The Janitor

Hello and welcome to The Janitor's website , firstly we would  like to thank you for finding it , whether you found it  looking for cleaning services or for  music , we're glad you're here !

 

So who is The Janitor ?

 

The Janitor is 35 year old Singer/Songwriter, Michael J Martin , born in the 70's in Great Yarmouth and then brought up in Lowestoft ,The most easterly point in England 

 

He first picked up a guitar right back in the 1980's and then put it down again until the early 1990's , when in the final year of high school he managed to persuade his mother to let him buy his dream guitar on borrowed money , He was then told to "Turn that Bloody noise down " for quite a few years after that !

 

After trying for a few years to turn the noise into sound, he decided to have a guitar lesson in which he was taught the blues pentatonic scale , from there on in , there was no stopping him !

 

Noise turned into sound overnight ............ Almost , and the songwriting begun .

 

When starting to play guitar , he was very into the Seattle Grunge scene that was happening across the sea , bands like Nirvana , Mudhoney , Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains , were reguarly played on his Sony Walkman and heavily influenced his style in the early years , he would often sit and learn the songs as loud as he could before he got told to "Turn that Bloody noise down" !! I did say almost !

 

He formed a band with some school mates named oddoher, and they played a selection of Nirvana covers and a couple of original songs which would get lost over the years .... Thankfully !

 

It was a lot of fun and never serious but was an experience .The band seperated when they all realised what women were and that was that !

 

It was a few years after that , that he met another Singer/Songwriter called J.Dewberry  and they came up with some songs together that have become part of The Janitors staple diet and basis for what he plays today .

 

The duo called themselves " The Two Dogs" and played only one gig together , life got in the way of "The Dogs" and after a lot of fun and a couple of demos , disbanded 

 

After "The Two Dogs" split The Janitor was forced to sell his dream guitar to pay for that little thing called life , and that was that for about 8 years, only playing on friends guitars on rare occasions and not writing in that time .

 

In the mid 2000's he was walking around a car boot sale and saw a guitar sitting on a stall , he had to have it . It was a really poor , badly made guitar which sounded terrible and cost the grand sum of four pounds !

 

Even with the poor quality of the guitar , this allowed the songwriting to start again and the love for playing was back again .

 

Today The Janitor has a rather large collection of poorly made , rubbish guitars and a couple of guitars that are half decent , still nothing on his original stratocaster , but more than capable of making some nice sounds  occasionally !

 

It wasn't until a few years ago, that he plucked up the courage to play a few songs live at a local club, that The Janitor was born. 

On agreeing to do the gig solo , The Janitor was working as a caretaker at a stately home at the time and the compere  asked how he wanted to be introduced to which he replied The Caretaker , but it was decided that it sounded too much like a hitman's name so The Janitor was born !

 

Footage of that actual gig can be seen below 

 

In the last couple of year's he found a website called Soundcloud and decided to upload a couple of tracks that he'd written .

Nothing happened for a few weeks and then comments started to appear on his tracks , and then favourites , this wasn't expected at all but was very welcomed and appreciated .

After building up a good bunch of friends ,fans and followers he was hooked to the cloud and has now recieved over twenty five thousand plays which is  something he is very thankful for !

Since joining the cloud he has participated in many different collaborations and recieved a lot of various  helpful pointers and feedback . With this in mind The Janitor  decided to try and polish up the sounds that he was creating  and a scroll through the back catalogues shows the improvements  he has made.​

Currently ranked at number one on the Reverbnation folk charts for Norwich too , which he is also rightly proud of  and still in shock .

 

 

 

The Janitor uses  Cubase 5 

Marshall Amplifiers

Silvertone and Samick Electric guitars

Tanglewood Acoustic guitars

Yamaha Synthesisers

Zoom Pedals

Shure Microphones

 

 

Thank you very much  for reading .