Toby Martin


Toby Martin, is an Australian singer-songwriter, musician, academic, and lecturer at University of Huddersfield UK. Martin is the grandson of Hungarian-born Australian poet David Martin and has a PhD in the history of Australian music from the University of Sydney. After fronting Sydney-based band Youth Group from 1996 to 2009, Martin developed his solo career, releasing his first album, Love's Shadow in 2012.
Martin's PhD thesis, published in 2012, is titled "Yodelling boundary riders : country music in Australia, 1936–2010".
In 2017, Martin released his second solo album, entitled Songs from Northam Avenue. The album was written in Bankstown, and features musical accompaniment by several locals to the area.

Early life and career

Martin was born in Melbourne and grew up in the Frankston area. At 15, he moved to Canberra attending school at Narrabundah College with Cameron Emerson-Elliott,, where they wrote songs together as The Morris Brothers. Martin moved to Sydney some years later. In 1996 he formed Youth Group and the band later achieved success with their cover version of "Forever Young" by Alphaville which made no 1 on Australian record charts.

Academic career

Martin was formerly a lecturer at the University of Huddersfield in the UK, where he teaches songwriting, performance, musicology and world music to music students. Martin currently is a lecturer in Contemporary Music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. As a songwriter and performer, his research includes practice-based approaches, including the paper Making Music in Bankstown: Responding to Place Through Song, in an IASPM Journal special issue focused on practice-based popular music research.

Touring

With Youth Group, Martin has toured extensively in Australia, as well as the US, Canada and UK. In 2012, he toured solo down Australia's East Coast supporting Seeker Lover Keeper. Following the release of Songs from Northam Avenue, he has performed solo in the UK and Australia since 2017.

Awards

Martin's band Youth Group were nominated for four Australian Recording Industry Association Music Awards in 2006.

Discography

;Solo
;with Youth Group