Martin Ruby is a self-taught multi-instrumentalist, singer and lyricist known for the raw emotion and simplicity of his music. Ruby's songs are typically...
Martin Ruby is a self-taught multi-instrumentalist, singer and lyricist known for the raw emotion and simplicity of his music. Ruby's songs are typically about "other people" as he puts it - their innermost fears, wishes, apologies, and confessions. Stripping down the character and the music to their naked forms is what defines Ruby's process, and his music.
Born in Brooklyn and raised on a pig farm, Ruby's influences are as eclectic as his own life, a mish-mashed checkerboard of experiences that include working as a short-order cook, welder, toy designer, and circus hand. The muse for his arrangements lurks in the photographs of Robert Frank, roadhouse blues, Rudy's Bar and Grill in New York City's Hell's Kitchen, cigar box guitars, qawwali scales, and the prose of Rainer Maria Rilke.
Ruby's throaty, hushed vocals and measured phrasing create an accumulative effect, often jarring at first and then immersive as the songs unfold.
It comes as no surprise that songs as deceivingly simple as Martin Ruby's are ideal for film soundtracks. The song Cielito Lindo was translated from the traditional Spanish lyrics and transposed to a blues key for the soundtrack of Gone Elvis (2011), directed by David Newhoff. As the main character passes through her soul's darkest night, Cielito Lindo does the work of speaking the unspeakable.
Listening to the demos for The Last Days of Frankie Macciota (2011) is a journey through the regrets and conflicts, the saudade of an artist finding his way through an emotional landscape.
