THE TEA PARTY is no more, but guitarist and vocalist and undisputed leader of the band Jeff Martin has got a premiere solo album, Exile And The Kingdom (through Koch Entertainment/Nevada), and a new crack act to make it fly.

“Exile And The Kingdom is actually the title of a book by Albert Camus,” begins Martin. “I needed a title that represented where I was at and where I was going. And after The Tea Party broke up, I did put myself in a self-imposed exile. I went to Ireland to recharge my batteries and to find my soul again. And by doing so, I discovered the kingdom, the kingdom being this area that I live in in Ireland, and there I found in my soul, all this big music again.”
“That song is something I wrote in Ireland,” says Martin of erstwhile title track ‘The Kingdom’, asked about a lyric he was particularly proud of. “It just started out just going out and looking out... the part of Ireland I live in is very rural and beautiful; it's like Lord Of The Rings. So I go for these nice long walks near the ocean, looking at the mountains and everything, and I would hear this melody in my head, that I imagined was coming off the sea breeze. It's that melody that's behind ‘The Kingdom’, the ooh oohs (sings it). So I started with that, and as the song says, I was sitting in front of my fire watching the flames, and I was thinking about what I had just gone through in my life, the breakup of the band and all that, but also what I discovered every day living there, and all the positivity that was coming into my life; so I'm very proud of that. I think that song in my career is one of my best moments.”

Adds Martin, addressing the somewhat surprising split with The Tea Party, “I have my artistic freedom back, you know? See, the problem with The Tea Party is, the last two records, with hindsight being 20/20, the more successful a band becomes, the more the pressures are to become more accessible, right? Commercial. So we were receiving that kind of pressure from our previous management and the record company and all that. And you know, I put on a brave face, that I was really happy with the way things were going, but to be perfectly honest now, I wasn't. But I think that's the direction that Jeff and Stewart wanted to take. And I wanted to take it back to what made the band famous, which was the fusion of world music meets hard rock. So that's what I needed to do. I needed to leave that situation, and get something going that I could realize all my dreams again, and continue to grow again as an artist. So I put this new band together, and, you know, I wouldn't really call it a solo project per se, because it's a collaboration, and the proof is in the pudding tonight. You're going to see tonight, one of what will be one of the great rock bands.”

“And we have the blessing of Mr. JIMMY PAGE to make the new ZEPPELIN, so that's exactly what we’re going to do.”

Martin may soon find himself closer to that state of affairs than he ever imagined. “Michael and I spoke a couple of days ago to Page; he was in Los Angeles, and the reason being is, because Michael and Jimmy wrote 16 songs together in a rehearsal space about a year and a half ago, and the purpose of it was to woo ROBERT PLANT back into the band, but Robert didn't really want any part of it. So I started to think about lyrics and vocal melodies for it, and after Exile In The Kingdom is said and done, we’re probably going to put that together and maybe take it on the road.”

For now, Martin is set to take Exile on the road. “Well, the record comes out April 11, so we’re going to tour immediately in Canada after that, play venues that aren’t too big; you know, keep it at 1500 people, in selected cities across Canada, and then go to Australia. Come back to Canada sometime in the summertime and do like your Massey Hall and stuff like that, and then, we’re also… because Michael and his connections in Dubai (Lee has residences both in the UK and in Dubai), he was just there last weekend and he did this big interview with MTV Arabia. And he wouldn't talk about THIN LIZZY, he wouldn't talk about anything else except Exile In The Kingdom, and played ‘The World Is Calling’ for a lot of the journalists there. And as soon as they heard the string section they were just totally sucked in. And so out of that interview, apparently now we have like ten or 11 dates set up for the summertime in the Middle East.”

See www.jeff-martin.net for more.