Marty’s Bio

I spent the first half my childhood in tiny Crete, Nebraska, and the second half in North Platte, where my father taught auto mechanics at a technical college. My mother, busy as she was raising her 14 children, somehow found time to write poetry – really good poetry.  So when, at age 13, I learned to play the guitar for folk mass, it didn’t seem terribly strange to me to set my own words to the chords that I was learning or to sing them in public.

After high school, I studied classical singing at Hastings College and then the University of Nebraska at Lincoln.  Much to the dismay of my vocal instructors, I realized that while I had the pipes for opera, a lifetime of arias was not for me. A summer stint singing and dancing at Front Street, a frontier review in Ogallala, confirmed the decision.

I headed to New York City, moving in with four other Nebraskans who were attempting to crack the Big Apple and needed more help with the rent.  My entire life up until then, people had said, “You walk too fast, you talk too fast, and you wear funny clothes.”  When I stepped off the train in Manhattan, I looked around and thought, “My people!”

I stayed in New York for seven years, starting out as a folk singer, but soon trying my hand at everything from cabaret to rock ’n’ roll.  I met my first husband, a drummer, while we were both working day jobs at the United Nations. Neither our band nor our marriage lasted, but we had a lovely daughter, Downie, who lives in Athens now and is a talented singer in her own right.

I got to Athens by way of Minneapolis, where I met my second (and last) husband, Noel, and New York (again), where his work as a journalist took us in 2001.  In between, I sang everything from reggae to psychedelic rock and formed a  women’s a cappella group, The Collective, that played everywhere from The Fitzgerald Theatre in St. Paul to The Bitter End in New York and opened for acts as different as The Wailers and Henny Youngman.  After The Collective disbanded, I began recording as a solo artist (listen at www.myspace.com/martywinkler) and performed on the Lilith Fair women’s music tour.

Noel and I abandoned New York for Athens in 2005, propelled by the declining newspaper business and the lure of a famously musical college town. For him, it was an overdue return, as he is a native Southerner. For me, it was and continues to be an adventure and a blessing. I relish my community of artists, actors, musicians, poets and friends here in Georgia. When people note my Midwestern accent, I say, “I’m not from the South…but I got here as quick as I could.”