About

Martin Colyer has been involved in music throughout his life. He is the son of Bill Colyer, the man who gave the name Skiffle to the burgeoning DIY movement that happened in Britain in the early Fifties. Bill’s brother was the renowned Jazz trumpeter, Ken Colyer, leader of a band that included the crucial influencers Alexis Korner and Lonnie Donegan. This story is brilliantly told in Billy Bragg’s recent book, Roots, Radicals and Rockers.

Martin was in a British R’n’B group called Hot!House in the Eighties, and although ultimately unsuccessful, managed to spend £1.3m of RCA’s money. They were fronted by singer Heather Small and worked with Susan Rogers and Eric Leeds of Prince fame, Ron “Have Mercy” Kersey, writer of “Disco Inferno”, and toured supporting Barry White.

Along with Mark Pringle and Barney Hoskyns, Martin is also a co-founder of the world’s number one music journalism resource, Rock’s Back Pages.

In 2012 he won a Parliamentary Jazz Award for his work on Goin’ Home: The Uncompromising Life & Music of Ken Colyer, a large-scale biography of his uncle. A magazine designer and art director by trade, Martin started writing a weekly blog, Five Things I Saw and Heard This Week, in 2012. It focused on music encountered in day-to-day life. In July 2018 he released a book of the blog, Five Things I Saw and Heard This Week, Vol. 1. He also posts occasionally on illustration and photography at Adventures in Commissioning.

He has continued to write, mostly on design and illustration for the beautiful graphics magazine, eye, in London. He makes music, sometimes, at martincolyer.com and southwesternrecorders.com. He likes reverb, outré scents, Bob Dylan’s boots and the writing of Dashiell Hammett.

He plays primitive music on ramshackle guitars, likes Bob Dylan, Sugar Pie DeSanto, Joseph Spence, Sam Amidon and John Fred & His Playboy Band among thousands of others. He’s a fair cook. On occasion, he writes a song, usually with Mark Pringle.

Inspiration Information: His constant writing inspirations include Laura Barton, Mick Brown, Joan Didion, Michael Gray, Peter Guralnick, Barney Hoskyns, Marinas Hyde and O’Loughlin, Michael Jackson (the wine one), Anthony Lane, Greil Marcus, Mark Myers, Amanda Petrusich, Alex Ross, John Jeremiah Sullivan, Ed Ward, Richard Williams and Peter York.