Martin Simpson
Martin Stewart Simpson (born 5 May 1953) is an English folk singer, guitarist and songwriter.[1] His music reflects a wide variety of influences and styles, rooted in Britain, Ireland, America and beyond.[2] He builds a purposeful, often upbeat voice on a spare picking style.[3]
For the Isle of Wight-based British paleontologist, see Martin I. Simpson. For the Whitby-based British geologist (1800-1892), see Martin Simpson (geologist).
Martin Simpson
5 May 1953
Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Singer, songwriter
According to his discography, Simpson has appeared solo (21 albums), as a session musician (16 albums), in collaboration (9 albums), in compilations, live, and on performance and instructional DVDs (7). He has also published a book. Between 2002 and 2010, he was awarded multiple honours among the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.[4]
Awards and recognition[edit]
He has been nominated 23 times in the 11 years of the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, including nine times consecutively as Artist of The Year, which he has won twice. His album Prodigal Son was named album of the year in 2008 and a song from that album, "Never Any Good" was named best original song of the year.
The accompanying book to the Topic Records 70-year anniversary boxed set Three Score and Ten lists Prodigal Son as one of Topic's classic albums.[12]: 94 "Never Any Good" from the album is track seven on the fifth disk in the boxed set and "Masters of War" from Grinning in Your Face is track four of the sixth disk. He was a session musician on June Tabor's album Aqaba which is another of the classic albums.
While best known as an acoustic guitarist, Simpson started as a banjo player, and also plays the electric guitar. He is renowned as one of the world's leading exponents of slide guitar.[13] His main performance instruments are:
He is known to have owned and played guitars by a number of renowned American luthiers including Ervin Somogyi, Jeff Traugott[17] and Bill Tippin, as well as British luthiers including Ralph Bown.[18] He recently acquired a Turnstone 14-fret cutaway guitar built by English luthier Rosie Heydenrych, and a 12-fret cutaway fan-fret Tirga Mhor model guitar with African Blackwood back and sides made by Rory Dowling of Taran guitars which he has been seen touring the UK with recently.