Press kit

Martin Purvis is a singer-songwriter from the North East of England whose music draws on dark country, Americana and folk, coloured by the crooners and storytellers he grew up listening to.

Entirely self-taught, Purvis writes, performs and records his music independently, with songs exploring the darker corners of life - murder, outlaws, gambling, addiction, isolation, regret, Hell and the Devil. His distinctive vocal style has drawn comparisons from listeners to both Frank Sinatra and Johnny Cash, while some have mistaken his original songs for genuine recordings from the mid-twentieth century.

Purvis's music found a wider audience through NCRR440, the in-game radio station in Fallout: New California. His connection with the Fallout community has continued since, including So Very Far From Home appearing on the Pioneer Saloon: The Fallout Era vinyl compilation.

With nearly half a million Spotify streams, Purvis continues to write, record and perform independently from his home in Gateshead.

Martin Purvis is a singer-songwriter from the North East of England whose music draws on dark country, Americana and folk, coloured by the crooners and storytellers he grew up listening to.

Born in Darlington and raised around County Durham, Purvis was a shy kid when, at around eleven years old, his mam persuaded him along to a local karaoke night. After spending the first few nights refusing to sing at all, he eventually got behind the microphone with songs such as Mack the Knife and Beyond the Sea. The encouragement that followed gave him an early confidence in a voice that would later become one of the defining features of his music.

The records around him growing up ranged from Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin to Tom Waits and AC/DC. Later influences would include artists such as The Handsome Family, Colter Wall, The Dead South, Sierra Ferrell, Alela Diane, Bad Flamingo, Blues Saraceno and Seasick Steve.

At eighteen, Purvis bought his first Epiphone EJ-200CE acoustic guitar and began teaching himself to play and write songs. There was no formal training in singing, instrumentation or recording; instead came years of writing, experimenting and learning by doing. Early songs were quite literally written in the bathroom, sitting in the dark with a guitar, before being recorded in a bedroom and uploaded to YouTube.

That DIY approach never really went away. Purvis writes, performs and records his music independently, building songs from acoustic guitar outward and playing guitar, bass and keyboards alongside virtual instrumentation where needed.

His songs tend to inhabit the less comfortable corners of life. Murder, outlaws, theft, gambling, addiction, isolation, regret, Hell and the Devil all make regular appearances. The result sits somewhere between dark Americana storytelling and an older tradition of country, folk and popular song.

That collision of eras has become part of Purvis's identity. Listeners have repeatedly compared his voice with artists as different as Frank Sinatra and Johnny Cash, while some discovering his original material through Fallout have assumed they were hearing genuine recordings from the mid-twentieth century.

That connection with Fallout became an important chapter in his music. Purvis provided the songs heard on NCRR440, the in-game radio station in the Fallout: New Vegas total-conversion mod Fallout: New California, introducing a large new audience to originals including Looks Like I’m Going to Hell, For Miles and Miles and Radiation in my Heart.

Years later, NCRR440 received an unexpected nod from the official Prime Video Fallout channel on YouTube when the station appeared on the Pip-Boy interface in its 2024 Fallout soundtrack visualizer - an Easter egg quickly recognised by fans of New California. Purvis's music itself does not appear in the Prime Video production, but the reference brought the strange journey of the fictional radio station full circle.

The Fallout connection continued in the real world when So Very Far From Home was selected for Pioneer Saloon: The Fallout Era, a compilation released on vinyl and digital platforms by the historic Pioneer Saloon in Goodsprings, Nevada - the real-world location represented as the Prospector Saloon in Fallout: New Vegas.

Across his independent catalogue, Purvis has accumulated nearly half a million streams on Spotify, with So Very Far From Home alone passing 150,000 Spotify streams. Other listener favourites include Radiation in My Heart, On the Frontier and This Hellfire.

After spending much of his musical life writing and recording alone, Purvis has more recently begun bringing the songs out of the bedroom and onto the stage. Starting with open mics before moving into his own gigs, live performance has become a new part of a project that, for years, existed almost entirely between a bedroom, a microphone and whoever happened to be listening on the other side of the internet.

Now based in Gateshead, Purvis continues to write, record and perform independently - even if, by his own estimation, most of the time spent songwriting is actually spent waiting for the next song to turn up.