Arron Lee Martin Performance at Third Thursday
Channel: NewJerusalemTimes
Date: 2012-07-21

A performance by Aaron Lee Martin at Smith's Market for Third Thursday (July, 2012), an event held on the Great Plains of North America, in the area known as Hutchinson-KS. 

I was really impressed with this singer/songwriter/musician. I got his CD, and continued to be impressed after a couple times through it, even though I tend to still mostly listen to Rock/Punk/Alternative music at my age. The majority of songs and lyrics are clearly Christian in their orientation, but without being too preachy and without peddling pet doctrines. The tempos and rhythms on many songs move at a pretty good clip and are probably best characterized as a Bluegrass/Folk sound. The song "Good Men" is very upbeat, sonically, even though the lyrics seem dark.

There is a general social commentary or ballad style in some songs, while others are more of an existential wrestling of sorts, dealing with ironies, hypocrisies, and other human conditions. One song tends to have a clear Futurist Eschatological or Dispensational outlook, which plagues so much of Christian or Gospel Music and contemporary thought, i.e., looking anxiously forward to A Futuristic Final Reckoning, or that Christ's Kingdom is supposedly not available today on Earth, which logically and spiritually makes Christians dupes of a hostile and warmongering State, until a supposedly Dictator Christ carnally and externally sets everything right, rather than seeing the timely fulfillment (within that very generation) of the Olivet Discourse or "Reckoning" at Jerusalem's complete and gruesome destruction in 70 AD, after the three and a half year Siege by the Romans. (But, I'm a Christian Anarchist, who holds the minority view, known as Realized or Preterist Eschatology.) Otherwise, the songs have a very full sound on the CD, especially since it's coming from a one-man band that seems to rely on just a guitar or banjo, a harmonica, a kick drum, and a foot-propelled tambourine, although there was a violin or a piano on a song or two that were by accompaniment or mixed in later. 

Overall, the CD is brilliant, and is full of soulful, introspective, and worshipful songs by a talented young man with a real genuineness about him.

Peace be with you all,
Christian Livingstone
www.newjerusalemtimes.com

PS: I believe contact can be made to obtain a CD via: www.myspace.com/aaronleemartin