SA Martinez

SA Martinez has been making records and touring with 311 for three decades.

He joined the SALTYmf GOAT Podcast ahead of the band's Atlanta date, August 14 at the Coca-Cola Roxy at the Battery on the Unity Tour with AWOLNATION and Neon Trees, in a conversation with Brad and Gina Boykin of Live Music Junkies. Atlanta earned the slot. It was the first major market 311 ever sold out, and Martinez says they got the news on the road, on a payphone, and could not believe what they were hearing.

He is not on Spotify. He is on Apple Music because he was on iTunes and saw no reason to pay twice for the same thing. He found music in record stores growing up, then about fifteen years ago, stuck at home after his first child was born, started digging through YouTube instead. When the band moved to LA the DJs were the influencers, and you went to a club to hear records you did not know existed, which he notes you can now hear in a Whole Foods chip aisle without them landing the same way. The band is spread out now and carving out time to write is hard enough that he says it is amazing anything gets made. They bring in writers from outside, and the 311 ecosystem has produced fans who turned into serious producers and are now his collaborators. One song on the new record came from a side project with his nephew. Set lists have to serve people who have never seen the band and hardcore fans who come to multiple shows wanting deep cuts, with lighting and production cued to specific songs.

Early on they were funding their own tour, pulling a trailer behind a borrowed Volkswagen, and the whole thing caught fire and burned their gear. Martinez calls it a one to the chin. The gig in Kansas City was cancelled, they made Omaha the next day on borrowed equipment, and he shrugs it off as part of the story. His advice to young bands carries the same weather. Play whenever and wherever, because not every gig is a good gig and sometimes nobody is there, and it is still an opportunity. He puts the slog for a touring act at about ten years before anything happens. He is also blunt about burnout being pervasive in the business, a drum that keeps beating, and about needing to take real time away to regroup.

The part he did not see coming was the community. He says he was blind to it for a long time because the band was so ensconced in its own work that nobody could see what had formed in its wake. People go to the shows to be around each other as much as for the music, because so and so might be there, and it works as a support group. Learning what that meant to people was something extra, he says, that came out of the making of it all. The band just played Europe for the first time in about twenty years, and Australia may be next.