Episode 50 Matt Martin

Race fans, it's time to buckle in and listen to the fastest hour in racing radio. Your driver is

a multi-time NASCAR winner and Hall of Famer Mark Martin. We cover racing, grassroots, history,

we bench race, we talk life, and most importantly, we smash the loud pedal. It's time to turn some

laps on the Mark Martin podcast. Episode number 50 of the Mark Martin podcast, and we're going to

talk about something pretty special. It's called the Mark Martin archive, and it was just started

organically over the last year, and it's a collaboration project between Mark and his son,

Matt. But Mark, you're going to be doing some interesting things, not only with the archive,

but now coming to Las Vegas. Tell us about that. Well, this Las Vegas race weekend is going to

be really, really fun for us. The Speedway decided that they wanted to start a legends program so

that every year they would honor a legend of the sport because there's so much interest in

sort of the golden era of NASCAR. And so they asked me to be their first honoree because we won the

inaugural race back in 1998. And so sure, we're, you know, thought that would be fun and all that

stuff. And one thing led to another and Landon Best, a young man from Tennessee,

about six months ago, just happened to acquire JR 51, which was the first car that we built

in 1998 after we moved our shop to Mooresville and set up shop in the shop with Jeff Burton.

And the 99. So he didn't realize it at the time, but he looked into the history of that car. And

of course, that car was my second favorite car of all time at Roush Racing. Won four races with it

in 1998, including, of course, the inaugural race there at Las Vegas. So as it turns out,

he's restored the thing completely to period correct. It's got, you know, a running engine in it

and everything. And it's going to be out there along with myself to kind of share with all the

fans, which I'm really excited about. We, you know, that car was really special. We won Vegas with it,

then we took it to Texas and won Texas, California and Michigan, all four races. So

it's pretty cool. It's going to be incredible to see that race car sitting out there on Pit Road and

maybe even maybe even a lap around the racetrack at face speed.

Race fans really can't see this right now, but Mark actually kind of has a glow talking about this.

JR51 is second favorite car of all time. It's going to be renovated. Now, if you go to Facebook,

Twitter, social media, you'll see some of the images of JR51. Mark has shared that on his pages.

But Mark, this leads into kind of a more of a bigger project that seems to be going on that

happened to come together over the last year. And that's the Mark Martin archive.

How did all of that come together? Well, that's really 100% Matt. And I'm going to let Matt,

you know, talk more about that. But he just, he really, Matt really wanted,

is pushed me into this book, doing a book. And that's kind of Matt's passion anyway,

is books and stuff. And he has, he has an online bookstore, roserebrooks.com and all that. And so,

you know, he's talked me into working on this book. And I'll let him tell you about the incredible

author that we have that's putting it all together. But he had to do an enormous amount of research

to try to, you know, sort of shepherd this project along. And so along the way, I think he just

decided to start this archive and we'll bring him in here and let him kind of tell the story on it.

So for the first time ever, episode 50, we're going to debut Matt Martin onto the podcast. Now,

Matt, this is a project that was featured in The Athletic. Jeff Gluck did an article about it,

talked about the connection that you have with your father and what you're able to do with the

archive. But talk about, and I know this from the past, you've been very interested in the retro

look, the apparel. But now this is gone to another direction. You've got that connection with your

dad with Mark, and you're able to build this archive project, but it's going to turn into a book.

So let's talk about that, Matt, and your interests and what you're doing these days.

Yeah, absolutely. So this archive thing all kind of started when after I had convinced dad to do

this book, we had been working on that for a few months, and I started gathering up photos

throughout his career and saving them all because we need to put a lot of those in the book, of

course. So I started accumulating a lot, and one day it just kind of hit me. I thought, man,

it would be cool to start an Instagram page and just post a lot of these photos and write a little

bit about his career and whatnot and the captions and stuff because I thought a lot of fans would

be interested in seeing them. And I know myself, I'm interested in some music from the 80s and 90s

and different things. So like on myself, on my personal Instagram, I'll follow some of these

pages that post vintage stuff. So I thought, man, that'd be cool to have a page about dad

that has stuff from back then. So just started that page, not really planning anything out, and

man, it got almost 3,000 followers in a day, and it just exploded. So I kept doing it and

posting more and more photos, and then I got people asking for merchandise. And I hadn't

planned on that, but I got so many people asking for it. I thought, well, yeah, that'd be cool to

do t-shirts and whatever else. And so I started doing that, and it just really kind of grew on

its own, and it was all just an organic process. But yeah, I mean, the book thing is going to be

really cool. We've actually, we want to do actually two books now. One, like a regular book that has

bad story in it. And then I've realized there's so many photographs of his career that, you know,

just due to space limitations, we're not going to be able to put a lot in the regular book.

