Barrett Martin on Screaming Trees, Mad Season and ‘Singing Earth’

Keep even the most cursory eye out and the name Barrett Martin is bound to appear somewhere in the liner notes to albums from countless artists across dozens of genres spanning three decades. Best known as the drummer in Screaming Trees and the grunge era supergroup Mad Season, the Seattle multi-instrumentalist has played on recordings by everyone from R.E.M. to Victoria Williams to Delta blues legend CeDell Davis to Queens of the Stone Age.

The only way to really describe Barrett succinctly is that he lives for life. Whether he’s sailing down the Amazon up to Alaska with the U.S. Army Special Forces or uncovering the story behind last living Delta blues legend, he’s continuously seeking knowledge, experiences and, most importantly for the purposes here, music.

Fittingly, the conversation we had for the a Vanyaland 617 Q&A ended up being the longest which has ran since I began doing them however many years ago. And I can say with complete confidence that there’s not a boring moment in our chat, whether Barrett is talking about how close Screaming Trees came to reuniting, losing so many close friends from the Seattle scene or recalling his time contributing to records by Stone Temple Pilots, Walking Papers and QOTSA.

Click the link above for the whole interview and check out his performance on drums with Mad Season from 1995.