Album Review – Tony Martinez’s “Everywhere West”

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photo: Edward Crowe


#580 (Outlaw Country) on the Country DDS.

It was a mixture of surprise, astonishment, and supreme happiness when someone reached out and said that Tony Martinez was finally releasing his debut album. Truth be told, Tony should probably be dead right now, and a few times over. Just the fact that he’s still alive feels like a victory in itself. Even better that he’s still out there playing for folks, let alone perhaps receiving the opportunity of his career.

Tony Martinez is like that baseball player that played four different positions for seven different teams, and every time contributed greatly, but never really found is proper home. He’s a legend of the local Phoenix country music scene. He’s a former 78s member behind Whitey Morgan, and a steel guitar player for J.P Harris. He’s played on a record from Cody Jinks, and Jake Owen “discovered” him back a decade ago and took him out on tour.

But despite all the successes and opportunities, the career of Tony Martinez has been scorpion bit, figuratively and literally. Just as everything was going well with Whitey Morgan, Tony was diagnosed with neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder, or NMOSD, which is an autoimmune disease that causes your optic nerves to become so inflamed that it cuts off the images from your eyes to your brain. Tony basically went blind, and was told there was a good chance he would become a quadriplegic and die in five years.

He didn’t give up though, undergoing aggressive treatment and getting better enough to continue to play music as best he could. Then almost like the plot of a country song, Martinez was bit by a scorpion while in Phoenix, and the bite actually cured his symptoms. Then the pandemic hit, and put the entire music industry on hold. Martinez ended up falling victim to some serious substance abuse issues, but once again was able to put that all past him and persevere once again.

All of this personal drama led to Martinez hanging out in Nashville and playing local shows. At one of them, hip-hop artist and frequent country collaborator Yelawolf saw Martinez play, and just like Whitey Morgan, Jake Owen, and others before him, fell in love with Tony and his music, and decided to record and produce an album for him.



Don’t worry about a hip-hop dude being involved. Everywhere West is straight up country with an Outlaw kick. This is the kind of record you blast right before hard cussing your boss and walking out mid shift, or leaving your husband or wife and peeling out in the driveway. Get listening to it or get out of the way before it runs you over.

These days, the best throwback country albums find a particular era and match the instrumentation and tones to it. For Tony Martinez and Everywhere West, that era is the early ’80s and Hank Williams Jr.’s rowdy days. Mix that with the Waylon Jennings influence that comes from hanging out in the Phoenix country scene, and you get one hell of a powerful country music record.

Everywhere West really comes with some unique sounds and ideas. You have the legendary “Cowboy” Eddie Long playing steel guitar, the acclaimed Alex Lyon on bass from Whitey Morgan’s band, as well as Lynyrd Skynyrd keys player Peter Keys adding that Southern rock element to the mix. But the way these songs are put together with dramatic volume changes an unexpected key changes, it doesn’t sound like just another modern Outlaw country record. It’s got a lot of texture.

Tony Martinez has released some singles and EP stuff before. But this album gives him the opportunity to pull from his entire catalog and showcase his best material. “White Label Lies” and “Wrong Like The Weatherman” shows off his great songwriting skills. The title track was actually written by his father, and once pitched to Waylon, but never recorded. “Try” is a song he’s recorded before, but gave it a solo acoustic treatment to here to make it unique for this release.

Sometimes Tony came come across almost like a chameleon with his voice, shifting his tone slightly to fit the mood of the song. This might make it difficult for some to settle into just how they feel about him, but it also results in some excellent and impassioned performances, especially in the opening song, the autobiographical “Ain’t Nothin’ Gonna Slow Me Down.”

The only place that the Yelawolf influence might creep in is in the song “Crazy” where he appears in backing vocals. The final song “Won’t Say No To You” will catch some off guard with its very robust, almost disco-like sound. But those well-versed in late 70s, early 80s Outlaw country will confirm that it’s pretty true to the era, as funky as it may be.

Tony Martinez and Yelawolf give you a lot to unpack and unravel here. There’s a lot of great songs and a sound that’s both unconventional yet keenly familiar that is sure to find favor with the crowd who values digging for the best in country music.

1 3/4 Guns Up

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