Martin Sexton at Dakota Jazz Club (April 26, 2025)

Tour Dates

• Apr 29The ELM Bozeman, MT
• Apr 30The Wilma Missoula, MT
• May 1Liberty Theatre Hailey, ID
• May 3Blue Note Napa Napa, CA
• May 3Blue Note Napa Napa, CA
• May 4Blue Note Napa Napa, CA
• May 4Blue Note Napa Napa, CA
• May 6Soho Restaurant Santa Barbara, CA
• May 7The Regent Theater Los Angeles, CA
• May 8Belly Up Solana Beach, CA
• May 9191 Toole Tucson, AZ
• May 10FUSION Albuquerque, NM
• May 11UNIT B, by Chocolate Maven Santa Fe, NM
• May 30Avalon Theatre Easton, MD
• May 31Outpost in the Burbs Montclair, NJ
• Jun 1Greenwich Odeum East Greenwich, RI
• Jun 5Daryl’s House Pawling, NY
• Jun 6The Colonial Theatre Keene, NH
• Jun 7Aura Portland, ME

Martin Sexton stopped by for two shows at The Dakota in Minneapolis on Saturday. I caught the early show, with the tour titled The Martin Sexton Abbey Road Tour, in which, you guessed it, he’s doing a play through of The Beatles final album.

Martin Sexton is a veteran singer & songwriter who has been active on the folk rock scene since at least the early 1990’s. His tenacity in moving up from busking in Boston and self-producing his first album, the wonderful In The Journey. He’s a prodigious touring singer, routinely with 100 shows or more a year. And with as many albums as he has, he has a rich catalogue to draw upon in his concerts. Rolling Stone calls out his “soul marinated vocals” and that vocal strength certainly is his calling card.

Playing the entirety of Abbey Road as a solo performer is a fascinating challenge, as the album is complex and layered. Sexton showed instantly that he was game, with an echo effect and percussion off the electric guitar for Come Together. He also got the audience involved with singing along and rhyming in “Minne-appo-leeze”. He ended with an in person fade out by simply backing away from the microphone.

His first bit of patter gave us the background of his interest in music being linked to hearing Abbey Road at home as an early teen. “I’m doing this thing [the Abbey Road concert] because it led me to doing this thing [his music career]”. The song Something got us an extended open mouth whistle solo showing a creativity with limited options. It helped a tremendous amount that Sexton wasn’t trying to replicate the album, but reinterpreting it in his unique singing and playing style.

Oh! Darling was sensational, letting Sexton really sail with the vocals. His take on Octopus’s Gardenwas playful and hit the right idea with that number. Noting that I Want You (She’s So Heavy) completely changed his idea of what The Beatles were also put him in the hardest song of the evening for someone performing alone, but he pulled it admirably. As he finished, he noted “that’s the end of side A”. Sexton also switched to acoustic guitar to perform a country version of Here Comes the Sun. He worked in more audience sing along and some of his trade marked yodel. While Sexton used humor and talent to make it look easy, it was easy to take for granted how much work he was doing. Becausereally showed all of the complexities in guitar work, vocal modulation and pacing to hold that song together by himself.

Sexton moved quickly through several of the next songs, though putting a nice spin on Mean Mr. Mustard and scatting his way into She Came in Through the Bathroom Window. This medley style was key to keeping the audience engaged and making the whole thing more manageable. There was a proper pause before starting Golden Slumbers, which was perfectly suited to Sexton’s voice and guitar. The End is, well, nearly the end of the album and Sexton rocked it.

After a very brief break, Sexton came out and started a new set, back again to standing and on electric. He began with Diner, “the only song I have that has the word Minnesota in it”. A fun fact, he mentioned that the song’s origins come from being at Mickey’s Diner in downtown St. Paul and that he started writing the lyrics while sitting there. Sexton was in his element with songs from his great albums such as Black Sheep. When he got to Glory Bound, the audience burst into applause at the first chords. This was nearly perfect and had the audience nearly silent as they took it in. Hold On was a pandemic era song that was actually joyful and Sexton had more singing from the crowd (“I love that Twin Cities choir.”)

After Hold On, Sexton said his when his wife first heard it, she thought the lyrics were pretty similar to an 80’s rock song. Sexton amusingly discussed the “rock and roll river”, where there are so many songs with similar ideas or chord progressions, joking, “you put in a little, you take out a little”. He then proceeded to demonstrate it in action, singing part of his song, Hallelujah and then snippets of many songs using the same chord progression, including With Or Without You, Let It Be, Take Me On, and others, saying “I could do this all night”.

Sexton appeared one more time with an encore on a banjo with a special history, coming from his grandfather. He used it to sing two relatively short, but touching songs with This Little Light of Mineand You Are My Sunshine. And with that, Sexton had to go and get ready for the second show of the evening. That realization truly showed the professionalism and the love that Sexton has for this road he has chosen to travel.