Bryan Martin at Midtown Ballroom

Midtown Events brings you Bryan Martin Friday, May 2 at Midtown Ballroom in Bend! Doors 7pm, show 8pm. All Ages.

A Bryan Martin song can sometimes feel like the old bar stool you slip into after a grueling day. It can embrace you like a bone-popping hug from a long-lost friend. And it can swing at you like an overdue punch in the gut – offering the wake-up call you didn’t know you needed.

His music digs deep, never hiding from the highs and lows in life that can be too difficult to define outside of a melody. And now, the world’s catching on to his craft like never before.

At age 36, Martin continues to climb the country music hierarchy. He’s revved up radio charts with pedal-to-the-floor hit “We Ride” – which landed at No. 3 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart and earned Platinum certification from the RIAA. He reaches millions of listeners each month, with over 800 million career streams … and counting. On the road, he’s sharing stadium stages with Morgan Wallen as part of the One Night At A Time tour, one of the biggest shows in live entertainment.

His growing success comes after years of struggle with mental health and addiction – past experiences that at times fuel the humanity in his songs. With each step in his career, audiences embrace Martin’s down-but-never-out story of survival and, now, triumph.

“I just think that if I go hide my scars and I go putting a mask on myself or who I am, I'm doing exactly what I never wanted to do,” Martin said. “I wear the scars, and I'm learning to wear it better. The reason why I don't hide anything is because there's too many people that need to know that there is no difference between me and them.”

This summer, Martin gives his growing fanbase a taste of new music with “Wishbone,” a standalone single released via Average Joes Entertainment. The song marks Martin’s follow-up to breakout 2023 album Poets & Old Souls. He co-wrote “Wishbone” with tenured storytellers Scott Sean White (known for his work with Cody Johnson, among others) and Terri Jo Box (who’s worked with Lainey Wilson, Eric Church and others); Martin enlisted go-to Music Row record-maker Nick Gibbens to produce the song.

An unvarnished and rowdy backroad country-rock tune, “Wishbone” chronicles the give-and-take found during long nights on the road, chasing neon-soaked ambitions.

In his warm, rough-around-the-edges voice, Martin sings in verse, “I'm chasing down a dream, bleeding self-esteem/ It seems nobody knows the trouble in my soul.” Backed by pedal steel about big guitar chords, he warmly howls in the chorus: “It's time to break another wishbone/ Burn down that old honky tonk/ Do somebody right, wrong, love's gone/ Write another sad song/ Tell 'em 'bout the story/ 'Bout the fame and the glory.”

On the song, Martin shared: “As a storyteller, I’ve found that it’s better to express my emotions in words rather than dwell on them. In ‘Wishbone,’ I do just that.”

Raised in Logansport, Louisiana, a small town tucked against the Texas border, Bryan began singing as a child in church. He fell in love with country music as early as four years old, when he – like most toddlers of the time – memorized the words to Billy Ray Cyrus’ “Achy Breaky Heart.” By age eight, he was singing in local fairs and festivals, covering George Strait with the encouragement of his mother, who in her time sang with Fargon Young and Allison Krauss, among others.

But his path veered away from country music. As a young man, he pursued bull riding and worked in a local hay field. He fell into a life of drugs and alcohol that – after a failed stint in the military – led to a suicide attempt at age 19. After this rock bottom moment, Bryan met his previous-wife and eventually became a father of four. He never stopped singing or chewing on songs, but it was later, after a near-fatal car accident, that Bryan returned to songwriting in earnest.

“I made a promise that I was going to take all these broken promises and this guitar that I'd been hiding behind for so long and I was going to make it go to work for once and make it pay itself off,” he said. “I had done all the suffering I was going to do.”

Today, Bryan takes his life experience into songwriting circles and on the road. He sings about the real world and working class struggles in a way most country artists hope for, but few achieve. Listeners hear his stories on albums like the 2019 debut If It Was Easy and 2022 follow-up, Self Inflicted Scars. For 2023 album Poets & Old Souls, Martin comes wholly into his own as a storyteller with standout cuts like the haunting “Wolves Cry,” touching Frank Foster collaboration “Poets & Old Souls” and ground-shaking single “We Ride.”

“These songs come from the struggle and all these things that I've been through,” Martin said. “I know that me surviving a lot of these things couldn't have been me. I just thank God for it.”

This year, Bryan continues touring, with opening slots booked on tours with Ian Munsick and Billy Currington, respectively. With each new city, his audience can expect to grow. After all, good songs dig deep – and travel far.

Host or Publisher Midtown Events