On Monday 29th September 2009, my husband Martin and I watched ‘The Soloist’ with great interest as we were on a plane from London to Los Angeles. We had spent the summer street performing (busking) in Stratford-Upon-Avon, UK invited by the authorities there and our expenses paid. A little like the Santa Monica scheme on the Promenade. Our goal was to perform ourr songs to a more receptive audience and we thought that Californians would be the most receptive to our songs of love and peace.
A little background – we have spent the last two years writing 40+ songs and recording around 25 of them so far by ourselves, playing all the parts. We are homeless,( not living on the streets like Nathaniel Ayres, but sometimes we have been out there for a couple of nights in the past). We have spent a fortune on hotel rooms, temporary accommodation, sofas and spare rooms. Our only income coming from our songs sold by us on a CD. We have a website – www.maryandmartin.com – where we encourage people to download our album.
I started writing songs two years ago after Martin started teaching me the guitar in a homeless shelter in Leicester, UK. Martin has been writing songs for a while now. Our album is called ‘Love Peace.’ We have another album just recorded – ‘Changes’ a track from the new album is on our website under ‘some songs’. It’s an inspirational song written around the time when President Obama was inaugurated.
Our story starts with Martin becoming a Tibetan Buddhist monk in his 20’s and I became an academic in Work Stress an ethnicity at Loughborough university. We met just after Martin left the monastery and I was still researching for my PhD. I had attended several conferences by then and my research had been published in Psychiatry and Psychology. I was losing heart in it as I wanted to change the effect of peoples’ prejudicial actions, but found the focus to be more on securing research funding rather than changing things. So I left my research behind. I have a BA (hons), PGCE and MA. I am a mother of two daughters and I have a grandson. I am 41 years old.
Martin played me one of his songs one day and I knew he should be on the radio and that’s what I said to him. Six weeks after we met we left and started to promote his songs. We married and became homeless as we couldn’t afford a place from our meagre income. So ended up in a homeless shelter. That’s where my songwriting began. Then I started singing and found I really could sing. We decided on Street perfoming as a means of an immediate income and we managed to pay for hotel rooms and temp accommodation from this. Every day singing for 5 or 6 hours for months, martin would sometimes just play the guitar by himself and I would sing the songs I’d written. We would go out separately to maximise our income. All the time writing more songs and using a laptop and free software to record them. We made a meagre living, and now we’re really great singer-songwriters with intelligent lyrics, and feel good music.
We played Birmingham’s Artfest, the largest free festival in the UK in September this year and brought in crowds of people. One of the songs recorded in the homeless shelter called ‘Love Everlasting’ has been liensed by Larry Holden of Batman Dark Knight, Memento, Charmed; for one of is independent movies. He has been in touch a few days ago wanting to help our songs along by giving them to his music industry contacts.
The reason I am writing to you is that we are on the brink of going on skid row. All our savings were spent to make it here. We have a few days left in our hotel. We don’t want handouts. We want publicity for us, our music, our talents and our Story. We are a beautiful couple who are still so much in love and know people want to hear us perform our songs. We played an open mic last friday evening at Un-urban, Santa Monica, and someone said after how beautiful it was and she thinks we have a positive message to share. She took photos of us as well. We met Jimmy Howard in Stratford, he was the UK producer for Adelaide Hall and Duke Ellington – he told us we had something more than special, and that he’d send our songs to some of his contacts. He is around 80, but my voice and look reminded him of Adelaide Hall. We put togther a band of musicians in the UK who are ready to go on tour with us. We are ready!
We have made sacrifices for our art as we believe so strongly in our songs and our love. We realise there is no future in street performing and the street is not our stage. We are too talented – we need Carnegie Hall and for someone to discover us! We have produced 30+ videos on youtube, maintain our website and keep our books.
I would like to invite you to meet us, we have so much more to say to you, therefore, I should be grateful if you would reply.
We are in an LA hotel until Friday patiently waiting with faith and hope that someone will help us reach our potential.
With kind regards,
Mary and Martin
www.maryandmartin.com
