Jill Martin

Country singer Jill Martin made her recording debut in 2013 with a personal songwriting style and an elegant mix of contemporary and traditional influences. Like her self-titled debut, her second EP, 2018's The Locals, was written with her husband, Logan Mize. A native of rural Andale, Kansas, Jill Martin started singing around the house as a toddler but became more ambitious after discovering Whitney Houston in the second grade. By the seventh grade, she was singing in a wedding band. While performing covers with the group, she noticed her flair for country music and concentrated on learning the classics of the genre. Martin played in the Midwestern touring band Annie Up while attending Newman University in Wichita, and after graduating in 2008, she relocated to Nashville. It was there that she met fellow country singer Logan Mize. The musicians married in 2010. That same year, Martin made it as far as Hollywood Week in the early televised rounds of <I>American Idol. After writing songs together with her spouse, Martin's independently released debut EP, Jill Martin, arrived in early 2013 and charted regionally as well as on streaming service genre charts. She soon took a break from recording and performing to focus on raising her young children while Mize continued to tour, returning in late 2018 with her second EP, The Locals. Co-written by Martin and Mize, it contained a track called "Loretta," a tribute to Loretta Lynn. Following its release on Big J Records in the last week of December, the EP reached the Top 20 of Billboard's Heatseekers chart. ~ Marcy Donelson, Rovi