Steven Martini is explaining Kundalini Yoga to me. He is not only a practioner, but has completed teacher training as well. We are in his car driving through the Pico Robertson neighborhood, and his tiny dog Bridget is resting silently on my lap as he explains the intricacies of his spirituality.
Acting writing, filmmaking, making music. They're all really related.
When I first started, acting is something that is very physical, you're performing. You're using your body, you're animating. Music comes from this other place, it definitely needs your body. Like when I write a song, it comes from some place deep inside.
Jeremy: How long have you been playing music and writing songs?
I took piano lessons when I was a kid. I hated them. The piano teacher, I used to hide under my bed when he was outside. But then my parents got divorced, and all those lessons that I actually did take seemed to come to fruition when I'd sit down at the piano and have this emotional sort of pain that I needed to get out. With this crumbling family, reality changing right in front of my eyes.
Jeremy: A lot of times when Parents make their kids take piano lessons against their will, they say, "you'll thank me for this later."
Steven:So true, I wish I'd taken more lessons. I wish I had more discipline at it.
So then I started emotionally expressing myself through music, and I was happy I knew the technical skills.
J: So you were in your teens when you started writing songs?
Steven: Yeah, I a lot of it was like trying to figure out a Billy Joel song on the piano and then singing it with all my heart. Like, "God, that feels so good." You know? And that was around the time, the whole nineties thing, which was just amazing. PearlJam came out.
Jeremy: I had the same thing with Pearljam.
Steven: With Pearljam, when they did Unplugged, that was just like, Oh my god! And that was the time, Art and Commerce was together! It's not just this pop, bubblegum stuff.
And Cobain had the ironic poetry thing going. The alienation, which was great. And Eddie Vedder, he had these spiritual truths that were coming out. He was saying stuff, and the stuff that was resonating with me was those spiritual truths that they were exploring when they were of the age. They were older, and they had already gone through so much shit that I understand now. When you're a teenager, you're like, this is cool.
Once I started really playing music, I almost stopped listening because I wanted it to come from that place, that raw place of emotion, and that's why I always hear something slightly different for my band. People always say it sounds like this or it sounds like that. It's always a little bit surprising, like when it sounds like something I never listen to!
So you've been acting for a long time too?
Yeah. I went to a high school for performing arts. It was like, you start off your writing exercises. So I was like, "Well, I'm just going to write like J.D. Salinger." You start mimicking, "I'm just going to act like Al Pacino." Then like, Nirvana. You start emulating and mimicking at some point, and that get's you to a certain point, and then you realize, oh, I don't necessarily want to mimic anymore. That doesn't feel real anymore.
How did you meet your current bandmates? And how long have you been in L.A. now?
I've been In L.A. now ten years. I came out to L.A. right after high school essentially. My grandfather died, and he left me his guitar. I didn't really know how to play it, I just played the piano. But I figured out the chords, you know, some friends would teach me. I learned E minor, which is like the easiest chord, and I didn't try to learn another song. I immediately just started writing. So as soon as I came out to L.A., I didn't have a TV, didn't have any friends. I was living in a pool house, just sort of alone from my family, my girlfriend I'd broken up with. So I wrote like a hundred songs. And it felt like a real outlet, like this gives me the writing aspect, which is real internal, in your head, and then when you perform it, it brings out the body and you're performing. So it's like acting when you're performing, and you're writing the song. It's so much more satisfying than just being an actor.
So you came out primarily to act but you got more into songwriting?
I think so, yeah. As an actor, I'd done a film I was brought out here and gone out on auditions and stuff. But then I started playing in bands, and people started hearing my songs. First I played keyboards in a band called Shag, with Raymond Richards of Idaho Falls. We started a band called Caboose, which was more like John Spencer Blues Explosion, but I was always much more song oriented.
You were the lead singer in that band?
Yeah I played harmonica and sang, I would bring songs that we would play, but we would also jam and come up with stuff, which lately hasn't been as much the case.
It's more solid songs?
Yeah.
So you've already played a lot of places around L.A.
I played a lot, and I played in a bunch of different bands, but then what happened was my movie career, I did my first movie and put a song in that.
Which movie was that?
Smiling goat and fish on fire. First movie that I wrote.
And that came out?
Yeah we made it for like 50 grand. And so that started off my writing career, I stared writing screenplays for film and television. That movie won the Toronto film festival. So then I started focusing more on writing screenplays, and getting really into the structure and storytelling. It was a really interesting change in pace but I kind of needed that extra dimension, to write my next Film, Lymelife. So this movie got us into sundance with Robert Redford, and we developed the script up here. I've never been to college, I've never been to film school, so this is like learning on the spot with people who........
So that film took a few years to find funding and everything. And a few years ago we had funding for it, six million dollars. We had 3 months preproduction, we spent a million dollars, shooting the film in New Jersey we were about to start the first day. We had Billy Joel doing the score of the movie.
So you got to meet him, and you said you're a big fan, right?
Huge fan, from when I was a kid. But at this point I'd already had my own musical journey, and he was like, "I haven't written a song in 15 years." I met him and I was like, "what happened?"
You asked him that?
Yeah!
And what did he say?
He was like, "I don't know how to explain it," He said, "Look at all the songs that I've written. Like I've lost, the silence."
but meeting him, I was really excited, it was like so cool. There was this burning thing inside of me.
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