By Brian Baker

Martin Sexton has had some fantastic problems this past summer. His normal routine of spending the season with his family and performing only driving-distance weekend gigs has been dismantled by a full slate of touring. His new album, Seeds, released on his own Kitchen Table label in April, has been selling steadily, producing the No. 1 Triple-A single "Happy" and resulting in the summer tour, which routinely sold out and necessitated the second leg that is looming before him as he relaxes for one last blissful week at his summer home in the Adirondacks.

"It's been a busy summer - good and bad news," he says via phone.

Seeds stands as the pinnacle of Sexton's accomplishments to date and a reminder of how far he has traveled, literally and figuratively, along his musical path. A native of Syracuse, New York, Sexton relocated to Boston in 1990 and quickly became a fixture in the city's thriving but tough coffeehouse folk scene. Sexton's signature was channeling the sounds of the American songbook - gospel, country, blues, jazz, soul and rock - into the folk idiom and his stellar songwriting in that service.

Almost immediately, Sexton recorded an album's worth of demos and released it on the label he called Kitchen Table, garnering big sales for a homemade product (he sold 20,000 copies on his own), great reviews and numerous Boston Music Awards as well. The buzz attracted the labels, and Sexton signed with big indie Koch, who re-released In the Journey in 1992 and his first proper recording, Black Sheep, in 1996, leading to national tours and a broad expansion of his fervent fan base.

Sexton moved up to Atlantic for his acclaimed third album, The American, and its conceptual follow-up, 2000's Wonder Bar, which was Sexton's personal recreation of '70s FM radio across an album's worth of original songs. Wanting to capitalize on his live reputation, he resurrected Kitchen Table and self-released his double live album, Live Wide Open, in 2002. Seeing the potential rewards of working outside the industry machinery, Sexton opted out of his Atlantic contract and went back to Kitchen Table for 2005's highly regarded Camp Holiday, his set of Christmas songs translated in his inimitable kitchen-sink American folk style. Although there was a lengthy span between Wonder Bar and Seeds, Sexton insists there was no label chicanery responsible for his lack of studio product in his post-Atlantic career.
"I basically worked [Live Wide Open] as if it were a studio record; I toured behind it, I serviced it to press and radio," says Sexton. "Between 2002 and Camp Holiday, those three years, I just toured and wrote and raised my kids and built a home, all that good human stuff that I hadn't done in the years before. You gotta keep the home fires burning. That's another benefit of being independent. I don't have some big corporation breathing down my neck: 'It's been 18 months since your last record. Where's the songs? Where's the tour? Where's the money?'"

Sexton is quick to note that although he is an independent artist, he's far from a one-man operation in bringing his music, both recorded and live, to his fans.

"It's a double-edged sword, though, being your own boss," he says. "Our distributor, Redeye, is very proactive and I kind of have the best of both worlds. And we have a great team in place. I'm blessed with great management and a great booking agency and a great radio promoter and a great online company, so although I'm independent, I'm not doing it myself, which is wonderful. I couldn't raise kids and be a touring and recording artist and do everything myself. I get to sit at the helm and point my finger and yell at people once in awhile. It's great."

Given that there had been the seven-year gap since Sexton's last album of all-original music, the release of Seeds was a highly anticipated event among his fans. He notes that there were several facets of Seeds that differed from his standard methodology.

"This one was different in that I recorded all the music before I had the lyrics written," says Sexton. "And I actually did the basic tracks in a more proper studio back in Boston but did all the overdubs up here at our camp. Once I had all the music recorded - I had the melodies written, that comes easy to me - I would come up here at night and light a lantern and go over the tapes, the scratch vocals, to catch any tidbits that were salvagable and took the mumbo-jumbo and worked them into actual lyrics. Hence, there are some phrases that I think I never would have written had I written it with a pen and paper."

The one non-original on Seeds is an atmospheric and slightly slowed-down funk/folk spin on Billy Preston's ebullient '70s single "Will It Go Round in Circles," a song that Sexton had long wanted to cover. Just as the Seeds sessions were winding down, he got the sign that the time had come to actually proceed with laying down the track he had intended to interpret for some time.

"I had the basic tracks done and we were wrapping it up and we heard it come over the radio that he had passed away," recalls Sexton. "This was my kick in the ass from the universe to do it, to pay a little tribute. We actually put the tapes back up on the machine and lit a few candles and one take, that was it. I never sang the song, the fellas had never played the song, and there it was."
As for the rest of Seeds, it's an album filled with Sexton's standard brilliance. Like an East Coast folk version of Van Dyke Parks, he weaves all of the elements of American musical tradition into his folk stream-of-consciousness, from the pop gospel of "Happy" and "Wild Angels" to the bluesy lope of "Goin' to the Country" and "There Go I" to the R&B touched "I'm Here" to the gorgeous Nillsonesque pop of "Marry Me."

Seeds is an important next step for Sexton. It's literally his best album to date, outselling even his major label work and drawing crowds to his concerts on this tour (partnered with CLIF Bar GreenNotes, a company that helps touring artists remain environmentally friendly on the road with biodiesel buses, and organic and recycled show merchandise) that have outstripped his previous attendance figures. And his exposure was increased exponentially this past year when the TV series Scrubs used Sexton's "Diner" across an entire episode in its swan-song season. It's a great time to be Martin Sexton.
"It's a celebratory time for me because I'm independent and doing, businesswise, better than ever," says Sexton. "It's a great feeling because I'm not relying on any major corporations, any major sponsorships. I'm beholden to no one. I can be true to my art and true to myself and to the fans, and I don't have to go up there and act like I love Coca-Cola or the Gap. It's just me and my music."

Martin Sexton,
Ryan Montbleau
8 p.m. Thursday, September 20
Grog Shop
2785 Euclid Heights Blvd.
216.321.5588
Tickets: $20