Martha Redbone, an award-winning American blues and folk singer, completed a two-day residency at Oberlin Oct. 29 and 30. Her music has been described as “an organic, gorgeous feast for ears and minds” by HuffPost and “a brilliant collision of cultures” by The New Yorker. Her residency was made possible by the Ed Helms American Roots Residency fund. Originally started in 2013 by Ed Helms, OC ’96, the fund aims to ensure that there are more performances, studies, and training opportunities to continue encouraging students interested in bluegrass, roots, and Americana music to pursue those art forms. Over the years,  residencies have included the bluegrass band Punch Brothers, Irish-American folk singer Aoife O’Donovan, and others. Residencies culminate in performances for Oberlin’s Artist Recital Series. 

“The goals [of the fund] are to provide for residencies, performances, and masterclasses on campus by artists and practitioners in this area to teach and work with our students, to help develop our students’ artistic voices and develop their intellectual awareness of the art form, and to help our students have meaningful artistic and aesthetic experiences,” Dean of the Conservatory William Quillen said. “Whenever I talk with [Ed Helms] about this, it’s clearly an art form he’s deeply passionate about and means a great deal to him, and he knows the broad interest in it at Oberlin in the Conservatory and the College. And so he was really interested in making a gift to help ensure that there can be more engagement for students who are interested in bluegrass and roots and Americana music. We are extraordinarily grateful to Trustee Helms for his gift that made this possible. This is part of our ongoing initiatives in the Conservatory to really broaden the scope of musical practices and cultural production that are taking place here. We are really excited about Martha Redbone’s residency this year. She’s an extraordinary and really singular artist, and we are just thrilled that she’s here to work with our students.”

Redbone’s residency marks her first visit to Oberlin. She and her band, the Martha Redbone Roots Project, will return to campus as part of the Artist Recital Series April 6, 2025 for a performance in Finney Chapel.

Raised in the mountains of Kentucky, Redbone is a vocalist with mentoring and training on a range of Appalachian American musical roots that she attributes to her work today. In her band and independent work, she explores a breadth of genres, pulling from country, blues, rock, soul, funk, pop, folk, and more. She has built a successful career as a talented and skilled singer and songwriter over the years, producing multiple solo and group albums and signing with Warner Chappell Music. Her husband, Aaron Whitby, is her longtime songwriting partner, and she considers their continued artistic collaboration to be a significant part of this success. Whitby is also a member of Redbone’s band and will be taking the stage with her in April.

Redbone’s music has taken her across the country and outside the United States. She had the opportunity to study with Walter “Junie” Morrison — a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist in the world of soul and funk who was a former member of the Ohio Players and Parliament-Funkadelic. The opportunity arose when the two lived in London at the same time. Morrison, originally from Dayton, connected with Redbone, and this experience heavily impacted Redbone’s current songwriting style.

“From being mentored by Junie, [he said] if you have a story to tell and a great melody, it can be produced in any style,” Redbone said. “That was the connection for Junie and us who are from the Midwest. I feel like that is the foundation of why I have such great respect for the history of this region, … those stories that it tells, and those melodies. Like we always say, there’s something in the water, there’s something in those hills.”

The uniqueness of Redbone’s journey is something she highlights as a core component of being a musician, regardless of the style and genre one takes.

“Being a great musician is being a great listener — listening to the world that’s surrounding you and the space that you’re in and taking in that energy,” Redbone reflected. “I was in Charleston, South Carolina last week, which has really deep history. It’s about as early colonial as you can get. When you think about the stories — where I walked in front of a building that was the center of slave trading — you think about how that must have been for the ancestors in that region, for everyone, and you take that in. That influences how you feel. It influences your performance. It influences the songs that you feel.”

Redbone’s time at Oberlin included a career talk and multiple different workshops for students, each centering around a different aspect of music. These workshops included singing, songwriting, and band collaborations in which students were given the opportunity to directly learn from Redbone’s musical guidance and engage in exercises exploring tempo, expression, melody, timbre, and phrasing. Redbone shared her music journey, family culture, musical influences, professional work, and more, ultimately showcasing the beauty of recognizing the voice as an instrument. 

When asked about what advice she had for students pursuing music, Redbone offered succinct guidance: “Get up before noon.” Discipline and good habits are things she emphasized as being crucial to finding success within music, especially given that the opportunity to study music at Oberlin is something she agrees should not be taken for granted. 

“If everybody is here because they want to be here and worked really hard to get in here, you can really make some magic happen,”Redbone said.