Meet the Lonely Parrots: Singing the praises of indie music and regenerative farming

For singer-songwriters Max Embers and Michael Martinez, steakhouses are the past. And sustainable agriculture is the future. On July 12, the Sunset District-based couple, who perform together as Lonely Parrots, will formally debut their passion project, MORF (Music on Regenerative Farms) with an afternoon of original tunes, organic produce, and educational tours at Solar Punk Farms in Guerneville.
But just a few years ago, they were each playing background music at expense account beef cathedrals.

“It was soul-sucking,” recalled Embers.

“Like being wallpaper,” emphasized Martinez.

In a recent interview with the Bay Area Reporter, the pair discussed joining forces, taking charge of their own careers, and focusing on what matters most to them.

Ditching the system
San Francisco native Martinez, 33, and German-born Embers, 31, first crossed paths as students at the Berklee College of Music in Boston a decade ago but didn’t begin working together until 2022.

After college, each spent time living in Los Angeles, working to build their names as songwriters and performers. Despite some notable accomplishments –including appearances by Embers alongside John Legend and Ryan Tedder (One Republic) on the NBC series “Songland”–both men found the machinations of the corporate music industry uncomfortably dehumanizing.

“In LA,” recalled Embers, “It’s such a pay-to-play culture. To get booked at a club, you have to guarantee a certain number of people will show up. And if they don’t, you have to pay the venue. You’re constantly calling the same 75 people you know –most of who are also musicians– and begging them to come out to your show.”

Martinez ultimately moved back to the Bay Area, where he continued to work on his own songwriting and supplemented his gigs as a for-hire singer-pianist with occasional roles in musical theater productions, including the 2021 “Bratpack” show at Feinstein’s at the Nikko, and the sex-positive rock musical “Coming Soon” at Z Space.

Embers checked out of the musical mainstream mid-pandemic, abandoning LA for an isolated three-week songwriting retreat in the San Jacinto mountains, which ultimately led to the release of a deeply introspective EP, “Idyllwild,” and a decision to begin a nomadic life, traveling the country alone by van, booking the occasional gig and playing living room and backyard concerts.

While crisscrossing the continent, Embers came upon the streaming documentaries “The Biggest Little Farm” and “Kiss the Ground,” about ecological farming and climate change, and felt something shift inside of him.

“I started to read up on regenerative farming as a way to grow food, to heal our topsoil and to mitigate climate change. I’d always been a nature lover, and in my excitement over learning about these movements, I also realized that farming without heavy machinery is inherently a community activity. It takes a lot of hands getting dirty.”

Morphing toward MORF
When he occasionally passed through the Bay Area, Embers would crash with his old college friend, Martinez. While spending an afternoon on the beach at Gray Whale Cove near Half Moon Bay in 2022, the two wrote their first song together, tilling the ground for their eventual partnership.

“A few months later,” Martinez recalls, “Max came to visit again, and he was just, I swear the only way I can say it is that he was like literally glowing. I was like, ‘What’s going on with you?’”

On the road, Embers had begun cold-emailing regenerative farms and asking if he could come play music for the folks who worked there. At some places, he ended up staying for a while, helping out and learning more about farming practices.

After listening to Embers talk about his experiences and watching the documentaries that had first inspired his friend, Martinez came to agree that there was a natural affinity between the communities drawn to regenerative farming and to the intimate style of music they each liked to make.

“We’re asking people to lean in, listen closely, and get in their feelings,” said Embers. “There’s not necessarily a lot of room for earnestness at more typical music venues.”

And so, the idea for MORF was born.

Slow and steady growth
As the pair began laying the groundwork for what ultimately became next month’s major MORF debut as well doing more collaborative songwriting, Embers’ life as a solo nomad came to an end.

Sharing a home in the Sunset, the two began performing together as Lonely Parrots (named in honor of San Francisco’s famous flock, which frequents their neighborhood on its daily peregrinations). Eventually, their artistic partnership also became a romantic one.

Playing shows organized through Sofar Sounds, a platform for booking affordable small performances, along with private house parties and benefit gigs, Lonely Parrots have spent the past three years building a small but strong following, locally and through social media.

They’ve also hit the road as a twosome, doing two cross-country tours in 2024, playing house concerts where they haven’t charged for tickets but found that attendees have been extremely generous with post-show contributions.

“Last year, we were pretty much able to support ourselves that way,” said Martinez. “At a single good house concert where we play mostly our own original music in an intimate environment for a couple of dozen people who are there to really listen, we can make more than by each doing a couple of steakhouse gigs where we sing covers to karaoke tracks for four hours and blow our vocal cords out.”

Though planning to tour again later in 2025, Lonely Parrots have devoted the first half of this year to building their hometown presence and producing recorded versions of the gently emotive songs that will make up their debut album, to be released later this year.

While demos of their originals are currently available only to their robust Patreon community members, Lonely Parrots’ meditative “Earth hymnal” cover versions of Chaka Khan’s “Ain’t Nobody” and Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” can be found on streaming services.

Jam on the farm
While Embers and Martinez look forward to growing their music-making career as Lonely Parrots, they are also enormously proud of the steps they’ve taken to get MORF off the ground, serving as logisticians and impresarios for the upcoming Guerneville event.

Attendees will have the opportunity to explore a regenerative farm in person, meet with representatives of grassroots advocacy groups, and purchase locally grown fruits and vegetables before settling into Solar Punk Farm’s redwood grove for a two-hour concert, also featuring likeminded musicians Foxtails Brigade and Lucy Clearwater.

The pair hope to evolve MORF into a legal non-profit and work to create similar events nationwide in years to come.

“I think the conversation around the ecological crises we’re facing can get scary and overwhelming,” says Embers. “Sometimes people just shut down to it. But MORF is meant to be joyful. To celebrate wonderful, positive communities and to show that there are uplifting ways to get involved in caring about each other and the earth.”

MORF Concert featuring Lonely Parrots, with Foxtails Brigade and Lucy Clearwater, July 12, 2pm-6pm, $39, Solar Punk Farms, 15015 Armstrong Woods Road, Guerneville

  https://www.morf-initiative.org

https://www.patreon.com/LonelyParrots  
 
https://www.instagram.com/lonelyparrotsmusic/