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AGE: 20-something |
Erin Martin is almost famous, she can feel it. “It’s right around the corner,” she says, ticking off her breakthroughs of the past year: appearing on the BMI stage at the Hard Rock Hotel during Lollapalooza, playing at Summerfest in Milwaukee, partnering with a new manager she met at the Elbo Room, and meeting with record label execs in New York and L.A. When Martin was 12, her parents gave her a piano for Christmas. They handed her sheet music for “Für Elise” and went to a party. By the time they returned, she’d taught herself the piece. Martin describes her solo style of music as folk influenced; with her band, it’s more like “Feist meets Imogen Heap meets Adele.” Her hair, which she calls her “fro-hawk,” attracts attention wherever she goes, and she loves to roll down the windows when she’s speeding along Lake Shore Drive. Says Martin, “B96 cranked up, my fro blowin’ in the wind, the lake on one side and the city on the other—there’s no better feeling.”
Photograph: Maria Ponce