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Catching up with
sultry singer and
now-Oregonian Martha
Davis of The Motels
5 0 3 .7 8 1 .4 1 8 1
www.RHFinancial.net
F i n a n c i a l S e r v i c e s I n c .
Sudden I/.
This Summer
OREGON
HEALTH___
&SCIENCE
UNIVERSITY
By BYRON BECK
Lesbians and gays have plenty o f music to
call their own: Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Sur
vive,”Janis Ian’s “At Seventeen,” or just about
any song by The Indigo Girls. But there aren’t
a lot o f songs both lesbos and gays, especially
those o f us who lived through the highly
impressionable early years o f MTV, share
equally like The Motels’ “Only The Lonely.”
That haunting melody hit Billboard’s Top Ten
in ’82 with the lyrics: “We walk the loneliest
mile/We smiled without anystyle/We kissed
altogether wrong/No intention.” At the time
it was a national anthem for the disenfran
chised, many o f them gay.
Fast forward to the summer o f 2009. At
this year’s Pride Celebration at Waterfront
Park, the lady who wrote that song, who
also happens to be The Motels’ lead singer,
belted out the oldie to a highly appreciative
audience.
Martha Davis had performed the pen
sive ballad at Pride celebrations before, but
something happened when she sang it on a
late Saturday afternoon in June in front of
a Portland crowd. As she looked out at the
faces and started to sing, Davis realized the
song wasn’t just about herself or the pain she
felt when she penned it.
That’s when it hit her.
“This song is about gay people too and all
the hypocrisy one has to live with when you
can’t be yourself,” Davis says over a latte in
a Northwest Portland coffeehouse. “Dude, I
finally realized this is totally a gay song.”
Those o f all orientations, sexual or other
wise, will get a chance to see her perform that
song as well as her other hits - among them,
“Suddenly, Last Summer” and “Take The L”
- and plenty o f new material when Davis and
a fresh version of The Motels takes the stage
at Dante’s on Friday, July 24.
New wave music stars of the 1980s don’t
disappear. They just keep rocking out in
Oregon: Rindy Ross of Quarterflash; Val
erie Day of Nu Shooz; and Bill Wadhams of
Animotion. They all live here. So does Davis.
Well, sort of. For the last three years that
“dark-haired beauty with the smoky eyes”
has lived what she calls a “country girl” life
on a remote farm located on the way to the
Oregon coast. Davis lives with four dogs, 10
cats and all the necessary equipment needed
to make her unique brand o f music.
Although she’s far from the husde o f the
Los Angeles music scene, Davis says she
still believes she is very much a part o f the
entertainment biz. Besides, living in Oregon
allows her to be close to her daughter and
grandchildren and, ultimately, is just her way
o f “going sane.” And Davis has plenty o f rea
sons to want to be “sane.”
Born in Berkley, California to “fabulously
dysfunctional” parents, Davis learned three
guitar chords by the age o f 8. By 20 she had
her first band, the Warfield Foxes, as well as
two kids and an ex-husband. The group’s first
gig was in San Francisco on Halloween night,
1971. Soon after she lost both o f her parents
— her mother from suicide and her father
from complications o f the flu.
On Mother’s Day in 1979, her band, now
called The Motels, signed to Capitol Records
where they recorded five albums and made
several music videos with the likes o f (now
mega-huge movie director) David Fincher.
She even read for the lead part in a little film
called Blue Velvet. “The original script was
much scarier,” says Davis.
In ’87 The Motels broke up and Davis re
corded her first solo album. Even though she
has continued to perform under The Motels
moniker, she’s pretty much been on her own
ever since and has continued to be a big hit
in, o f all places, Australia. Now, at age 58, she
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