FAST HEART MART: Corona Coaster Blues

Martin Stamper performs as Fast Heart Mart, whose nickname comes from his history of heartbeat irregularities treated with an internal defibrillator (an experience shared by this author), and the bluegrass banjo player and vocalist’s latest album is the online Corona Coaster Blues. It was inspired by the first nine months of the Covid 19 pandemic, with ten tracks including seven of Stamper’s originals and follows up on his 2019 album Keep on the Sunny Side.
Stamper recorded this set; he sings and plays all instruments except accordion and drums on one track and pedal steel on another. “We All Knew” is just him on banjo and bass, as he tells the listener that signs of the trials of 2020 and 2021 were there all along and shouldn’t be surprising. His vocal is a deep and raw, and his banjo licks throughout are memorable, especially on “Play On,” which lights a fire under rapid-pulse bluegrass strumming as he sings about “Robots coming/ They have a virus/ I think I heard one cough.” Stamper’s music calls attention to the problems of life in our times, some with tongue at least partly in cheek, and songs like “Let’s All Solve This” encourage unity to turn things around.
He is committed to the cause of fixing things, as the first cover, the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” demonstrates. He plays it with a furious intensity, as he reminds us that society’s problems are endemic, “Everybody knows about it/ From the Queen of England to the hounds of hell.” Fast Heart Mart becomes Fast Hands Mart on “Invincible.” He flies on this one, his frailing a near blur on the balls-to-the-wall bluegrass burner. The most memorable track here is backed by Saki on accordion and Joe Schwab, using the setting to sing about how “A hundred things are wrong/ But a trillion things are right.”
The title song has more hammer-down picking, and the lyrical tale of the evil virus that came in spring 2020, as Stamper takes the opportunity to issue a musical editorial about how we can’t see who is smiling at us because of the masks and how the corporations want to drive out the little guy. And he won’t take the vaccine; his position is clear, whatever the end result. Then, he doubles down on “Frustrated,” again on the soapbox with the same musical framework, key and pace—and similar complaints about how “They won’t let me work/ So I’m stuck here at home.” Frustrated, indeed. Quite the descriptive for this 2021 world. The timeless standard “Wonderful World” is the finale, and the primarily vocal cover is an opportunity for Stamper to balance the sheet between how bad things are and those trillion things that are right.
Bluegrass enthusiasts who like social commentary with their music are sure to find much to enjoy on Corona Coaster Blues. The CD is available on Pandora, Spotify, and here: https://fastheartmart.bandcamp.com/album/coronacoaster-blues