Hailing from Rockville, Maryland and calling Denver, Colorado home, Eric Martinez is a guitarist in the rock/jam band world and a fixture of the Denver Music Scene.


Having been a member of multiple touring acts over the years, Eric has earned a reputation as a hired gun and polished music professional. Whether he’s onstage or in the studio, Eric’s precision and laser focus elevates most any act or project. His musical acumen and his demand for perfection keeps him high on people’s lists. In short, Eric is a musician’s musician; a player’s player; an artist’s artist.

Eric’s diverse range of talents allows him to acclimate to most any musical setting. Whether engineering and producing a bluegrass track for Jojo Hermann (Widespread Panic) in his studio or shredding solos on stage with Portland’s Jerry Joseph & The Jackmormons, or Athens’ Bloodkin, Eric is renowned for his ability to instantly add energy and prowess to the stage.

Bozeman Magazine recently had the opportunity to chat with Eric regarding his new album You Know Why I Am Here which was released on December 6, 2024, and is currently available on all streaming services and on Bandcamp.com/

BR: Thanks for the call Eric, let’s get right into your new record, You Know Why I Am Here, which came out on December 6, 2024. What would you say separates You Know Why I Am Here from at least your last album, Caldera or the other albums that people would listen to online?

EM: It’s the first one where I actually brought together a full band and created the record. On most of the other early stuff I just did everything myself. And then Caldera, it was during the pandemic that I recorded that. I did a lot of it myself, but for the first time brought in quite a few other people who sent me tracks remotely. And I put that record together that way.

But, this new one, You Know Why I Am Here, was me, Mario Pagliarulo on bass, and Andrew Clapp on drums, sittin’ in my studio, bangin’ out the songs, and then I had Micah Munro & Cody Russell and Ethan Ice come record on top of that.
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BR: It’s on all the streaming platforms?

EM: Yes, it is. And if you actually wanted to purchase the tracks digitally, in all sorts of files, you go to Bandcamp, and it’s there for purchase.

BR: So the first song, “Danny’s Song” seems to me to be a salute to Danny Hutchens, from Bloodkin. Tell us a little bit about that song.

EM: Honestly, I think I started writing that on the way home from Athens when I went to see Danny in the hospital just before he died. I think I just wrote the lyrics on the plane and then I came up with the music, and I unfortunately hadn’t sent it to him yet, and then he died, so... I did the lyrics myself. I think the music is very, very Danny. You know, I would have sent it to him eventually, right? Every line in that song is true and could bring you to a time and a place where there was some sort of memory.

BR: I can feel that. When you listen to it, it’s very touching in that sense. And on that same note, you wrote another song on the new album “Fireworks and Fashion Shows” with Eric from Bloodkin?

EM: I did. And, it’s funny, you know, the things you add to a song or, even in some ways take away from it, become a writer on it. With some of my early stuff that I did with Danny, it was like, ‘come on, man, you can’t actually give me a writing credit for that.’ 


BR: I mean this as a compliment—I think this song sounds more like a Bloodkin song than some of the more recent Bloodkin songs. It really does. It could easily be on one of their earlier albums. 

EM: That’s a high compliment in my opinion. I appreciate that. One of the things I get from the song is in the chorus; it kind of sounds like “There’s Only One Way to Rock” by Sammy Hagar. I wouldn’t say I stole it; you know, I can’t say the last time I’ve heard that song, although I do listen to a lot of Van Halen and, in turn, a lot of Sammy Hagar, too.

BR: So are you a David Lee Roth or a Sammy Hagar fan, or do you think it doesn’t matter because of Eddie?

EM: I think it ultimately doesn’t matter because of Eddie, and I celebrate both with high honors. 5150 is a fucking great record, front to back, you cannot deny it. No matter what you think about Sammy Hagar, the fucking outcome is phenomenal.

BR: Well, he’s a much better singer, but they have such different styles that the band was different in a lot of ways. And that’s what people didn’t like so much I believe. 

EM: Yeah. I didn’t like the fact that, when Sammy came around, they just stopped playing so much stuff.  How can you just stop playing all that stuff?

BR: I never saw them, but I wish I could have seen Eddie. I know you’re a Taylor Swift fan also, a Swifty. Besides Van Halen and Taylor Swift, give us one more of your guilty musical pleasures.

