Martin Ruby is an alt. folk band led by singer and multi-instrumentalist Marco North. Born in Brooklyn, he has been living in Moscow, Russia for the past 13 years. Laying his demons bare, North pulls on characters like a series of strange coats. Paring back the extraneous, coaxing out the wry details, always seeking that conversational tone, his songs are a wandering collection of midnight confessions.
His first album, Heaven Get Behind Me was written on a 100-year-old parlor guitar, and recorded in a Soviet-era living room on a collection of vintage instruments, including an 1887 Pollman banjola. North’s unique songwriting is steeped in not only the melancholy grace of Nick Drake and Mark Linkous, but also the foggy noir of Johnny Cash’s American albums, and the somber meditativeness of Nick Cave’s most recent recorded output.
North has lived a helluva life, from the wild Lower East Side of the ’90s to a bewildered expat in Russia in the wake of a nasty custody battle. He knows what he’s talking about when he paints pictures of his down and out characters. On “Rusty Trucks and Daisies,” North gets personal. The song serves as a eulogy, poem, and ambient music to create a beautiful tribute to his former bandmate.
“There were these phone calls in the middle of the night. Molly was dead. We had just gotten back to talking again, putting the past in place, cracking jokes about the old days when we played at CBGBs.” Marco North, the voice behind Martin Ruby explains. Just a day before, he had begun writing a new single, where a few scribbled lines sat on the page. In the wake of unexpected loss, this turned into Rusty Trucks and Daisies, a tribute to an old bandmate that lived a mysterious life, full of contradictions and left turns.
The track was mastered by none that than Oz Fritz, a celebrated engineer who has recorded and mixed for Tom Waits (Mule Variations), Iggy Pop, Bill Laswell, and the Ramones.
Name a perfect song and tell us why you feel that way.
I spent a lot of time stuck in the back seat of a car listening to AM radio when I was a kid, and I can still remember the first time I heard Glen Campbell singing “Wichita Lineman.” It was so specific, and so abstract at the same time and it just made me feel frail, and vulnerable, and alive. I did not know a song could do that. I have heard some great stories about how Jimmy Webb wrote it in a few minutes and how he felt it was awful – repeating “lineman” and the “main line,” he was embarrassed by how terrible he thought it was. There’s a lesson for you!
Do you start off with the music or lyrics first? Why?
Every song is its own little world – on this one, some of the words came first, just a handful of them “She never slept in the Chelsea Hotel/But she bought an old guitar just ‘round the corner.” I sang them to myself out of key, to make sure they were not clunky. They sat on the page for a while, not sure where to go next — and then, out of nowhere my old bandmate Molly Fitch died from Covid and I understood, in that messy, broken moment that this song was about her. She lived a complex, mysterious life and we had just gotten back in touch after years of silence, cracking wise about our adventures playing at CBGBs in the 90s. I decided to keep plenty of her secrets intact, and tried to paint an honest picture of where she ended up, and what it was like to wake up in a world without her.
Who are some of your musical influences?
I learn so much from Jeffrey Martin and Anna Tivel (both together and on their own) about how to write authentically, how to sing what you have written, and how to perform it.
What’s the best way a fan can support you?
On a purely practical note — follow me on Bandcamp and buy there. Being able to connect without FB or Twitter or Instagram getting in between us is a big deal. I get notes and feedback, anecdotes and reactions from fans all over the world and they are a huge shot in the arm. Music is a two-way street – not a faucet.
Is there a professional “bucket list” item you would love to check off?
Recording at Prairie Sun in the Tom Waits room with Oz Fritz at the board is more than just a passing fancy, but something I am working towards in a practical way. I reached out to Oz with some questions about mastering after I finished this track. I was just looking for some advice – but as luck would have it, Oz offered to master it right then and there! Be careful what you wish for, right?