JEFFREY MARTIN
ANNOUNCES UK + IRELAND TOUR DATES FOR 2024
TOURING ACCLAIMED NEW ALBUM:
‘THANK GOD WE LEFT THE GARDEN’
OUT NOW, VIA LOOSE – PRE-ORDER/SAVE HERE
Following the release of his acclaimed fourth album ‘Thank God We Left the Garden’, JEFFREY MARTIN will be heading to the UK and Ireland for a series of headline shows this Winter.
Taking in 11 dates in total, the Portland, Oregon artist will be playing at these venues as follows:
JEFFREY MARTIN – UK & IRELAND TOUR 2024
JANUARY
16 – BIRMINGHAM Sunflower Lounge
18 – GALWAY Roisin Dubh
19 – CORK DeBarra’s Folk Club
20 – DUBLIN The Workman’s Club
21 – BELFAST Lavery’s
23 – BIRKENHEAD Future Yard
24 – DRYGATE Brewing Co.
25 – NEWCASTLE The Globe
26 – LONDON Slaughtered Lamb
27 – BRIGHTON The Folklore Rooms
28 – FOREST ROW Hopyard Brewing Co.
Tickets for all dates are on sale now here:
https://www.jeffreymartinmusic.com/
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The 11-track album, ‘Thank God We Left the Garden’, came out in November 2023 and arrived as Jeffrey Martin’s first full-length outing since 2017’s ‘One Go Around’.
The title ‘Thank God We Left the Garden’ is a paradoxical nod to Martin’s own spiritual conclusions, a theme that is subtly woven throughout the album. The son of a pastor, he touches on his religious upbringing then carries us well beyond his past where the weight of his deepest questions are free to unfold.
“It’s always bothered me how uptight religion gets around the messiness of our human natures, always trying to tell people they’re broken and flawed from the get-go,” Martin explains. “The only God I can imagine is one who is overjoyed with the mess. Who revels in the edgeless mystery. I imagine hanging around with angels all day gets boring pretty fast. So maybe we got the story wrong. Maybe we were supposed to leave the Garden all along. Maybe that was the first good thing we ever did. After all, I can’t think of anything that has an ounce of meaning or dimension that doesn’t come from failure.”
Self-produced and recorded in a tiny shack on the back of Martin’s small corner lot in southeast Portland, the songs on ‘Thank God We Left the Garden’ began as demos meant for a later visit to a proper studio, but became the quietly potent album itself. Beloved Portland guitarist Jon Neufeld would later mix and master the record and add electric guitar to three songs. Sticking to the same less-is-more approach, his work skillfully and subtly elevates the lyrical intention, becoming such a crucial part of the final result that Martin also credited him as a co-producer.
Martin recalls: “There was a magic quality to the sounds I was getting in the shack with these two cheap microphones, some lucky recipe of time and place…I feel like I’ve only just learned how to sing. Like I’ve been chasing this record since my very first recordings. I wanted to really see what I could do, just my guitar and my voice and little else. I don’t think it was conscious. I think maybe it was a reaction to the pace of life these days. The churning news and entertainment and politics and violence of it all. I needed to know that even in this day and age, just a few simple ingredients still hold up.”
‘Thank God We Left The Garden’ is out now on classic black vinyl LP, CD and digitally.