EM: Well, I watched the entire evening with Dua Lipa last night on CBS or whatever it was. I don’t know if you’re familiar with who she is, but she played at the Royal Albert Hall with, I assume it was the London Symphony behind her, but with a full rock band, the symphony, and like 15 backup singers. It’s awesome. And her new record is phenomenal. She’s one of my guilty pleasures.

Honestly, my big guilty pleasure (as anybody who’s ridden in my car for a significant amount of time will tell you) is [that] all I’m listening to is Hair Nation, which is the hair metal station on Sirius. I mean, it’s all I listen to. It’s just such a huge part of my life. I’ve worn flannel and jeans and listened to hair metal since the 80s.

BR: Well, I like that stuff too, Eric. It’s okay.

EM: Yeah. I don’t hide it.

BR: Nice. So, back to the new album. There’s another song on You Know Why I Am Here that you wrote with Jojo Herman [Widespread Panic]?

EM: Yeah, I wrote that with Jojo. 

BR: How did that transpire? The process between the two of you?

EM: It wasn’t like we sat down to write a song together; it was a series of small events, one of which was I actually just came up with this music, and ultimately it ended up reminding me of this song that he had on his Missing Cats record called “Larry Brown Amen” 

​I think I ended up sending it to him one day, it was a phone recording of just my acoustic guitar. And I was like, ‘I ripped you off, you know, and didn’t think anything of it.’

​And then months later, he and Jerry [Joseph] and I were doing this COVID gig in Beaver Creek, CO at this place called the Vilar Center, and Jojo was playing on a concert grand piano, which, you know, are just these massive things. It’s like a nine-foot piano. Like, it was huge. The funny thing is, we’re social distancing because it was back in the COVID days. It was a performing arts center and there were only 125 people allowed in there, and we, being musicians, used the piano as the measurement, which was, again, like nine feet.

​So Jojo was telling a story, and he said something about hiking boots and Steinways. Cause it was dumping there. They were closing the highway; it was a pretty big March dump.

​He said something about playing in his hiking boots on Steinway’s and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s a cool little thing.’ I just remembered it; then, I think it was later on that summer, we’re doing a run of shows in Colorado and we’re sitting somewhere before a gig, just kind of talking, and Marshawn Lynch came up. You know, the football player. And he hated doing interviews, but he was contractually obligated to do them. So he’d go to the interview eating a pack of Skittles. Anytime they asked him a question, he’d just say, “You know why I’m here.” They’d ask the super long, intricate question, and he’d just be like, “You know why I’m here.” And Jojo was like, ‘we should write a song called, “You Know Why I’m Here.”’  And I was like, ‘darn, I got some music that I already ripped off from you and I got the opening line. Perfect.’ And that’s just kind of how it was started. And then he actually wrote most of the lyrics to that tune. I think I ended up writing the first verse and he wrote the rest. 

BR: Does he sing or play on it? 

EM: No. he wasn’t around during any of that. [It’s] my buddy, Ethan Ice, who is a big fan of Jojo, and during the recording of that song I was like, ‘give me your best Jojo part,’ and he fucking knocked it out of the park.

BR: Nice. Without seeing the liner notes, I was trying to figure it out for sure.

EM: It’s me, and Ethan Ice on piano, Cody Russell on steel, and then the rest of the band.    

BR: It fits your album because you wrote the music, and it goes with all of the rest of the music, but it seems like I could hear Jojo singing it. So I could hear Panic playing that too.

EM: You know, that’s very comforting to hear. 

BR: It fits his personality and his style in a way that it wouldn’t be weird for them to play that song.

EM: I think it fits him. And, again, the music was kind of born from one of his songs anyways.

BR: Do all the songs that you write kinda happen the same way?


EM: I’m open to anything, and it’s very much so all across the board.  And it can happen randomly at any time. I do most of my writing early in the morning; you know, coffee and some weed and watch the sun come up, and that’s when I get a good bit of my creative process.

A lot of it’s just spending time with the guitar and coming up with something. And I learned to jot down phrases a long time ago that could work, or maybe a name for a song that could work, or something like that. I start messing with things and intertwining. I currently have this one bit of lyric and can’t decide which piece of music I want to put it with. Both pieces of music work really well for the lyrics, and I don’t want to decide on the wrong thing, Brian.

