Transcript from an Interview with Dogwood Daughter
A native East Tennessean and musician, Martha Maria... Her hauntingly beautiful music and voice has been likened to Loreena Mckinnett, Kate Bush, Gillian Welch, Emmylou Harris...
I'm singer/songwriter, pianist, composer Martha Maria and multi-instrumentalist that is MarMelodian.
A little about me....I live in a small white house in the woods in the shadow of the Cumberland Mountains, near Oak Ridge. That little white house is also where most of my music is produced and recorded. When I'm not working on music, I'm wife to Bob and Mother to Joe and Walker.
When I was a little girl, we had an old upright piano in our house. Some of my best memories are of sitting on that piano bench, banging on the keys and singing at the top of my lungs....probably when I was about two. When I was four, I started playing for real, just by ear. My father got me a teacher and I really took off. I learned to play the piano by studying the usual classics, but when I was 11, I went to a craft festival in the mountains and heard an old woman playing a mountain dulcimer. I fell in love with that modal sound! All I wanted for Christmas was a mountain dulcimer of my own. The dulcimer opened the door to singing. I loved the mountain ballads and collected and sang them. I think when I was a teenager, I was known primarily as the girl who could play and sing. But I was always a shaky performer.....too nervous. It was the music I loved, not the recognition.
I went out of state to college and other pursuits took me away from music for several years. I really owe my return to music to my husband. After the children were born and had started to school, I got a piano again and started playing and improvising, timidly at first. My husband would always encourage me.." Martha, that's beautiful. You should do something with that." And then one summer day, on our way down to the Ocoee River (my husband is a raft guide on the river) I overheard my husband talking to his cousin and he said, "I think Martha should be a composer."
Hearing him say those words was all it took. I've been composing (sometimes night and day) ever since. So you see, that's why I said on the inside cover of my "Spirit Songs" cd that I am grateful to my husband Bob, who is always the wind beneath my wings.
I began recording as Dogwood Daughter in 2011. I recorded as MarMelodian 2008-2010. Please visit me at my new website, www.dogwooddaughter.com and also at my original website, www.marmelodian.com
If you like my music, please tell other folks about it. It will help me so much and I will be sincerely grateful. Thank you! Be Well and Good Luck. Martha Maria.
(for more about Dogwood Daughter and the Angel Project visit www.dogwooddaughter.com -)
Official Website: http://www.dogwooddaughter.com/
Old Website: http://www.marmelodian.com/