Meet Natalie Martin | Musician, Educator, and Activist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Natalie Martin and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Natalie, what matters most to you?
Honesty is the most important value to me. I’ve only really come to appreciate the true value of honesty since I came out as transgender. I named myself “Natalie” because it’s one letter away from “not a lie.” During my late teens (and pretty much all of my twenties) I had a compulsive lying habit, and I still carry a fair bit of shame over how much I struggled to be honest. My name now helps keep me honest, reminding me that those days are behind me.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
This is *quite* a story. I would say that two things really set my art apart from others: experience and perspective. I dedicated my life to music when I was 10 years old, and I’ve always had an insatiable thirst for different musical experiences. My first instrument was piano, but from there, I grew proficient in flute, French horn, percussion, bass guitar, clarinet, and euphonium, all before turning 18. I was heavily involved in choir and drama, but aside from the arts, my father always encouraged me to play sports. I played all the sports little league could offer, including baseball, basketball, soccer, football, and even wrestling. Through high school, my sport was marching band. I fell madly in love with the marching activity, it was the perfect mix of music and motion, and all my experience with sports had prepared me well for such a physically demanding activity. I marched all four years of high school marching band, two seasons of indoor percussion ensembles (WGI), both of my years at Akron University, and three seasons of drum and bugle corps (DCI). My second season of DCI was spent marching bass drum with the world champion Santa Clara Vanguard, and since I joined late, I had mere weeks to learn what others in the corps had spent half a year learning. We finished 4th place at World Championships, and I could write a book from all the hard lessons I learned in that summer alone, but the most important of them was that I could do and learn more than I ever realized. My brain had a seemingly endless capacity for music, and that was the year I discovered that. I almost went full career with the marching arts, but rock and roll came calling.
Musician’s Institute, located in the heart of Hollywood in Los Angeles, is one of the only contemporary music colleges in the country, and I moved to California to be a student there when I was 20, in 2003. Through the school, I got a job playing keyboards and singing backup vocals for the recording artist Avril Lavigne, and after graduation, I made a living as a composer, writing music for commercials, radio ads, theater productions (including one full-length musical), and indie films. It was also during this time that I began pursuing my dreams of being a solo singer/songwriter, and I performed under the stage name “C. Mardo Martin.”
I left Los Angeles in 2009, moving back to Ohio to help my father with our family business, which was being a karaoke DJ. Suddenly, I was spending five nights of every week listening to amateur singers perform top-40 hits from virtually every popular genre of music. The singing was sometimes amazing, and every night was an eclectic mix of music for my brain to absorb.
The end of that five-year phase of my life led to 2013, the year I came out. I had just finished recording my second solo album for Vindicated Records out of Columbus, and it felt like the music I’d just made wasn’t mine. I knew it was time to address this inner conflict I had felt my whole life. I also came to understand that it would mean being a publicly-known transgender musician, because I was already all of that (without the trans part) and I couldn’t just stop doing what I’d spent my whole life preparing to do. I was scared, but not nearly as scared as I was of staying in the closet.
I announced I was transitioning to my family on September 17, 2013. My ex-wife was 8 months pregnant with our second child, and I had wanted to wait to tell her until after our son arrived, but it got too dangerous to my health to keep it to myself any longer. For the next year or so, I kept a low profile, not playing any shows or hosting any karaoke, and I’d hit a massive writer’s block with my music, so my focus was able to stay on figuring out who I was. One year to the day after coming out to family, I came out to Facebook and started HRT, which stands for hormone replacement therapy. I started playing gigs again, but strictly cover songs because I didn’t yet have any new original music for my new identity.
When the writer’s block finally broke, three and a half years later, I was established as a local musician, but I hadn’t yet gotten into anything resembling activism. I was freshly divorced, but I knew I didn’t want to make another album about heartbreak, so I went in a more positive direction. The first batch of songs that came were all about my transition, my evolving emotions and perspective on the topic, and announcing my intent to be proudly and openly trans from then on. I found myself being invited to perform at Akron’s inaugural Pride Festival, and it was there I found my people.
I had assembled an 8-piece band for the festival, and one of my backing vocalists was Madeline Eckhart, whom I had met during my karaoke days. She and I discovered a vocal chemistry that was effortless and powerful, and after that show at Akron’s first Pride, we formed our band DreamStates. Initially, it was just an extension of my solo act, but it evolved into a project all its own, with a life and a following and momentum. The music we write together is reminiscent of my solo work, but more honest and heartfelt, more technical, and more ambitious. The pride I feel performing with Madeline, and DreamStates, is beyond definition, and I believe that’s also an apt description of our sound.
My art comes from a life filled to the brim with experiences. My perspective includes rural and urban life, male and female identities, loving and losing and finding love again, and emerging victorious through countless challenges. My art is me, my everything.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Day 1 – A tour of my hometown Wadsworth, including Memorial Park, the historic downtown, and dinner would be at El Rincon on the north end of town. Day 2 – Spend some time with my family, then take a trip to Cleveland for the Aquarium, with dinner and a jazz show at The Bop Stop.
Day 3 – Early part of the day, we’ll go to Peninsula to rent some bikes and ride the trails. After that, we’ll take in a movie in Barberton at the Lake Cinema, and finish the day with dinner at Swensons.
Day 4 – Akron Day: breakfast at Angel Falls Coffee Shop in Highland Square, a hike through Sand Run Park, lunch at Mr. Zubs Subs, and finally more live jazz and dinner at Blu Jazz.
Day 5 – I’ll probably have a concert this weekend, so this day will be spent relaxing at home. We’ll be ordering delivery, watching cartoons, and preparing my outfit and equipment.
Day 6 – Show Day: we start with breakfast at the Valley Cafe in Wadsworth, and then we head home to prepare for the show. We get all dressed up to the nines, load the gear, and have a blast the rest of the day at the show.
Day 7 – Relax Day part Two: We’ve spent so much time on obligations that we haven’t gotten to just talk. So, today we make the eggs at home, we take a walk with the dog, play board games, drink way too much coffee, and spend the whole day sharing stories.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I’d love to dedicate this to my two beautiful children, Penelope and MacKinley. They are, and will always be, my greatest works of art.

Website: dreamstates.carrd.co

Twitter: https://twitter.com/DreamStatesUS

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy1ogRKUzgwdLvNaqUi_cGQ/videos

Image Credits
Jasper Martin Jimmy Carter