After 32 years in the business, you’d think Martin Nievera has seen and done it all, and yet, Martin himself will be the first to admit that he still has a lot of unfulfilled dreams.
One of them is to be in a band. Yes, Martin, who has sold out all of the country’s major venues and performed in other parts of the world as well, still dreams of doing and achieving things, and says that is what keeps him going. “Thirty-two years in the business, 52 years old, and I still have dreams and I can still fulfill them,” says Martin, whose achievements have taken him so far beyond his Concert King title. If there is anything Martin has proven in all the time he has been in the business, it’s that the truly good never stop trying to be better.
One of the things he dreams of achieving that he hasn’t done yet is singing in a band. Thus, he was overjoyed when his recording company PolyEast Records gave him the chance to record an album titled Big Mouth, Big Band. But before you go thinking that Martin has started crooning standards, the album is actually a collection of songs by some of the biggest bands in the music business — Earth Wind and Fire (Sing a Song), Chicago (Will You Still Love Me), Queen (Love of my Life), Toto (I Won’t Hold You Back), the Doobie Brothers (What A Fool Belies) and Kansas (Dust in the Wind) — hence the tag “big band” — performed by Martin, with actual instrumentalists and arrangements for each one.
The album was thus quite tedious and expensive to do, explains Martin, who finished the 12 songs in four days. “One of my dreams is to be in a band. I’ve never been in a band. So PolyEast, which doesn’t need to do this because it’s very expensive to do what we’re doing where you have a band, you have actual paper arrangements for each musician, then you have ad-libs by actual instrumentalists like a cellist, a trumpet player, a trombone player, and every instrument of the album is live. Everything is raw. Everything’s organic, which is I think what the industry wants today, not stuff where you’re trying to turn computers into music.”
“Everyone thinks ‘big band’ means ‘Big Band’ like (Michael) Bublé or (Frank) Sinatra,” says Martin. “No. These are the hits of the big bands, not Big Band music.” He also revealed plans to come up with a second album that has essentially the same concept, but this time, with the music of “big” OPM bands.
Being able to take on new projects and dream of new frontiers to conquer is what keeps Martin going after all this time. As a performer, Martin has failed and been knocked down so many times that by now, he has already mastered what it takes to get back up.
How did he do it? “I just focused on work. I didn’t try to bounce back on anything. I didn’t say, ‘Ah, gano’n? Watch this.’ Hindi ko ginamit ‘yun. I never announced a come-back, I never announced that I’m going to be making it again. I never forced it down anyone’s throat that I’m going to be something again. I just did it.”
Today, Martin has learned to take each moment that he’s onstage and make those the best moments of his career. If he is, say, on ASAP, and he’s only given four lines of a song to sing, he will make them the best four lines of his career.
“If you have only four lines, then make them the best four lines of your life. Make your performance the best show on earth. Don’t go there with a bitter attitude and say, ‘Bakit wala akong solo today?’ or ‘Bakit aapat lang ang linya ko?’ You make them the best four lines of your life and then you go home proud, that you did something good. That’s the new Martin. I always remind myself, ‘Make every moment golden.’ Don’t count your golden moments, make every moment golden.”