So I'm just now starting to work on a project to do a limited edition coffee table book that

will be light on text, but will be mainly photographs that will be like super high

quality and everything. And because I know there's a lot of diehard fans out there that

would definitely love to see those. And a lot of them, I mean, have never been seen. So that's

really cool. But yeah, I mean, it's been a lot of fun doing this. And I've just been blown away by

the response from the fans and from everybody. And it's just amazing the hunger for 80s and 90s

NASCAR right now. I mean, I'm just blown away by it. So in the past, you guys have done some

apparel stuff, worked at the museum, kind of done some different things. But doesn't this seem

organically to have more of a purpose now? Yeah, I would definitely say so.

You know, I really wanted this Mark Martin archive to become a platform to promote,

you know, Dad's book. And, you know, and then just doing this merchandise and all this other

stuff and raising awareness about the stuff that he did throughout his career, just it feeds into

that. And, you know, we're not, yeah, we're not doing things at random. Like I guess, you know,

from the merchandise store from years ago did, it's all kind of with a purpose. So absolutely.

So talk about your background a little bit. Of course, you know, and you can go to the athletic,

Jeff Gluck's went into kind of detail about that. But racing really didn't become an interest after

a while. And now you're into books and you have your own company. Let's get some background on

that, you know, your racing career and then your interest more importantly. Yeah. So, you know,

I started racing when I was seven years old. And, you know, that was my idea. Dad never asked me

if I wanted to race or do anything like that. Yeah, I just asked him one day if I could get

a quarter midget and start racing and everything. And, you know, I had never,

I mean, I knew dad was an ask our driver, but when you're seven years old, you're not really

thinking about what you're going to be doing at 30. And I was just thought it'd be fun and just was

kind of living in the moment like most little kids do. And, you know, as I went on, it was fun. But

as I turned 13, 14 years old, when it's time to start really getting serious about this, if

you're wanting to pursue it as a career, it just really wasn't my passion. I mean,

when dad started racing, when he was 15, that's all he ever thought about. I mean,

you can just look back at his journals and everything like that. I mean, his whole life

revolved around racing. And me, like I'd go race and then I'd be thinking about whatever else I'm

going to be doing with my friends that week, whatever. I mean, it just was something that I

did must, you know, a lot like a lot of kids play baseball or football growing up, but they don't

become professional ball players. Yeah, just for whatever reason, I just inherit that passion

promoter sport. So one thing that I was always interested in, though, was history and literature,

things like that. And so after I went to college and graduated, I liked to read so much and I got

into collected books, rare books, mainly. And I just decided that it would be cool to

try and start a business where I dealt with and sold rare books. And so I started that about a year

ago and I've been having fun with that growing it and getting some cool stuff. I mean, some of

the books that come up for auction are pretty wild. I recently got a book from 1896 that, I mean,

it looks like it's brand new and it's just wild when you hold something in your hands. It's that

old, but it's hard to replicate that kind of feeling. So that's pretty cool. So that company

is called Rose Rare Books, rose rare books.com. Correct? That's correct. So you can go on that

website and check out what Matt has got going on. But Mark with Matt not having a racing career,

you've always supported him in whatever he's done 100%. Talk about that. I mean, there's

a bit of a fandom that wants to know what Matt's doing that wanted to know about his racing career,

but you've always played that role of dad steadfastly and not pushed him to go into racing.

First of all, Matt just sold a book this week, I think, that was 171 years old,

if I'm correct. That's absolutely fascinating. Think about where that has been and who read that.

And that's just totally fascinating to me. And I've grown appreciation for

not only the history of motorsports, but I share that enthusiasm as well. I mean, when you look

at a book that's 150 years old or 170 years old, and it's in beautiful condition, it makes you

think about all the things and puts you kind of, it puts things in perspective. Sometimes you just

get lost and running hard every day and you don't really think about things. So that's really cool.

