By Jay Scott Kanes

MILLTOWN CROSS, PEI, Canada -- Rugged fisherman Mike Martell has a soft touch with songs.

“When you get out on the sea, face a gale wind and then pick up a guitar, it doesn’t take much to write a song about it, which I’ve done many times,” he said.

Atlantic waters gurgle and splash behind Mike’s folksy music. As he sings, listeners may rock to the motion of a boat or raise their feet away from imaginary waves lapping at their toes.

Fifty-two-year-old Mike’s proud to be called a singing fisherman. “You’re looking at a man who feels comfortable making fishnets or sailing in my boat,” he said. “When I suddenly started to write songs and perform, that was really different for me.”

Sea stories dominate Mike’s albums: Ten Knots or More (2004) and The Old Man and the Tide (2002). The latter competed as album of the year at the PEI Music Awards. In 2008, he plans to release a new album, one with “a well known producer” and some new songs written in the past year.

When Mike’s rich baritone voice fills a hall, the audience draws comparisons to Stan Rogers or Gordon Lightfoot. Typically, Mike plays guitar as his wife Tami supplies harmonies. “It’s simplicity in sound,” he said. “Tami and I work alone with limited use of instruments.”

The music supports Mike’s poetic lyrics, not vice-versa. His messages and delivery are deep like the ocean, soothing like gentle waves and conducive to thoughtfulness. “Emotion from his songs rolls out into the audience,” Tami said.

“I like to see how people react,” Mike said. “I like to touch them with the music.”

A coastal fisherman, Mike grew up in Georgetown, PEI, before settling in Milltown Cross with Tami and their six children (teenaged to adult). Some of the youngsters take an interest in music, but “as performers, they’re all shy”, said Mike. Not many years ago, so was their father.

“Mike barely could speak in front of a crowd,” Tami said. “When he started to sing and perform, everyone was shocked, absolutely shocked.”

An urgency to share his songs forced Mike onstage. “It was something I had to do,” he said. “I knew that one of two things could happen. It could become one of the worst experiences of my life, or I could enjoy it.

“Soon I learned that when you have a large audience, say at the Confederation Centre of the Arts, you don’t see past the first few rows anyhow because the bright lights are on top of you. The curtain rises, everything’s silent, then you hit your first note, and it’s a rush that feels so good.

“I love for people to enjoy my music. Seeing someone out there smiling, maybe with closed eyes, makes me feel more comfortable on stage.

“Later someone may come up and say, ‘Wow, we liked that song.’ Or a person I don’t know at all may cry and give me a hug. It’s a real privilege. I’m always flattered.”

For Mike, songwriting’s the bedrock. “I want to write my own stuff because I’ve spent my life on the sea, and I have a lot of ideas about what makes a great song,” he said.

In late 2001, Mike wrote his first song, “Ballad of the Garden Trip”, and unleashed creative juices that still gush.

In the morning,
On a bright, clear morning,
The old man, he got up,
And opened a shanty door…
Sailing out to sea,
That’s where he’d like to be,
The old man fishing cod once more.
From “The Old Man and the Tide”, Mike Martell, 2002

Mike has written about 40 songs. “I never know when one’s coming,” he said. “I could get an idea from someone I meet, an event in my fishing career, a TV show, a dream, an emotion or even a word. As little as one word can trigger a song. I’ve written four or five songs about my children. I wrote one about my Mom and Dad, both dead now, and one about my wife.”

Being a fisherman, Mike meets a few Newfoundlanders who work nearby, often in fish-processing plants. “When you speak to them about the demise of the cod fishery, it really hurts them,” he said. “You see it in their eyes and feel it in how they speak. They have traps in barns and ropes lying on the shore. A song, ‘The Fisherman’s Soul’, came to me. I plan to perform it in Newfoundland.”

Coastline to coastline
Along the deep water
Leaving the land of old,
Young men, ladies,
Mommas with babies,
And the cold sou’wester blows,
And the fog, to roll us home,
To the land of the fisherman’s soul.
From “The Fisherman’s Soul”, Mike Martell, for release in 2008

Inspiration may strike anywhere. “One day, I was driving the truck and had to pull over because I’d had an idea. I wrote an entire song at the side of the road.”

Mike doesn’t always carry a notebook. “Any piece of paper will do,” he said. “Anything to remember the lyrics – I’ve written on toilet paper. If necessary, I’d write on my hand or on the side of my boat.”

He works hard to stay sharp on guitar. “I played for six months in my 20s,” he said. “Then I picked it up again at age 47. But within a few months, I was out performing. I’m always up for a challenge.”

Mike began to fish at age 14. “I started with my brother,” he said. “By age 21, I got my own dragger. I fished with that for so long and then got into other fisheries. Now we’re aqua-farmers, growing clams, and trap-fishermen of silversides, small fish along the coast.”

His biggest mishaps involved the dragger. “Then you’d be out to sea, maybe north of the Magdalen Islands. You could get into heavy weather.

“Fishing still takes a lot of my time,” Mike said. “But I love to sing and play.”

Mike and Tami plan to do a lot more musical touring once their youngest children finish high school. Next summer, they’ll perform in North Carolina.

“Things are going to happen,” Mike vowed. “Scotland may be an important market for us. We’re invited to folk clubs in England. Maybe we could tour in Australia. We’re interested in every place with a fishing community.”


Music on board: the singing
fisherman tunes up on his boat.

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