Catching Up with A Martinez
at His Fabulous New Malibu Home
by Rosemary Rossi, 1996
Former Santa Barbara heartbreaker A Martinez has moved to Malibu and set his heart on a new career -- music.
"I'm looking real hard to graduate to the kind of career where music is in the center," he says. "I've been working at the craft of songwriting for many years, and it makes sense for me to see what I have to offer."
A has already produced his first album, Fragrance and Thorn, which is selling extremely well in Europe. He wrote the music and lyrics for the songs, which he describes a L.A. Country, full of contemporary, funk and Latino sounds. Now he's set his sights on a second album. "Because it's actually working, I'm under a deadline to get the follow-up together," he reports. "I'm trying to incorporate the lessons that I learned on the first album into the second one.
"Hopefully, I'll be able to get to the position where I can go on tour once a year, get in a room full of people and make something happen emotionally, to share a little bit of the blessings that have come to me."
A gets most of his musical work done in his in-house recording studio, filled with keyboards, mixing boards and computer equipment. "The enemy in a recording studio is parallel surfaces," he says, explaining the room's curved walls. "When the room is a rectangle, it doesn't let sounds die -- they just keep bouncing back and forth from wall to wall."
He and his wife, Leslie, spent two and one-half years building their Malibu dream home. They had looked in the area and after being stunned by the prices, decided to build the house themselves with the help of a contractor and designer.
While they worked on the house, they actually lived in a trailer parked in the back yard.
A courtyard reminiscent of a Mexican villa leads to the front entrance. The foyer gets plenty of light from two-story, floor-to-ceiling windows and from a grandiose chandelier.
The decor is "international." Matching wall lighting fixtures are Mexican-peasant style. Mirrors and knickknacks are from Italy.
Much of the furniture is Spanish and many of the paintings are ones A brought back from Russia.
Huge, uncovered windows lighten each room and look out on the backyard and nearby canyon. The yard is filled with toys belonging to A and Leslie's three children: son Dakota Lee, 9, and daughters Devon Makena, 6, and Ren Farren, 2.
A and Leslie chose their children's names with great care. Dakota, says A, was named in honor of his mother, who is part Blackfoot Indian, a group which inhabited the Dakotas. Devon's middle name, Makena, means abundance in Hawaiian and is also the couple's favorite beach in Hawaii. And Ren's first name means lotus flower -- the symbol of everlasting wholeness -- in Japanese. Her middle name came from good friend and ex-Santa Barbara (and current Another World) executive producer Jill Farren Phelps.
Although he's moved music to the front burner, A, who spent almost eight years on Santa Barbara before leaving for L.A. Law in 1992, says acting is still a large part of his life -- although he admits it could be even larger.
"I said 'no' to 13 of the last 16 things I could have done," he reveals. "Some of the projects were stuff I wouldn't be able to explain to my kids why I did them.
"I feel tremendously happy and blessed when I do do something I really love," he adds. "Maybe that's what comes to you if you hold out."
He recently appeared in the USA film Where's the Money, Noreen? with Julianne Phillips and can be seen in the upcoming HBO miniseries Grand Avenue, executive produced by Robert Redford.
"It's written by a Native American who sketches the lives of the people he grew up with who moved off the reservation and into the poorer sections of Santa Rosa, California," says A. "It's a really nice piece about what they went through trying to adjust and the way the various extended families functioned.
"It reminded me very much of the way it was in my own family," he adds, "including my mother's willingness to open her house to people who needed shelter, no matter what the circumstances. It's definitely an important story."
Besides acting and creating music, A wants to write stories based on his experiences.
"As I get further into my life, it's more difficult for me to find stories that I want to be part of telling," he admits. "There's so much cynicism and exploitation. I've done my share of those kinds of things, and I'll probably have to do them again if I have to feed my family. But I want something better. I'd deeply like to be able to choose material based on what I believe in as opposed to what I need to do to keep eating.
"As you get deeper into your life and career, what you do with your gifts becomes more and more important," he says. "As a beginner, you're judged on your talent. As you get deeper, you're judged on what you do with it."
A admits that he has bittersweet memories of his time on Santa Barbara opposite Marcy Walker as the enormously popular lovers Cruz and Eden.
"The thing that seems so clear to me is that Cruz was the best part I'll ever have and that it's behind me," he confesses. "Thank God I knew how good it was even as we were doing it.
"I remember so clearly going onstage and feeling we had something special to offer," he says. "We felt a sense of connection, support and strength. I've never played another character I've enjoyed as much. Not even close.
"I don't know what I ever did to deserve the life I'm leading," he says softly. "I couldn't have dreamed of the life I have."
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