But as far as, I'm just like, I've seen some parents who have pushed their kids to do things

that I think they probably wanted themselves or wish they had done. And I just followed my passion

all my life from a kid. And that's what I want for my children as well. I just want them to

follow their passion and to be their own person. And so it was a no-brainer for me. I just always

supported Matt for whatever it was that he wanted to do and our girls as well. I just want them to

be their own person. And I'm just a regular guy that was not good at anything when I was a kid.

And I found something personally that I was, I had a Mac for and was a little bit good at.

And that just sucked me in. And that's what, that's what I do. And thank goodness I found

something that I loved and had passion for. And I'm just happy for Matt to be able to follow his.

And it's his passion as well and support him in every way. And I'm a big cheerleader. I'm loving

this archive because it really brings he and I together. He asked me a lot of questions

now about, you know, different things that I haven't thought about in a long time.

And he knows a lot more about my career in the 90s and the cars than I know. You know, I'm almost

like a savant or something for the 70s and 80s. But you know, I really think I can't tell the

difference of 1993, Valveline Thunderbird in 1994. He can spot it immediately through all his research.

So it's fun to see him and share with him, you know, things about my career that

I have forgotten. And it's really fun to see the fans' response to all this as well. I mean,

it's amazing, overwhelming the response and how much fun that we're having with this.

I think this is very similar to what we did with the podcast and going through the different

years on each podcast and, you know, explaining the different races that were a part of the year.

But what is so wonderful about this whole project, this Mark Martin archive,

is the fact that number one, it's organic and number two, the bonding opportunity for

father and son to get together and work together and, you know, have these discussions. And I

believe this is going to lead Matt. Are you going to Las Vegas also? Oh, yeah, I'll be there for

sure. I can't wait. So you're going to have an opportunity just to see this old car. You're

going to have some fun. I believe you guys have a sweet experience for the weekend.

I've seen South Point. You're going to be there connecting with the fans.

But this is an opportunity, Matt, for you to go out and be a part of this, you know,

NASCAR community again, and to share some of your passion from the bookside, the retro apparel,

the nineties, all of that. I mean, are you fairly excited about going to Las Vegas next week?

Oh, yeah, it's going to be really cool. And, you know, I kind of thought about it's pretty

neat because I'll get to be there now. And it's 24 years later. And when he won the race, you know,

back in 98, you know, me and mom weren't there. So we will be this time. So that's kind of neat

from that perspective. And yeah, man, I just love those those nineties valvoline cars. They're

it's going to be pretty awesome. So, Mark, you're going to get in your hot rod camper,

motorhome RV, whatever you want to call it. You've been posting about that a lot on your

Facebook page and Instagram. Is that thing ready to go? You got it serviced? Have you

have you taken out the Q tip and cleaned out all the little stuff and all that that goodness?

Yeah, I can't wait to get it dirty again. So I can clean it. It's been sitting here for about

six weeks and and pristine condition and and ready to go. So when I get back from a trip, I

that's the first thing I do is I 100% get it ready to hit the road again, because you never know

something might come up. That's our that's our transportation. You know, we sold our

our airplane in 2018. And if we have anything come up where we need to go anywhere, we just

are leaving. I just pile in it and go. So it's already and I'm excited about about

going down there and being in the driver owners lot for for the motor coaches and seeing the

I'm seeing the racers, but especially I love seeing the

the coach drivers. You know, I'm a that's that's my thing now more than race cars as motor coaches.

And that's what I kind of hyper focus on. It reminds me of being a teenager and having my

race car. We would bring it home after every race and I would spend the week trying to improve the

car and figure out how I can make it work better or be cooler or look cooler or whatever.

I can do that now with these coaches. You know, I love working with my hands and

always trying to figure out how to make it better or cooler or work work better or whatever or

maintain it. And you also look forward to being down there because on I think Friday

NASCAR Productions is going to do some video stuff with me about our

Mark Mamba and the Mayor podcast as well as their 75th anniversary, which is next year.

They're going to be celebrating all year long. There are 75 years of history of NASCAR

and they're going to do some filming for that. That's going to be really fun. It's so good

to see the historical side of NASCAR and how far it goes back. And

there's just a lot of cool things that makes me think about even back to the 50s and all

when Tim Flock raced. I had the opportunity on two or three different occasions being at functions

in 1982, 81 and 82, where Tim Flock was there. Tim raced and won races with a monkey riding in the

car. As a matter of fact, he won a race with a monkey riding with him in the car. And those are

the kind of historical things. So the reason the monkey didn't get to ride in the car anymore is

because back then they tried to beat him up, didn't they? Yeah, they put a trap door on the

firewall where the driver could pull it and see it would open up the door and they could see the

right front tire to see if they needed to change that tire. Well, he pulled that door down and a

rock flew up and hit the monkey in the head. And the monkey went crazy and jumped all over his head

and he had to pit. He was leading the race and he had to pit and get the monkey out of the car.

