Former Tea Party frontman Jeff Martin has a new collaborator, Wayne Sheehy, a noted Irish drummer who has worked with Ronnie Wood, Robert Palmer, Bo Diddley and Michelle Shocked. His new album, tentatively titled "The Line In The Sand," should be out in Canada in early summer and the singer-guitarist calls it "monster rock."

"Even though it's under my name, it's not really a solo album because Wayne and I did the writing together," says Martin, in an exclusive interview with Lowdown from his home in Ireland, days before leaving for Australia where he and Sheehy are booked for a month of dates as an acoustic duo.

"When this record does come out, we're basically forming another power trio, just like The Tea Party. When we get back from Australia, we're auditioning for a bassist/keyboardist -- what Stuart [Chatwood] used to do," he says referring to his former bandmate. " That's the most comfortable thing I know, and with the way that Wayne plays drums, he's just a monster, so if we can get someone with the level of musicianship that Wayne and I are at, it's going to be a very powerful band."

After Martin's acrimonious split with The Tea Party in 2005, the multi-platinum-selling rock band he formed in 1990 with Windsor, Ontario schoolmates Chatwood and drummer/percussionist Jeff Burrows, he moved to Ireland with his wife and young son. He released his independent solo debut, "Exile And The Kingdom," in 2006 on Koch Entertainment, which sold 11,000 units in Canada, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

"With 'Exile And The Kingdom,' I kind of purposely tried to keep it under the radar because, to be perfectly honest, I really didn't know where I wanted to go after the band had broken up," Martin tells Lowdown. "I had to put a record out to support my family because I had nothing.

"Hindsight being 20/20, yes I know back then I talked it up and everything because I had to, but the thing is that it's kind of unfocused. It was a mishmash of songs that were left over from The Tea Party days and stuff like that that I never used, whereas this is a brand new slate, and it's very focused. What Wayne and I are doing is an evolution of what I did with the other two [from The Tea Party]. It's exciting."

He says "The Line In The Sand" sounds somewhere between The Tea Party's 1995 album "The Edges Of Twilight," and 1997's "Transmission."

On the new album, Martin handles all the vocals, guitars, bass, and keyboards, and Sheehy plays drums and percussion. The two co-wrote all the songs, except for two that Martin wrote with other people -- one is the title-track with Brian Paul and Martin Ouellette of Canadian rock band Tenth Planet; the other is "Raindrops" with two other Canadians, Gregory Vitale (Likota Son) and his writing partner Simon Clark.

Besides working on his own songs, Martin has been producing tracks for both Vitale and Tenth Planet in Ireland as well as a new project from Sonny Greenwich, formerly of Montreal's Bootsauce, who lives close by.

"With the break up of The Tea Party, I was left with absolutely nothing," says Martin, including, he says, the recording studio he made much of The Tea Party material on.

"Basically for two years here in Ireland, I was without the tools that I'm used to having. There was a recording studio here that someone else owned, but it wasn't the type of gear that I was used to, because my thing is the old analog sound. So it just took me a couple of years to get all my sh*t back together and what I did, essentially, is I built a recording studio exactly like I had with The Tea Party, but just better gear."

The studio is just down the lane from his house at a place called Carbery Cottage Guest Lodge, the Sheepshead peninsula property where his new management office is situated.

"The meeting and on going friendship/partnership with Jeff Martin started when Jeff booked his band in here during the recording of 'Exile And The Kingdom," reads an email for Lowdown from Mike Hegarty, who now co-manages Martin alongside Julia Clotworthy-Bird and the singer himself. "This proved to be a slow but natural progression into the set up of Kingdom Management."

"I run my management company," says Martin. "Wayne and I run it in tandem with Mike and Julia. Mike is, for all intents and purposes, my manager. His background is from the shipping business, so he's very pragmatic. And Julia was the development director of The Theatre Royal in Bath, England, for 15, 20 years, so she knows that side of things, dealing with fame and things like that.

"So it's just a great combination. It's like family. They are very protective of me and, in tandem with that, we've got [Toronto's] Christ Taylor as the lawyer. Chris is basically overseeing the business side of things with the contracts, and [Montreal's] Donald Tarlton from D.K.D [Group of Labels] is kind of like our consigliore, because Donald is semi-retired now, but he's taken a very vested interest in what I'm doing and where this is all going.

"We're also talking to EMI right now so we'll see where that goes," adds Martin of the label that released all The Tea Party recordings in Canada from 1993's "Splendor Solis" to 2004's "Seven Circles."

Martin will be in Canada for just three concerts at the end of April, booked by Darcy Gregoire at The Agency Group in Toronto -- the Grand Theatre de Quebec in Quebec City on the 26th and the following day in Fredericton at the Fredericton Playhouse. The final paperwork is still forthcoming for a third date in Ottawa. There will not be any other shows, says Martin. "I'm trying to keep it low key right now."