Aldous Huxley once wrote, “After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
Such was the case last Wednesday night, as soul singer Martin Sexton took the stage for a solo set before a packed house at famed Milwaukee rock club Shank Hall.
Sexton, a native of Syracuse, N.Y., began his career listening to ’70s FM radio and working the Boston club circuit. He acknowledged his music influences as broad-based, including Black Sabbath, Pavarotti, the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Ray Charles, U2 and blues legends like Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon and Robert Johnson.
He has meshed this diverse background into a sound unlike any other artists today, for it is one of tremendous range, raw lyrical honesty and rhythmic creativity.
That sound, which he describes as “guided by a higher power,” often includes religious references, eerie explorations into human nature’s darker side, and blissful descriptions of love. These themes drew an equally diverse crowd Wednesday, as members of practically every age group and economic level were well represented at the 300+ venue.
As Sexton noted Wednesday, “What I’m singing about is human and honest. I think people of all ages like that. Soul music is universal. It doesn’t matter if you’re 9 or 90.”
That understanding of truth as the embodiment of beautiful soul music was evident from song one, “Wasted.” The song, mellow and strengthened by Sexton’s amazing range, included just that brutal honesty: “Any time of the year, I’d walk a country mile / A pint and a bag in my pocket characterized my style / I was wasted, not strong as I am now / So wasted, not strong as I am now.”
The song takes the listener through all the highs and lows of drinking and drugs, with Sexton’s characteristically well-traveled catharsis.
Themes of growth, travel, and hard-fought maturity also bled through in his other works. “Freedom of the Road,” another honest set of lyrics in which Sexton plays on his amazing range, he sings, “Up ahead a truck’s carryin’ a wide load / A prefab house cut in half / Cute little front door and two windows / I’m not sure whether to cry or should I laugh / You see I broke a home up myself once when I stumbled to that door / I read that note by the dawn’s light / Said don’t you come round here anymore / Now I’ve had enough of this freedom / Of the road.”
Sexton concluded the piece by singing of “the good Lord” bringing him the power to come home.
In “Diggin’ Me,” a playful ode to a love (“Later at the thrift store / Shopping for a gift for you / I could ask you back there / Behind the rack of shoes”), he enters into scat sounding more like a trumpet than a human voice. A typical question asked by at-home listeners is, “Was that his voice? That’s incredible!”
Several patrons to the show, learning that the singing was actually his unmodified voice, expressed similar amazement. Indeed, Sexton’s command of range and inflection left many listeners impressed, as shown by two standing ovations and an encore.
When asked if his reflections on religion had impeded his success as an artist in the modern music industry, a problem Bono of U2 has noted in his lyrics, Sexton responded eloquently: “Anyone’s spirituality can and should be reflected in their art because art is a powerful motivating force. It is a good, reliable line to our Creator, like a wire.”
