Some lives are less straight-forward than others. As we approach the tail-end of a very strange year, a time when usually we would be collectively coasting peacefully towards a holiday season, it seems that the music coming my way grows more and more interesting. None could be more intriguing than Martin Ruby's debut album Heaven Get Behind Me . Martin Ruby, it turns out, is not a person but a band, lead by multi-disciplinary creative Marco North, here credited as supplying vocals, 6 and 12-string acoustic guitars, electric guitars, dobro, banjola, saxophone, harmonica, cloud chamber bowls, calliope, pump organ and foot-stomps. Read more - http://www.thealternateroot.com/reviewarchives/martin-ruby-heaven-get-behind-me7473252

"I used to watch Gunsmoke with my little brother who is only 14 months younger than me. We beat the shit out of each other all the time. I sent him to the hospital once covered in blood. About when I was thirteen we somehow understood we were two sides of the same coin. From then on, we had each other’s back. He had some tough years, and I thought we might lose him. It was like I was going to lose part of myself.” So says Marco North—better known by his stage name, Martin Ruby—of his stunning new music video for ‘Kodachrome Shangri-La’. Written and directed by the artist himself, the video features gorgeous imagery that assists in conveying the folk tune’s meditative path. The tune is wistful without being saccharine, ominous without being uninviting, and exemplary of Ruby’s balanced and emotive songwriting capabilities. It’s a beautiful piece of work, having first appeared on Ruby’s debut LP, Heaven Get Behind Me, on 20 Nov. Read more - https://www.forfolkssake.com/interviews/39882/premiere-interview-martin-ruby-kodachrome-shangri-la

Like a half-heard tune from another world ‘Fellini Is Dying (drunk in the afternoon)’, the opening track from Martin Ruby’s ‘Heaven Get Behind Me’, emerges from behind traffic and crowds recorded on New York’s Sixth Avenue. It is this insubstantial quality, barely rising above the ethereal and indistinct, that characterises all the songs on the album. There is something here that roots these songs deeply in the whole history of modern American music: written on a hundred-year-old parlour guitar and then performed on vintage instruments like an 1887 August Pollman guitar and a 1929 Selmer tenor saxophone. Read more - https://americana-uk.com/martin-ruby-heaven-get-behind-me-whistlepig-records-2020

Like the visage of death himself, extending his arm and firmly guiding you through a barren stretch of road, songwriter Marco North’s sun-beaten guitar probes a venerated style of folk, cloaked in equal parts hope and despair, and as ominous as death bells. Read more - https://ventsmagazine.com/2020/11/18/interview-moscow-based-folk-americana-artist-cinematographer-devout-minimalist-martin-ruby/

Slowly, you become aware of a saxophone, wafting through the room like the sounds of traffic. It carries you through the emotional crescendo of Martin Ruby's "California Divorce," and sets you down gently at the denouement. If you've been around long enough, you may also know Ruby as Marco North, a mainstay of Manhattan's Lower East Side in the '90s. Heaven Get Behind Me, out November 20th on WhistlePig Records, is North's first release in some time -- and he's lived enough for four lifetimes since then. Read more - http://www.adobeandteardrops.com/2020/11/premiere-martin-ruby-california-divorce.html