In a tiny studio in Durrus, Ireland, it took just 10 days for Jeff Martin to record the majority of his first solo album, "Exile And The Kingdom," due April 11 in Canada on the new Toronto-based indie label Nevada Koch.

Originally intended to be an acoustic recording, the direction took on a harder edge when the former Tea Party frontman invited Page & Plant drummer Michael Lee to come onboard. He already planned to use his good friend, percussionist Ritesh Das of The Toronto Tabla Ensemble, and knew he would utilize many of the exotic instruments (from the sarod to esra) for which The Tea Party is known but had largely put away in recent years. Martin would produce the album and Toronto's Nick Blagona would engineer.

He found the ideal recording studio at the home of Kevin Nolan, just down the lane from where Martin now lives in the Irish countryside with his wife and young son. His musical guests stayed at a local B&B, where they could walk to Caroline Studios each day.

From Dec. 11 to Dec. 20, they recorded a good nine of the 10 songs. When Martin returned to Canada for the Christmas holidays, Blagona started mixing them at Metalworks Studios in Mississauga, ON. Meanwhile, Martin had a bit more work to do on a few others. He laid down vocals on "Where Do We Go From Here" and enlisted Jennie Laws, who was recording next door, to sing back-up on "Stay Inside Of Me."

While in Buffalo, NY, for a lone solo show before the new year, Martin had a local gospel choir, the New Beginning Choral Ensemble, sing on "The Kingdom" and "Black Snake Blues" at Chameleon West Studios, owned by Goo Goo Dolls' Robby Takac. And after the New Year, he went to Montreal's Studio Piccolo where arranger Marc Ouellette brought in members of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra to add strings to "The World Is Calling" and "The Kingdom."

The last song Martin completed for "Exile And The Kingdom" is the closing track, the bluegrass hoedown "Good Times Song." He once called it "The Table Song" because it literally featured Martin on acoustic guitar and Das playing a table back in Ireland. But it had no lyrics until Martin was inspired in Metalworks to write a little tribute to his friends.

Martin gave Lowdown an exclusive listen to the finished album.

Here are some of his comments as he played back the entire album song by song at Metalworks Studios. The lead track and first single, "The World Is Calling," has just been serviced to rock radio and the video was shot last week in Vancouver, directed by Canadian actor Adrian Hughes.

"THE WORLD IS CALLING" -- the lyric, according to Martin, is "an open letter to George W. Bush." Key lyric: "You keep on lying/There's children dying."

"BUTTERFLY" -- written for his wife, Nicole, before his son, Django, was born and he was trying to make sense of her moods and the way she was before she became pregnant. "It was like trying to catch a butterfly," he says.

"WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE" -- "My usual statement on the human condition," Martin says.

"DAYSTAR" -- after being in the hospital for his son's birth, even cutting the umbilical chord, with his wife exhausted, she told him to go home and write a song. He did -- in 10 minutes. He thought "of all the light this little boy brought into my life -- like the sun, the day star. I don't know how you write a song more from the heart than this one," Martin says, immediately pulling photos of his son out of his wallet.

"LAMENT" -- living in this small Irish community, inspired by traditional aires, and even the work of Sinead O'Connor and Canadian Daniel Lanois' first two solo albums, he wanted to create a "tribute in the vein of Lanois' 'For The Beauty Of Wynona.'"

"ANGEL DUST" -- written about 18 months ago; Martin comments how "a lot of these songs became prophetic in a way. I knew inherently that there was going to be a change in my life and I needed to go into self-imposed exile. It's a story about taking my wife and son in exile. I said goodbye to all those friends and walked away."

"BLACK SNAKE BLUES" -- reclaiming his roots, he says, Martin introduced this song by reminiscing about listening to the blues as a kid with his dad; he then recounts a story about The Tea Party opening for Page & Plant at the Montreal Forum, a set which included "Turn The Lamp Down Low." Afterwards, hesays Robert Plant told him not to touch the blues, that going to those influences is frowned upon. Martin ignored the advice obviously and this wrote this fun, Robert Johnson-style song. "It's what makes me happy," he says. He explains that the black snake in Haitian voodoo is the devil.

"STAY INSIDE OF ME" -- He says he always loved Led Zeppelin's "Going To California," but the lyrics don't mean anything to him. Still, he went for the same type of feel with this song. He also thought about Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush's "Don't Give Up" and enlisted Toronto singer Jenny Laws "who has the voice of an angel" to join him on the song.

"THE KINGDOM" -- Martin talks of living in Ireland, and hearing the melodies in the sea breeze off the Atlantic Ocean. With gale force weather outside one night, he sat in front of his fireplace and started humming a melody which became this song. Lyrically, he was thinking of old issues, working through them and moving on from the past, changing everything about his life for the positive.

"GOOD TIMES SONG" -- the song is a celebration and name checks his friends -- Ritesh; blue eyes (Michael Lee); MJ (his new manager, Michael Lee Jackson); and Angel (friend Terry Scott). Martin added a banjo and dobro, and Scott played spoons and Blagona put shaker on it. "It's real hillbilly," Martin says.