with his second live album and two volumes of recordings under the heading Don't Talk About Love 1992-2002, following his first best-of compilation.

Joseph's second album under Pipe Records in November 2003, Whoever It Was That Brought Me Here Would Have To Take Me Home. Joseph began a long relationship with Tom Robinson and Steve Knightley, whom he collaborated with extensively early in his career. The result, Faith, Folk, and Anarchy, as well as an eventual live accompaniment, Faith, Folk & Anarchy, was released in 2004. Joseph's third book was released in the new year. Deep Blue, Joseph's upcoming album, contained the tracks "Yet Still This Will Not Be" and "How Did We End Up Here" in the midst of Iraq's turbulent war. In a conversation with a folk music website, Joseph mused, "I bet, in his private moments alone, Tony Blair, the person who regrets what he did in Iraq." The Bridgerow Sessions and Because We Can... continued to work with Steve Knightley and Stewart Henderson respectively throughout the year.

Joseph, a regular performer at the annual Greenbelt Festival in the United Kingdom, filmed his 2006 appearance and named it MJGB06. Martyn Joseph Live, his first live effort on DVD, was released the year before. A two-day stint in Las Vegas would precede his debut on LP in 2007 and will be highly influential, inspiring the album's name, Vegas, and its title track. On the other hand, "Kindness," was inspired by the homeless situation in Toronto, Ontario. The album featured an electric guitar on a generally edgier sound.

Joseph released Evolved, a new full-length album containing 14 newly recorded songs from Joseph's previous catalogue, but in a different style than the original recording. He found that the songs on his albums no longer reflected the way in which he performed them live. The songs are precisely as Joseph played it in the studio, without any overdubbing or additional instruments.

Joseph released "Five Sisters" in January 2009, a track honoring the five sisters who were killed by an Israeli shell that was supposedly meant to strike a mosque. Joseph released another live album titled Official Bootleg Series 92–08. The album contained a number of official bootlegs ranging from 1992 to 2008. Joseph's appearances were recorded during a 31-date tour of the United Kingdom, beginning in October 2010, and will be released as a new live DVD version.

Joseph was released as a 10-track LP under the name "Under Lemonade Skies."

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