Martin Zellar forced off guitar at Minnesota gigs after ‘playing through a lot of pain’

With another busy summer of gigs lined up around the Upper Midwest, Gear Daddies frontman Martin Zellar revealed to fans he’s suffering from osteoarthritis and can hardly play guitar anymore.

“My problems are ones you might expect for someone who’s spent 45+ years as a professional musician: my hands, wrists, and ears are in rough shape,” Zellar, 62, wrote in his newsletter ahead of his slew of shows — including the kickoff to Shakopee’s popular Rhythm on the Rails summer concert series Wednesday night (6-9 p.m.), where he’s performing with his Neil Diamond tribute band.

“For now, I’ll be slowing down on live performances and concentrating on singing for most of those I do,” he added. “Which means I’ll be adding another guitar player to the mix.”

Zellar told the Minnesota Star Tribune that he has two different guitarists lined up to fill in onstage, one a recognizable name: Wilson Zellar, eldest of his two sons, who has his own band, Dad Bod, and helped sculpt his dad’s last solo album, 2023’s “Head West.” The other is Luke Kramer, who has long played with GB Leighton.

As familiar and well suited as these younger slingers are to Zellar, however, he admitted giving up the guitar has been difficult.

“My playing has always been more about conducting the band — setting tempo and dynamics and tweaking things mid-song if they aren’t feeling right,” he explained. “I feel like a lot of what makes my songs my songs are the dynamics; if I can’t dictate that, they change. There’s a reason so many of my songs kick off with only me.”

Zellar also admitted to another unexpected challenge from sidelining his guitar work: He started to occasionally forget lyrics, too.

“My muscle memory, built over many years, involves singing and playing together, and not doing that threw me off,” he said.

The good news is Zellar has been working through all these challenges and plans to keep up appearances, occasionally using a guitar for help. In fact, he’s been working through all this for several years now and tried to tough it out. But the pain that comes from playing guitar full time with osteoarthritis continued to worsen.

“Between adrenalin and heavy doses of painkillers, I can still technically make it through a show,” he said. “I am willing to play through a lot of pain, but my range of motion becomes very limited as the night progresses. I pay a heavy price pain-wise for at least 24 hours afterward.”

A resident of scenic San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, for the past 20 years, Zellar still regularly returns to his native Minnesota for performances, especially in summer.

Other concerts on his calendar this season include Martin Zellar & the Hardways shows at Waconia’s Parley Lake Vineyard on Friday, the Hewing Hotel in Minneapolis on July 13, and Silver Bay along the North Shore on Aug. 8; plus a couple of Gear Daddies gigs at Hutchinson’s Riversong Music Festival on July 12 and Excelsior’s Concerts in the Commons series on July 23.

In the case of the Gear Daddies — whose lead guitarist, Randy Broughten, plays a lot of pedal steel onstage — Zellar sounded especially uneasy about messing with the formula that’s more or less been in place since the band’s 1984 formation in Austin, Minn.

“Take any player out, and it’s not the Gear Daddies,” he said, “but we’ve all agreed that, provided it was Wilson, we’d be cool moving forward with some shows using that configuration. Hopefully, our fans will accept that.”

With the laid-back, roll-with-it attitude that’s a Gear Daddies trademark, Zellar said he has accepted his increased physical challenges and will probably decrease his number of performances. But he won’t accept any discussion of retirement.

“Never playing again isn’t something I’ll contemplate,” he said.