So that's the kind of thing that we need to remember and enjoy about the celebration of 75

years. So coming up next week, you are at the South Point 400 NASCAR weekend in Las Vegas. It

starts on Thursday. There's a party at South Point from 6 to 8 p.m. That's Brennan Gahn's

situation there, the South Point Casino, correct? Yeah, it's actually, I think the date of time is

6 to 7 p.m. But yeah, Brennan will be there sounding autographs. And I think Noah Gregson

and a couple of other drivers as well. So be able to get pictures, I think, with JR 51.

A lot of stuff, I understand, is going to be free beer. Everybody should come and have some fun.

So we're looking forward to that event there at the South Point and seeing Brennan and I think

we'll get to see his dad as well while we're there. So that's going to be a cool evening.

It's going to be a big week at Las Vegas. Again, it starts at South Point on October 13th,

6 to 7, like Mark said. The number 6 will be there in all of its glory. Then there's other

opportunities throughout the weekend. It looks like Saturday, October 15th at 11 a.m. is a driver

Q&A session in the Neon Garage. And then on Sunday, race day, Speedway Children's Charities

live auction at 8.30 a.m. and Trackside Live stage at 9.30 a.m. All kinds of things going on

next week in Las Vegas. But getting back to Matt, Matt, there's a new t-shirt out. It's the Folgers

Car, a very limited run on this t-shirt. Talk about the inspiration on that getting that t-shirt out

and then sales. Are you the one actually shipping this? Are you doing all the hard work, the hard

labor? Oh, yeah, it's just me that packages them all. So I've got a lot of work ahead of me today

and tomorrow because I've already sold half of them. I got 300. But yeah, so what I do for all

these shirts is I go back and I try to find originals that I like. And I'll send them to

Kane's screen print is who I work with. And what they do, they have their artist,

they base a design on that original design. So it's not a copy of it, but it's heavily

influenced by that original. And so for this particular Folgers one, there was a couple

really good shirts from 1990. But this one was one of my favorites because it says Ozark

Mountain Grown on it. And of course, Folgers is Mountain Grown. So it was kind of a pretty cool

deal with that, with dad being from North Arkansas. So yeah, and so I sent that to them and they did

design and they got to me quick. And yeah, they're halfway gone now. It's crazy. But

we've got, I've got a lot more in the works. I got two designs done, they're just not print yet.

And I've got, I got plans for much more. So as long as their response is still good to them,

good with them. So yeah, man, it's been awesome.

So MarkMartinArchive.com is where you can go get those t-shirts. When it comes to cane

screen printing, that's actually Casey Kane's company. And I believe is a Blaine Derward

that's been doing some of the artwork on these? Yeah, Blaine has done a lot of them. He hasn't

done all of them, but he like, he did the 98 shirt and he's done one of the shirts that we haven't

printed yet, but we're going to print next. So again, if you got a chance, MarkMartinArchive.com,

a shout out to Casey Kane screen printing, they do a great job. And then another, you know,

plug for you, Matt, roserarebooks.com. Even if it's people, just go check out what's going on there

because it's fascinating just by clicking on the website and looking at some of those books and the

history of, you can definitely go down that rabbit hole and learn at the very least.

Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's a lot of cool old books out there. And you know,

right now, you know, I have a good mix of everything, but I'm waiting on some more

options to come up so I can get more stuff to offer people. But yeah, that might not be your

type of thing, but you might be interested in at least seeing what I'm doing. So

one more, one more thing, Barry, before we go to Matt has, he's been working, we've been working

for months, probably six months, good six months. I don't think people really understand

how difficult it is to, it's not like we're, you know, my, my short track car, my late model from

1977, where I don't have to answer to anybody, no national sponsors, no other car owners, no other

thing. But once you get to the level of NASCAR, you just can't go produce this merchandise. You

have to get agreements and sign offs from, you know, the sponsors and the owners and the,

in fact, all kinds of stuff. It's not as easy as people think it's not, you don't just do up this

artwork and do it. So we've worked months and months and months and months to get okays and

approval for this stuff. And the big thing is around the corner, and I think I'll let Matt

tell you about the die casting that's taken away Matt, that's going to be really cool.

