Joy Oladokun shares her love of Martin guitars, and the Kurt Cobain-inspired guitar that’s become her number one instrument.
Find out more about the Martin Artist Showcase at martinguitar.com
#joyoladokun #martinguitars #martinartistshowcase2024
Find out more about the Martin Artist Showcase at martinguitar.com
#joyoladokun #martinguitars #martinartistshowcase2024
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MusicTranscript
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00:25I feel like when I first started writing songs it all came at once a little.
00:29I had just started like reading Lord of the Rings.
00:33And I had just gotten my first guitar and I only knew how to sort of just like pluck the E string type thing.
00:40I would just write all these little dorky songs about adventures that I would make up
00:46and I would just sort of hammer one string at a time and like yeah.
00:50I think it's always been interconnected the writing and the music making
00:54and the guitar has been such a like perfect bridge for that.
00:57What the guitar did was maybe yeah I think just create again like a bridge
01:02or like a highway between my brain and my heart and my hands
01:07and sort of say you don't have to like write down the lyrics and then make the music.
01:12You can actually just do both at the same time.
01:14Just spew my thoughts out over a musical motif type person.
01:19So I'll play a chord and just sit with the feeling that it makes me feel
01:23and then move to the next one once I have the words.
01:26Some of the last few songs that I wrote were written on this guitar.
01:29This was one of the first things I played.
01:35Like just really simple, beautiful but I think that's what's really cool about a Martin
01:40is like it's something that sounds sort of classic like Glen Campbell could have stumbled on it.
01:46Just feels like it was living in the guitar.
01:49Like I feel like I picked it up and this is what it wanted to play.
01:56So I did that.
01:57Honestly to me Martins have always felt like the guitar you get when you know how to play guitar type guitar.
02:03Like there's always been such a mystique and lived in quality and sound to every Martin I've ever seen.
02:10When I first became a Martin player it was out of necessity this guitar that I'd had for a long time.
02:17I dropped it in the middle of a tour
02:20and I went to this old sort of like antique-y guitar shop in Austin
02:26and I found this Martin that was owned by an old worship pastor.
02:31He wrote like a long letter on the inside of it
02:34and I thought that that was funny because a lot of my music deals with like religious trauma
02:38and all this different stuff like that and so I bought it
02:41and it just even though it was an older guitar still like from new Martins to old Martins
02:47the moment I picked it up it just felt solid and storied and it felt well taken care of
02:52and not all guitars feel like that when you pick them up
02:55and so it was I think in my head maybe I built up this idea of the player I wanted to be before I owned my first Martin
03:04and I think life just said you're ready now
03:08and it took me a long while to get the confidence to be like you're a good enough guitar player to own one.
03:16Martin has this guitar that's modeled after a guitar that Kurt Cobain owned
03:20and I am a pretty big Nirvana fan for lots of reasons
03:25and so I picked this one because I was looking for a tool that one sounds good, feels good, is strong
03:33but also that I could sort of treat mercilessly you know on planes, trains, and automobiles
03:41and so it's really cool because it feels like this guitar has history
03:44but it's new enough that it's mine and like some of the chips and deformities and all those things
03:50like they come from me now and I think that yeah it to me this guitar represents
03:57hopefully someday some kid will be like oh I saw Joy Laccoon play this Martin guitar
04:04and it inspired me to pick a guitar up in the first place
04:07and so this is my new this is like my new baby we sort of are inseparable for the foreseeable future
04:13because it's fun to play and because of like the nature of it and the wear of it I'm not I'm not scared to play it
04:20I just I really do love like one that it's modeled after a historical guitar
04:25but I think the pre-wear like the pre-relicing
04:28this is a conversation I have with friends is like it makes you less afraid of that first scratch
04:35or that first drop and you just sort of play like you've been together for a long time
04:41and so it's cool because now what was maybe somebody else's damage as I have now added my own bits and bobs to which is good
04:51I'm my own worst critic so I think I'm like a fine guitar player
04:55but it's cool that like the people who make guitars go like no that when you hold our guitars it sounds good
05:01it took me a long time to consider myself a guitar player and to to have the confidence to say
05:09especially I started playing on acoustic like I started playing like Bob Marley songs
05:14and I just I think sometimes there's this misconception that if you play acoustic or if you play a certain way you're not like a real guitar player
05:24but it all takes sort of an ability and an understanding and an intimacy with the instrument
05:30and so to be able to be a Martin showcase artist it has put like this sense of confidence in me to say like oh I'm a guitar player
05:38I'm a guitar player