Album Notes

"...one of the three best voices ever to grace my stage" M's Fine & Mellow Café, Baton Rouge, LA

A Road Not to Be Missed
Life on the road has always been a thematic apex of folk music, so it is no surprise that Jen and Rob Slocumb, A.K.A. Martha's Trouble, named their second album The Road Ahead. The acoustic duo spend a great deal of time traveling across North America playing concerts from Vancouver to Texas and their itinerant troubadour lifestyle gives a vibrant life to the songs they weave. The road can be felt in many of their songs from the steady pace of acoustic guitars and percussion to lyrics about new horizons, homesickness, and documentary style description of life from the van window. The Road Ahead is a scenic soundscape of North America from Ontario's 401 to Oklahoma's I-40.

Martha's Trouble has been performing together since 1994 when Jen and Rob met in Houston. A rich creative collaboration ensued, not to mention matrimony, and Martha's Trouble embarked on a relentless perennial Trans-National tour schedule that sees them performing 180 dates a year.

Jen's spine-tingling vocals, compared by critics to Harriet Wheeler, Natalie Merchant, and Aimee Mann, will hold you captive. Her superb talent will enchant you and convince you that every word is for you. Her voice, rich with experience, conviction, and wonder is what keeps audiences alert and returning to hear Martha's Trouble. Add to this Rob's delicate and patterned acoustic arrangements and a live experience that transcends expectations and you have just a few of the many reasons why Martha's Trouble is being heralded by critics as a duo to watch.

Now with two albums behind them, a third one on the way, and campus radio support in two countries, Martha's Trouble has turned a passion for music and the journey into a bright and promising future. They are again packing up the van with guitars, drums, stories, and songs and are about to take the road to your town, perhaps jotting down observations and experiences along the way for future songs. Even after they leave you, and head towards a new compass point, you will recall Jen's radiant voice and how it silenced a room. And the next day maybe you will find yourself singing, "We'll never know where tomorrow will take us, but that's fine with me / 'cause I have all that I ever wanted here with me" (from Before the Sun Goes Down).