Dorothy Martin had waited her whole life for this shot. But as
the singer stood in the vocal booth, flanked by crack-squad musicians
and producer Linda Perry, tracking second album 28 Days In The Valley
(released last year), the cracks were showing. In her own words, Martin
“looked like shit, felt like shit, sounded like shit”: quite a feat
given her head-turning pipes and the calibre of her classy,
melodic California-rock material. “I was hungover and Linda
yelled at me,” she recalls of the fateful day in summer 2017
when she was frogmarched from the studio. “She’s good at
tough love. It was all starting to take its toll on me. My mental
state and emotional state were just degenerating.”
The episode seemed like another misstep in the tale of a natural-
born rock star who just couldn’t keep her shit together. Born in
Hungary, raised in San Diego and reared on Motown, soul, grunge
and classic rock, Martin followed the wannabes to LA and made
an impact. “It’s hard to find great musicians there,” she reflects.
“It’s hard to find genuine people. There’s a lot of noise. There’s just
a lot of garbage floating around LA. In a way, it gives the city its
charm – and [it feels good] to say you survived, rose to the top of
the garbage and kinda made a name for yourself.”
In 2016, Dorothy released a heavy, hooky debut album,Rock Is Dead (“we were just being sarcastic”) and enjoyed press coverage
championing Martin as the next great frontwoman. But there were
problems, too. “Getting sober was the biggest thing for me,” she sighs. “The
decisions I made, the people I associated with when I wasn’t clear-headed...
I was the root of the problem, I take full responsibility for that.”
Happily, Perry’s scolding was the turning-point, setting in motion both
Martin’s sobriety and the band’s second album – the “more feminine”
songs of which dance with her candid vocals. “The song Flawless is
autobiographical,” she says. “It was a bad breakup that I just never
dealt with. Songwriting is a great form of therapy, and when
I started writing with Linda, all that stuff came to the surface. Ain’t
Our Time To Die is about my personal struggles with alcoholism,
trying to motivate myself to not give up.”
It’s been a hard road. But play 28 Days In The Valley, or watch
Martin command the stage, and you’d bet on her having passed
the last pothole. “When I was a kid, I just wanted to be a singer,”
she reflects, “because there was something about it that made
me feel free. And I never really lost touch with that. When we’re
younger, we have these dreams, but then we’re told, ‘that’s
impossible’ or ‘you’ll never make a living as a musician’. For some
reason, I never bought the lie. I had to make a lot of sacrifices to
get here. It was very dark and ugly at times. But I never lost sight of
that dream. And it can only get better from here.” HY28 Days In The Valley is out now via Roc Nation.How LA’s ‘next big thing’ pulled a breakthrough
album from the world’s worst hangover.Dorothy
“In contrast to the first
album, this one seems
light and dreamy, not
as heavy. We wanted
to capture this desert,
California rock vibe,
and were inspired by
artists like The Eagles,
Jefferson Airplane,
Fleetwood Mac –
especially Rumours.
You’re not just getting
one heavy rock song,
‘cos after four of those
you get numb to it.”FOR FANS OF...SKY
LAR
BA
RBE
RIO
/PR
ESS
“I had to make a lot of
sacrifices to get here. It
was very dark sometimes.”
CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 23