BR: Yeah.  Should it be green or purple? 

EM: Exactly. But, you know, some songs take a long time. “You Know Why I’m Here”, that was a couple years in the making. Once you know you should write a song, it could be another six months or something.

BR: What do you think the most difficult song you’ve written is? And why? Not complicated, like Metallica, but emotionally, or like you knew what you wanted to say and you didn’t know which song to put the lyrics to, or just the song that gave you the most struggle in one way or another?

EM: You know, I’m not sure. There could be a really simple song that was hard to get out there, you know? To get your point across. I’m a man of little words, so I don’t have too much to say. Lyrics generally are my hardest part of the songwriting process.

​I’ve got tons of music. Danny was a wealth of lyrics for me, and I didn’t tap his well too many times. He and I probably had 12 songs or something like that. Jerry [Joseph] and I, he’s a little harder to get lyrics from, but I’ve done it. I have a couple songs that we’ve written together.

​The lyrics are generally my hardest thing. I’ll have a hard time trying to come up with a third verse or something like that. A lot of times the first couple verses come out quick, and then maybe that third one is a little tougher. 

​These days, I’ve been trying to pull back my songwriting a little bit, as far as being complicated, just concentrating on—it sounds silly to say—but, three chords and the truth. A good melody with a good chorus says a lot.

BR: A lot of these songs have that. I feel like the melody gets stuck in your head right away; like, the first time you hear it, you’re like, ‘oh, there it is.’

EM: Thank you. I think melodies are really, really, really important.

BR: I was watching a documentary with Jon and Robbie from The Doors, and they were talking about Jim, and how he had no musical talent other than singing and writing words, and he didn’t know how to write songs, but he would come up with lyrics on the fly when he was out, and in order to remember them, he would create a melody. So, in actuality he was already writing these songs without knowing they were songs, just so he could remember his own words. And then you think about those melodies, and they’re incredible. You know, some of them, the early ones. Iconic. But he wasn’t even realizing what he was doing. He was just like, ‘I gotta find a way to remember these words.’

EM: Yeah, and you know, really some of the greatest melodies are if work them out and write them out’… are literally just a couple of notes. 

BR: To me, that seems like the hardest thing out of lyrics, writing the progressions and the music is the actual melodies, it’s like, that’s the part that ties it all together, really, and kind of sells the thing as a song, as a package. Otherwise you’re just reciting lyrics over music or something and it’s, then it’s like jazz or something else.

Anyways, I digress, So you were just talking about Jerry a little bit ago. How did the two of you guys meet and start playing together?

EM: I think  ultimately it was Danny Hutchens.  Danny and I were doing a run which brought us out to Portland. Danny and I opened a show at the White Eagle. Brad on drums and Dex was  on percussion, and there was no bass player and Steve James was there playing guitar. 
I think it was 2006. I ended up, I played, uh,  I think I played War at the End of the World with him.

Later I played some opening gigs with this guy Brian Sofer that I was playing with for a little while. We became friendly. Me and Junior [Ruppel], we’re pretty friendly. And, I opened up a gig in Minneapolis, and I think it was actually Junior who called me up for the encore. He [suggested] they get me up there, and it was when Michael Lewis was playing with the Jackmormons, so I grabbed his guitar and  we played War at the End of the World and, Way Too Loud.

Then it was just every time they came, to Denver, I’d end up playing a show or two with him, helping out.

BR: You and Jerry are playing together here in a couple weeks [December], right? You guys got our Jerry Montana Christmas run this year.

EM: Yeah, exactly, and we’re doing four gigs here in Colorado and so it should be a good time. It starts in Carbondale at a place called Steve’s Guitars Wednesday. And then, Cervantes Thursday, Evergreen at Cactus Jacks on Friday, and a place called Music Roots Project or something like that in Boulder on Saturday.

BR: That sounds like a sweet little run.

EM: Yeah. It’s gonna be cool.

Eric Martinez does not currently have any Montana shows on the books, but he has been in the area for summer shows every year for the past five summers or longer, so be on the lookout for him gain this summer.

In the meantime get yourself familiar with his songs by checking him out on your favorite streaming service or downloading his track from his website or bandcamp.