ON STAGE
What: Samantha Martin and Delta Sugar
Where: Hermann’s Jazz Club, 753 View St.
When: Friday, Feb. 21, 7:30 p.m. (doors at 5:30)
Tickets: $35.50 from the Victoria Jazz Society office (977 Alston St.) or by phone at 250-388-4423
Samantha Martin has been a bundle of energy since she was a toddler. The Toronto soul singer can remember being labelled precocious before she entered elementary school, on account of her constantly churning engine — which is apparently not yet out of gas.
Martin’s upcoming album has been named The Reckless One, its title an homage to being “recklessly and dangerously in love, or falling very quickly out of love,” according to the songwriter. But it also encapsulates Martin’s personality, which has been honed to pot-stirring perfection over the past 14 years of music making.
“Life is too short to always watch your Ps and Qs,” Martin, who is originally from Edmonton, said during a recent tour stop in Penticton. “Sometimes, you’ve got to kind of go for it. You have to be a little bit reckless.”
Martin definitely goes for it, on stage and off. She recently drove her tour van from Toronto to Winnipeg, where she hooked up with her bandmates in Delta Sugar — who flew there from Toronto — to begin their Western Canadian tour.
Her list of duties doesn’t end there, as Martin plays a role in almost every aspect of the business that is Samantha Martin and Delta Sugar, from management to grant writing.
Not that she’s complaining. Her career in music was never going to be anything but full tilt, Martin said with a laugh.
“I took piano lessons when I was seven, but it didn’t go well — probably because I was precocious. I played saxophone in the high school band — that didn’t go well, either. Because I was precocious. But when I got a little older, I took vocal lessons from a teacher in Toronto, and found that to be the most effective. It was the most schooling I’ve had.”
Etta James and Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings are stylistic reference points, but Martin and her six-piece band also dip into everything from the southern-fried country of Lucinda Williams to the retro-leaning jams of the Black Crowes, the results being a gumbo Martin calls roots ’n’ roll.
The Juno Award nominee is joined at the hip in Delta Sugar with two singers, Tafari Anthony and Sherie Marshall, whom she calls her “co-vocalists” on account of the work they put in each night.
The end result — especially when the group operates in Ontario and Quebec as an 11-person unit — is a hurricane of raw emotion and soul. The band has performed thousands of shows since forming in 2013, including more than 500 in the past four years. Martin, who started playing professionally in 2004, has probably played triple that number over the course of her many musical projects.
Martin came to music with a business-first mindset, on the advice of an uncle in Edmonton she was living with during her Grant MacEwan College days. “I originally wanted to travel the world. I wanted to be an airline stewardess, that was a big thing I wanted to do. Then 9/11 happened, and my uncle, who I was living with at the time, told me I should rethink it. He convinced me that if I had a business degree, it would be applicable to anything I wanted to do. I don’t regret it at all.”
Her business acumen now factors into every music-related decision she makes, which has enabled her to keep a large band on the road in an era of shrinking tour budgets.
“A lot of the music programs across the country and across the world do a great disservice by not including some element of mandatory business courses,” she said.
“I really feel that it does give a competitive edge to the musicians who have those kind of skills.
It’s not enough to be incredibly talented. You have to know how to sell yourself. You have to know what your product is.”