Yeah. So as dad said, I've been working with Lionel for months, trying to get approvals to

do a lot of these historic die casts. And due to, you know, there's some that we won't be able to

do because they don't have the tooling anymore, but we're able to do the Ford Thunderbirds between

1989 to 1997. And so we got the approvals from everybody the other day to do these two raced

wind die casts, one from 1990, the North Wilkesboro win, and the 1997 Talladega win, which holds the

record still as the fastest NASCAR race ever. And so we're just getting started on that. And

that'll, I mean, that's going to take a while to produce. I mean, if they started right now,

they might be out to the public by May of next year. So that's how long a lot of this stuff takes.

So it sounds like a lot of cool things are going on right now with the Mark Martin archive,

not only the t-shirts, but you're bringing in die casts. And then the last thing we should

touch on quick is the book. Matt, tell us about the process. This is your wheelhouse. Tell us about

the process of the book and how that's going when we can expect it. But this isn't a Johnny

Come Lately thing. This Mark Martin archive is for real. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So we contacted

a motorsports writer by the name of Bones Borsier. And dad has actually read most of his books.

He's a phenomenal writer. But what's really important too is he's also, he's a motorsports fan

first. And he just happens to be a great writer. Sometimes you can get in trouble when you contact

a great writer, but they don't know anything about the subject matter. But this guy, I mean,

he was the perfect guy to do it. And he's known dad almost since the beginning. He's been heavily

involved in motorsports. And actually, when we were in Arkansas just a few months ago,

I had never noticed it before, but we had a frame article in the museum for 1988

that Bones had written about dad and Ralph Racing. And so it's kind of cool. But yeah,

we've been working on that for several months. We don't know when it's going to be out.

We don't want to set a timeline or a deadline on it. We want it to be right. And however long

it takes is just however long it takes. But we hope that it's sooner than later. But we,

I really believe that it's going to be really good because it's not just going to be about,

you know, the competition side of things and, you know, where dad won this race or where he

finished here. It'll have that in there. But it's more about the human story, you know, about dad's

struggles to get to NASCAR and all the behind the scenes and stuff that a lot of people,

even his diehard fans don't know about. I mean, there'll be a lot of stories in there

that people have never heard. And I think that's going to be, I think that's going to be really

good. And I believe it'll be a big hit for sure. So, Mark, you're going to Vegas. You're going to

have some fun. You're going to interact with some fans. It's probably one of the, you know,

bigger interactions since you did the open house in Batesville a couple of years ago.

So it's kind of a little comeback tour for you to get a chance to hang out with the fans.

Yeah, I look forward to it a lot. I just love the whole setup. I love Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

I love racing there. I've missed the fans tremendously. I think it's going to be so fun to

share the entire experience with fans. And with the car being there, it's really going to be

a lot of fun. And I look forward to getting it off. Keep that off.

So one last question for Matt before we go, Matt, what's it like having a dad that's into

gangster rap? Oh God. Yeah, man. I don't know that type of music. It's never been my cup of tea.

But, man, you like what you like. I like some wild music too that, you know, a lot of people

don't like. I mean, I like all that extreme metal and stuff. So a lot of people think that's just

noise. But I think one thing though, my buddies love it. He loves gangster rap. You know, it's

funny. I mean, in high school, I had to show dad how to download mixtapes on the internet.

You know, that was funny. But yeah, I mean, actually, I think he mentioned in one of the

podcasts that it was one of or maybe it was a couple of my buddies that introduced him to

Taguchi mate. That is right. You know, so yeah, I think it was one of my buddies that did. But

yeah, so yeah, it's funny for sure. So before we go, if you get a chance, also head to the

Seen Vault podcast and other podcasts that's out there, Mark just recently did about a story to

get back into the Winston Cup garage. So make sure to check that out. You can find that on the Seen

Vault podcast. But boys, markmartinarchive.com is it. Vegas is the place to be next week.

And that is it. It's a wrap on episode 50 of the Mark Martin podcast.

Thank you for subscribing and listening to the Mark Martin podcast.

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Ford Thunderbird

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